The Story
Located near the Ohio Valley, lies a multi-billion dollar corporation plant where the controversy created sounds like a story line out of a scary movie. DuPont, which is a chemical corporation founded in 1802, has been knowingly disposing of a toxic chemical called C8 for over five decades. The outcome of disposing C8 has been nothing but bad news -- causing numerous people in the area to become extremely ill and developing cancers such as testosterone cancer, prostate cancer, and even birth defects.
The Dry Run Landfill near Parkersburg, WV.
Near the landfill owned and operated by DuPont in Parkersburg, WV, the corporation had contaminated the drinking supply for a nearby farmer by the disposing of green water with bubbles on the surface, had contributed to deformed behaviors and body parts of the farmer's cattle, and the increase in deaths of his cattle supply. According to The New York Times Magazine, "
The Lawyer Who Became DuPont's Worst NIghtmare", Rob Bilott, a former defense attorney for eight years, filed a federal lawsuit against DuPont in the summer of 1999. Three veterinarians chosen by DuPont and three chosen by the E.P.A. were sent to the farm near the landfill to investigate the cattle's health conditions. Their reports did not find DuPont responsible and described their conditions as inadequate care provided by the Tennants. The surrounding community began to antagonize the Tennants of the farm for their distrust in the corporation, which followed with the loss of lifelong friends.
DuPont then began to refuse the documentation of the chemical C8 (referred to as PFOA by the government) that was found at the landfill site. Since 1951, this chemical has been used and has not been classified by the government as a hazardous substance. DuPont stated in its own instructions that it was not going to be flushed into surface water or sewers, yet over the next few decades, over a hundred thousand pounds of the C8 chemical powder was flushed through the pipes of Parkersburg facility to the Ohio River. This eventually entered the local water table, which supplied drinking water to neighboring communities of more than 100,000 people in total.
Bilott eventually learned that DuPont began conducting secret medical studies on C8 for over four decades. In the year 1961, the researchers at DuPont found that the chemical could increase the size of the liver in rats and rabbits; they repeated the study a year later in dogs and replicated their results. In the 1970's the researched then found that there were high concentrations of C8 in the blood of factory workers at the Washington Works plant near Parkersburg, WV. DuPont did not disclose this information to the E.P.A at the time. In 1981 after 3M (the inventor of C8 four years before DuPont began utilizing it) released that the ingestion of the substance caused birth defects in rats. After they released this information, DuPont tested the children of pregnant employees and of seven births, two children had eye defects. DuPont did not release this information to the public. By the late 1980's DuPont began to express concern about the health effects of the C8 chemical and decided they needed to find a landfill for the toxic sludge dumped on the company property. Fortunately, they recently bought 66 acres of land that was eventually renamed the Dry Run Landfill.
By the 1990's, Bilott discovered that DuPont understood that C8 caused testicular cancer, pancreatic and liver tumors in lab animals. Also by this time, DuPont had dumped 7,100 tons of C8 sludge into the Dry Run Creek. DuPont did not disclose the levels of C8 to the Tennants of the farm at the time of discovery, nor did they disclose it in the cattle report that was commissioned for the Tennant's case a decade later. In 2001, Bilott sent his entire case file of DuPont's use of C8 and his Tennant's case to the E.P.A and DuPont responded quickly by requesting a gag order to block Bilott from providing the information he discovered to the government. C8 was only one of more than 60,000 synthetic chemicals that companies produced and released without regulatory oversight.
Under the 1976 Toxic Substances Control Act, the E.P.A. can test chemicals only when they are provided evidence of harm. In 2005, four years after the letter by Bilott was read, DuPont reached a $16.5 million settlement with the E.P.A., which accused the corporation of concealing its knowledge of the toxicity and presence of C8 in the environment in violation to the Toxic Substances Control Act, mentioning that DuPont wasn't required to admit liability of this occurrence. This fine represented less than two percent of the total profits earned by DuPont on C8 that year.
