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“Bilott is an engaging narrator who breaks our hearts with tales of clients suffering excruciating ailments and amazes us with endless 14-hour days scouring technical reports in search of that one clue that might help him make his case. The naïve corporate defense attorney we meet at the book’s start is gone by the end, and he seems no longer surprised when he realizes that regulators, including the Environmental Protection Agency, are in DuPont’s pocket. By the time he learns PFOA and its chemical cousins are in the blood of virtually all of us, he knows it’s fallen to him to do the E.P.A.’s job. The book ends with him filing a federal class action suit against eight chemical companies on behalf of every American. His education is complete." —The New York Times Book Review
“In the grand tradition of Jonathan Harr’s A Civil Action, lawyer Bilott presents his own real-life legal thriller...readers will be riveted...smartly told and briskly paced, with keen attention to pertinent details.” —Booklist (starred review)
"Leaves little doubt that year after year, the corporation misled government agencies, courts, and consumers into a false sense of security about the poisonous nature of their manufacturing processes.” —Kirkus Reviews
“An intimate account of one of the most appalling environmental crimes in modern history. Exposure is a classic story of American good and American evil—of the triumph of ingenuity, diligence, and self-sacrifice over psychopathic corporate nihilism. Rob Bilott is a hero of our time.” —Nathaniel Rich, writer at large for the New York Times Magazine and author of Losing Earth: A Recent History
“Rob Bilott uncovered the most heinous corporate environmental conspiracy in history. The evidence is literally in your blood. Rob makes one shocking discovery after another while bringing the culprit to justice. You won’t be able to put Exposure down.”—Ken Cook, president of the Environmental Working Group
About the Author
Robert Bilott is a partner at the law firm Taft Stettinius & Hollister, LLP in Cincinnati, Ohio where he has practiced environmental law and litigation for more than twenty-eight years. He has been selected as one of the Best Lawyers in America for several years running and has received numerous honors for his work in environmental law and litigation. Rob is a former chair of the Cincinnati Bar Association’s Environmental Law Committee and a graduate of New College in Sarasota, Florida (BA) and the Ohio State University College of Law (JD, cum laude). In 2017, Rob received the international Right Livelihood Award, commonly known as the “Alternative Nobel Prize,” for his years of work on PFOA. Exposure: Poisoned Water, Corporate Greed, and One Lawyer’s Twenty-Year Battle against DuPont is his first book.
The cattle farmer stood at the edge of a creek that cut through a sun-dappled hollow. Behind him, white-faced Herefords grazed in rolling meadows. His mother’s grandfather had bought this land, and it was the only home he had ever known. As a boy, he had cooled his bare feet in this creek. As a man, he had walked its banks with his wife. As a father, he had watched his little girls splash around in its shallow ripples. His cattle now drank from its pools.
The stream looked like many other streams that flowed through his sprawling farm. It was small and ephemeral, fed by the rains that gathered in the creases of the ancient mountains that rumpled West Virginia and gave it those misty blue, almost-heaven vistas. Thunderstorms occasionally swelled the creek so much that he couldn’t wade across it. Dry spells shrank it to a necklace of pools that winked with silver minnows. Sometimes it ran so dry he’d find them glittering dead in the mud. That’s why they called it Dry Run.
Dry Run used to flow gin clear. Now it looked like dirty dishwater. Bubbles formed as it tumbled over stones in a sudsy film. A thicker foam gathered in eddies, trembling like egg whites whipped into stiff peaks so high they sometimes blew off on a breeze. You could poke it with a stick and leave a hole. It smelled rotten.
“That’s the water right there, underneath that foam,” the farmer said.
He was speaking to the camcorder pressed to his eye. No one believed him when he told them about the things he saw happening to his land. Maybe if he filmed it, they could see for themselves and realize he was not just some crazy old farmer. Birds sang through the white-hot humidity as he panned the camcorder across the creek. His hand shook as he pressed the zoom button, zeroing in on a stagnant pool. Its surface was matte with a crusty film that wrinkled against the shore.
“How would you like for your livestock to have to drink something like that?” he asked his imagined audience.
The farmer’s name was Wilbur Earl Tennant. People who didn’t know him very well called him Wilbur, but friends and family called him Earl. At fifty-four, Earl was an imposing figure, six feet tall, lean and ox-shouldered, with sandpaper hands and a permanent squint. He often walked through the woods shirtless and shoeless, his trousers rolled up, and he moved with an agile strength built by a lifetime of doing things like lifting calves over fences.
Hard labor was his birthright. It had paid for the 150 acres of land his great-grandfather had bought and for the two-story, four-room farmhouse pieced together from trees felled in the woods, dragged across fields, and raised by hand. The farmhouse stood at the foot of a sloping meadow that rose into a bald knob.
Dry Run was less than a mile’s walk from the home place, across Lee Creek, through an open field, and along a pair of tire tracks. It flowed through a corner of the three-hundred-acre farm, in a place Earl called “the holler.” A small valley cut between hillsides, the holler was where he moved the herd to graze throughout the summer. He walked there every day to count heads and check fences. The cows grazed on a mixed pasture of white Dutch clover, bluegrass, fescue, red clover… “just a duke’s mix of everything.” Until lately, the cattle always fattened up nicely on that, plus the corn he grew to finish them and a grain mix he bought from the feed store. Now, he was feeding them twice as much and watching them waste away.
The problem, he thought, was not what they were eating but what they were drinking. Sometimes the cattle watered at a spring-fed bathtub trough at the farthest end of the field, but mostly they drank from Dry Run. Earl had come to believe that its water was now poisoned—with what, he did not know.
“That’s where they’re supposed to come down here and pull water samples, to see what’s in that water.” He pointed the camera at a stagnant pool of water flanked by knee-high grass. The olive green water had a greenish brown foam encrusting the grassy bank. “Isn’t that lovely?”
The edge in his voice was anger. His cattle were dying inexplicably, and in droves. In less than two years he had lost at least one hundred calves and more than fifty cows. He marked each one on a calendar, a simple slash mark for each grotesque death. The herd that had once been nearly three hundred head had dwindled to just about half that.
Earl had sought help, but no one would step up. After contacting the West Virginia Division of Natural Resources and the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection, he felt stonewalled. The state vet wouldn’t even come out to the farm. He knew the folks at the DNR, because they gave him a special permit to hunt on his land out of season. But now it seemed they were ignoring him.
“It don’t do you any good to go to the DNR about it. They just turn their back and walk on,” he told the camera. “But you just give me time. I’ll do something about it.”
Thing was, time was running out. It wasn’t just his cattle dying. Deer, birds, fish and other wildlife were turning up dead in and around Dry Run. He had stopped feeding his family venison from the deer he shot on his land. Their innards smelled funny and were sometimes riddled with what looked to him like tumors. The carcasses lay where they fell. Not even buzzards and scavengers would eat them.
Hunting had been one of Earl’s greatest pleasures. He had carried a rifle as he went about the farm, always ready to shoot dinner. He was an excellent marksman, and his family had always had enough meat to eat. His freezer had brimmed with venison, wild turkey, squirrel, and rabbit.
Now it was filled with specimens you might find in a pathology lab.
The problem had to be Dry Run, he thought. He hardly ever saw minnows swimming in the creek anymore, except the ones that floated belly up.
He zoomed out and panned over to an industrial pipe spewing froth into the creek.
“But the point I want to make, and make it real clear,” he said, zooming in, “that’s the mouth of Dry Run.”
The pipe flowed out of a collection pond at the low end of a landfill. On the other side of his property line, Dry Run Landfill was filling up the little valley that had once belonged to his family. Its dumping pits were unlined, designed for the disposal of nonhazardous waste—office paper and everyday trash. At least that’s what his family had been told thirteen years before by the company that had bought their land.
He didn’t believe it anymore. Anyone could see that something was terribly wrong, not only with the landfill itself but with the agencies responsible for monitoring it. Did they think no one would notice? Did they think he would just sit by?
“Somebody’s not doing their duty,” he said to the camera, to anyone who would listen. “And they’re going to find out one of these days that somebody’s tired of it.”
Two weeks after he filmed the foamy water, Earl aimed the camcorder at one of his cows. Standing walleyed in an open field was a polled Hereford—red with a white face and floppy ears.
He panned the camera a few degrees. Her calf, black and white, lay dead on its side in a circle of matted grass. It looked, at most, a few days old. Its head was tipped back at an awkward angle. The carcass was starting to smell.
“It’s just like that other calf up yonder,” he said, panning over the matted grass. “See how that’s all wallered down? That calf had died miserable. It kicked and thumped and wallered around there like you wouldn’t believe.”
The calf was engulfed in a black, humming mist. He zoomed in. Flies.
He panned again: a bonfire on a grassy slope, a pyre of logs as fat as garbage cans. In the flames, a calf lay broadside, burning. Black smoke curled into the daylight.
“This is the hundred and seventh calf that’s met this problem right here. And I burn them all. There’s been fifty-six cows that’s been burnt just like this.”
In another field, a grown cow lay dead. Her white hide was crusted with diarrhea, and her hip bones tented her hide. Her eyes were sunk deep in her head.
“This cow died about twenty, thirty minutes ago,” Earl said. “I fed her at least a gallon of grain a day. She had a calf over there. Calf born dead.”
Earl loved his cows, and the cows loved Earl. They would nuzzle him as he scratched their heads. In the spring, he would run and catch the calves so his daughters could pet them. Even though he sold them to be finished and slaughtered for beef, he didn’t have the heart to kill one himself, unless it had a broken leg and he needed to end its suffering. Recently, the cows had started charging, trying to kick him and butt him with their heads, as this one had before she died.
She had spent the summer in the hollow, drinking out of Dry Run until she’d started to act strangely. With no one from the government or even local veterinarians willing to do it, Earl decided to do an autopsy himself. It wasn’t his first. His earlier efforts had all revealed unpleasant surprises: tumors, abnormal organs, unnatural smells. He wasn’t an expert, but the disease seemed clear enough that he bagged the physical evidence and left it in his freezer for the day he could get someone with credentials interested enough to take a look. That day had never come, so he decided he would make them watch a video.
“She’s poor as a whippoorwill. And I’m gonna cut her open and find out what caused her to die. Because I was feeding her enough feed that she shoulda gained weight instead of losing weight. The first thing I’m gonna do is cut this head open, check these teeth.”
Earl pulled on white gloves and pried open the cow’s mouth, probing her gums and teeth. The tongue looked normal, but some of the teeth were coal black, interspersed with the white ones like piano keys. One tooth had an abscess so large he reckoned he could stick an ice pick clear under it. The flies hummed as loud as bees. He sliced open the chest cavity, pulled out a lung, and turned the camera back on. The smell was odd. He couldn’t quite place it. It was different from the regular dead-cow smells he had dealt with all his life.
“I don’t understand them great big dark red places across there. Don’t understand that at all. I don’t ever remember seeing that in there before.”
He cut out the heart and sliced it open. The muscle looked fine, but a thin, yellow liquid gathered in the cavity where it once beat. “There is about a teacup or so full of it—it’s a real dark yeller. It’s something I have never run into before.”
He reached back into the cow and pulled out a liver that looked about right. Attached to it was a gallbladder that didn’t. “That’s the largest gall I ever saw in my life! Something is the matter right there. That thing’s about… oh, two-thirds bigger than it should be.”
The kidneys, too, looked abnormal. Where they should have been smooth, they looked ropy, covered with ridges. The spleen was thinner and whiter than any spleen he had come cross. When he cut out the other lung, he noted dark purple splotches where they should have been fluffy and pink. “You notice them dark place there, all down through? Even down near the tips of it. That’s very unusual. That looks a little bit like cancer to me.”
Whatever had killed this cow appeared to Earl to have eaten her from the inside out.
To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyzes reviews to verify trustworthiness.
It's unbelievable what DuPont did, all in the name of financial profit, by introducing this hazardous chemical concoction and then perpetuating its use when they knew full well how toxic it was. It is unbelievable and heartbreaking to hear about the suffering of humans and animals while DuPont raked in profits. It's unbelievable that Earl Tennant found just the right person in Robert Bilott to seek and attain justice...but he did. It's equally unbelievable that the EPA and our legislative bodies have done so little in this fight, while other countries have made giant strides. I had no idea of the scope of this issue...and I thank the author, not only for giving me the story to read, but for his patience and tireless efforts over so many years to expose this issue and cause lasting change. We need more people like that.
I read it in 2 days. The book balances the intellectual rigors of the legal process with the personal and social aspects of the case behind it. As someone who lives in a community with PFAS contamination, I think every American should read this book and wonder what the factory down the street is discharging into their water.
Reviewed in the United States on November 15, 2019
Verified Purchase
Excellent read - pacing was gripping because I am familiar with the PFAS chemical compounds as they relate to firefighter exposures. Detailed, factual read. Buying more books for others and holiday gifts. Just enough legal and court action to keep it fascinating without getting bogged down. Highly recommended!
5.0 out of 5 stars
If you drink water or are a firefighter, you should read this book.
By Vicki Quint on November 15, 2019
Excellent read - pacing was gripping because I am familiar with the PFAS chemical compounds as they relate to firefighter exposures. Detailed, factual read. Buying more books for others and holiday gifts. Just enough legal and court action to keep it fascinating without getting bogged down. Highly recommended!
Reviewed in the United States on December 23, 2019
Verified Purchase
The audience at the Tower Theater applauded Bilott at the conclusion of Dark Waters, and I rushed home to buy this copy of his book Exposure. It's even better than the movie, and I'm filled with admiration for this man who chose the battle dragons, and the button-downed law firm that stood behind him as he did it.
Anyone who has ever been involved with a court case knows that it's the evidence admitted that determines outcomes. How Bilott managed to mire through hea hundred-thousand pages of more of documents thrown at him by DuPont to find the skeleton key to winning this case is a miracle in itself.
Here's to those who battle dragons and the senior partners at Taft that supported him when the outcome was as clear as a muddied lake.
Reviewed in the United States on December 16, 2019
Verified Purchase
This is a little bit like Erin Brockovich, the lawyer who fought the Pacific Gas & Electric Company in 1993 which ended in a US$333m pay-out by the company. Although the total pay-outs were not as large as the Pacific Gas case, the drama is as exciting. Like the Pacific Gas case, this book was written by the lawyer who took on the corporate giant – DuPont.
Bilott is a corporate defence lawyer, but in this case, he became the small man’s plaintiff lawyer. He begins this book with the intriguing brief from a poor farmer, Earl Tennant, that came to him through his grandmother, Alma White. Farmer Earl’s cattle and even his family were all falling ill. He suspected – no, he strongly believed – that it was something that the big company DuPont pumped into the waters of Dry Run Creek nearby.
This book is the exciting account of how Bilott took on Earl Tennant’s case and fought a court action that resulted in a satisfactory settlement for Tennant. But that was only half the story because part of the settlement required a Science Panel to study the effect of the deadly agent, known by various names such as AFPO, PFOA, FC 143, and C8. It is the chemical used to make Teflon. The agreement saw further pay-outs should the Science Panel determine that C8 was the likely cause of any illness.
In the meantime, more cases sprung up from elsewhere, all with the same problems that Earl Tennant and the people of Parkersburg had with C8. A new action was commenced by Bilott on behalf of his new client, Joe Kiger. This time, Bilott, after studying Kiger’s story, commenced a class action. The fight with DuPont was far from over. It had gotten bigger. The book is also a legal thriller and should be read by law students and lawyers. Bilott found how difficult it was to fight a giant corporation like DuPont. His methods and perseverance form the fascinating aspects of the book.
Was Bilott a good lawyer, an altruistic man. Or a glory seeker? The reader can decide. In the meantime, like Erin Brockovich, Bilott’s book has been made into a movie – Dark Waters, starring Mark Ruffalo as Bob Bilott.
Reviewed in the United States on December 18, 2019
Verified Purchase
I watched the movie on Saturday and on Sunday I sat down to read Exposure. I devoured the book in only two sittings, once again captivated by the story I had seen only the day before on the big screen. The book is split into three sections, the first two which were detailed in the film. Although the movie did a fine job of capturing the tale, the book provided additional insight into the very captivating and complex legal battle with DuPont .
Being somewhat aware of PFAS prior to reading the book, I was impressed to see a complicated scientific topic broken down (without dumbing it down). Bilott did a great job of capturing his learning curve as well, making it clear how much time he put into learning the material to represent the cases as eloquently and accurately as possible. But fear not, if science is not your interest the book covers the legal proceedings in wonderful detail.
I highly recommend this book and have purchased several copies for Christmas gifts!
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 16, 2019
Verified Purchase
This is a little bit like Erin Brockovich, the lawyer who fought the Pacific Gas & Electric Company in 1993 which ended in a US$333m pay-out by the company. Although the total pay-outs were not as large as the Pacific Gas case, the drama is as exciting. Like the Pacific Gas case, this book was written by the lawyer who took on the corporate giant – DuPont.
Bilott is a corporate defence lawyer, but in this case, he became the small man’s plaintiff lawyer. He begins this book with the intriguing brief from a poor farmer, Earl Tennant, that came to him through his grandmother, Alma White. Farmer Earl’s cattle and even his family were all falling ill. He suspected – no, he strongly believed – that it was something that the big company DuPont pumped into the waters of Dry Run Creek nearby.
This book is the exciting account of how Bilott took on Earl Tennant’s case and fought a court action that resulted in a satisfactory settlement for Tennant. But that was only half the story because part of the settlement required a Science Panel to study the effect of the deadly agent, known by various names such as AFPO, PFOA, FC 143, and C8. It is the chemical used to make Teflon. The agreement saw further pay-outs should the Science Panel determine that C8 was the likely cause of any illness.
In the meantime, more cases sprung up from elsewhere, all with the same problems that Earl Tennant and the people of Parkersburg had with C8. A new action was commenced by Bilott on behalf of his new client, Joe Kiger. This time, Bilott, after studying Kiger’s story, commenced a class action. The fight with DuPont was far from over. It had gotten bigger. The book is also a legal thriller and should be read by law students and lawyers. Bilott found how difficult it was to fight a giant corporation like DuPont. His methods and perseverance form the fascinating aspects of the book.
Was Bilott a good lawyer, an altruistic man. Or a glory seeker? The reader can decide. In the meantime, like Erin Brockovich, Bilott’s book has been made into a movie – Dark Waters, starring Mark Ruffalo as Bob Bilott.
I bought this after watching "Dark Waters", the film of Rob Bilott and the events described in the book. The book, obviously, goes into far more detail than any film ever could, although it is worth noting that the film was surprisingly accurate. Considering this is written by a lawyer, there is, unsurprisingly, a lot of legal jargon and there is a lot of information based around chemistry, but don't let that put you off. The subject matter is fascinating in itself, but the book is well written and gripping - it reads almost like a dense story than real life. Considering that this is true and is such a relevant issue right now, just buy the book. You may have to read it in small chunks as it is quite dense, but it is well worth the money and a fascinating read.
5.0 out of 5 starsA 'Must Read' for those who care about all our health, the environment and corporate responsibility
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 1, 2020
Verified Purchase
Reading Robert Bilott’s ‘Exposure’ on Du Pont’s chemical pollution in Parkersburg, West Virginia, the book gives a great deal of legal and personal background to the story which I first had revealed to me recently in the film Dark Waters - fine film, worthy of nominations this year of which it received none (go figure).
In jumping the fence inside his corporate defence firm to take the plaintiff’s side of a lone farmer, Earl Tennant, against Du Pont, Robert Bilott uncovers an ugly story of corporate harm done to the community of Parkersburg and surrounding populations. The casual and arrogant ease with which this powerful corporation covered up major illness links (probable cause to major life threatening and altering conditions eventually found by a long independent exhaustive scientific study of nearly 70,000 people) which led to deaths from a ruined natural water supply in the area (Earl among those who died) in the pursuit of annual profit, for Teflon and other products, is as stunning as it was breathtaking. A jury finally found for a class action civil case against the company - who put up a fierce public relations & legal defence - the plaintiffs awarded a 670 million dollar settlement against Du Pont.
Rob Bilott established that in working in tandem with weak and complicit authorities (EPA) to hide the facts of a chemical dumping program, Du Pont knowingly carried on its activities for years, abusing the basic trust its economic stranglehold over the small community provided them (they were the town's main employer).
5.0 out of 5 starsEvery one in North America should read this book
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 21, 2019
Verified Purchase
It reads like a legal thriller with a protagonist who never gives in the fight for the little guy. Gripping from beginning to end. The book opens our eyes to the shenanigans in a gargantuan legal fight for justice on behalf of 70,000 people who drink water.
A brilliant story and reads like a boxing match! Rob's tenacity in taking on the heavyweight of Dupont comes across excellently in the book. Earl Tennent's down to earth and honest approach to life and Rob Billot's enduring hard work and search for justice make this a must read.