The next step for Bilott was to file a class-action lawsuit against DuPont on behalf of everyone who has been affected by the toxic chemical with tainted drinking water. DuPont had told its workers that the C8 was causing health problems for women and birth defects in children. A woman named Darlene, with an ex-husband who worked at the DuPont factory, faced complications with hysterectomy's occurring six years apart. In 2002, the agency released its initial findings that the chemical C8 might pose human health risks to those drinking tainted water and to the general public (anyone who cooked with Teflon pans since C8 is a major chemical used in the production). In 2004, DuPont decided to settle a class-action suit. It agreed to install six filtration plants in the affected districts and pay a cash reward of $70 million. This would fund a study to determine whether or not there was a "probable link" between the C8 chemical and any other diseases. If there was a correlation, DuPont was responsible for paying medical monitoring of the affected group. Class members were forbidden from filing any personal-injury suits against DuPont. Bilott and his team had received $21.7 million in fees from the settlement. As much of a settlement this was for years of research Bilott didn't stop there.
There was a considerable gap in the data that Bilott had found. The health studies conducted by DuPont were limited to factory employees. After discovering the gap in data, his team pushed to make receipt of the cash reward contingent on full medical examination. The class voted in favor of this approach and in a few months, nearly 70,000 people near the area were trading in blood testing of C8 for a $400 check. Twelve studies were designed by scientists to determine exactly how much C8 each class member had ingested. Because DuPont was responsible for the funding of the research without limitation, it costed them $33 million. Seven years later, in 2011, scientists began to release their findings as a "probable link" between C8 and kidney cancer, testicular cancer, thyroid disease, high cholesterol, pre-eclampsia, and ulcerative colitis.
As of October 2015, 3,535 plaintiffs have filed personal-injury lawsuits against DuPont. As part of its agreement to the E.P.A., DuPont has stopped production and use of C8 since 2013. In May of 2015, 200 scientists from a variety of disciplines signed the Madrid statement, stating that the production of all fluorochemicals, including te replaced C8 chemicals interfere with human reproduction and metabolism and cause cancer, thyroid problems, and nervous-system disorders. DuPont disagrees with the Madrid Statement. In 2009, the E.P.A. set a "provisional" limit of 0.4 parts per billion for the short-term exposure, but has never finalized that figure. This means that local water districts are not under any obligation to tell customers whether or not C8 is in their drinking water. The E.P.A stated that it will release a lifetime health advisory level for C8 by early 2016, yet this doesn't effect those who already have the C8 in their blood, especially for those with multiple generations who have either worked or lived near the DuPont plant or landfill almost their entire life. Most residents appear to not know that their water levels are highly contaminated with C8 in the Parkersburg area. Scientists have found that C8 is common in many types of fish, pelicans, sea turtles, bald eagles, sea lions, and albatrosses.
Bilott doesn't regret fighting DuPont for the last 16 years. He is currently working on the second personal-injury case against DuPont.
The Ethics
On many levels, this incident with DuPont has violated not one, but many levels of ethics while using the toxic chemical C8 for the production of Teflon and other products. The violation of ethics includes, but is not limited to, personal, professional, community, corporate, federal, state, and occupational levels. Although all levels of ethical violations are wrongfully done in this disastrous situation, violating ethics on a professional level is a controversial issue when talking about the case of DuPont and C8.
Professionals such as lawyers and doctors/veterinarians are comprised with their own ethical code of conduct that is expected to be followed in order to properly perform at a level of professionalism. With the actions made by DuPont in this scandal, professional level ethical codes are violated and conflicted by personal moral codes and consistently affect others on an individual level and on other levels of ethics.
In this case, lawyers are expected to follow a professional ethical code to understand what is definitively right and wrong in a situation presented upon them. As far as Bilott's level of professional ethics, he evaluated his personal ethical code to consult with the victims of the wrong-doings made by DuPont and made a decision in order to provide the victims affected by the use of C8 and the contamination of their drinking water an answer that they deserved to hear and hopefully receive accommodations for the suffering that the community near Parkersburg has been enduring for over five decades.
As far as the ethical violations among the doctors/veterinarians, medical ethics in serving the community near Parkersburg where effected greatly. As a medical professional, you are responsible for following medical ethics. Medical professionals must act for the best interest in the patient, and are allowed to ethically decline a patient-physician relationship before it has been established. In the case of DuPont, all veterinarians in the area technically followed their professional ethics stated ensured for medical professionals, but with the knowledge of the condition of the patients and the animals effected with C8 by information from the corporation, the conclusion of medical care was limited based on the influence that DuPont had within the community. If stipulations were different and personal morals and ethics were proposed more influential on the decisions these professionals had to make, the severity of the damage and outcome of the C8 exposure in drinking water may have been treated differently and DuPont's five decade long use of this chemical and the effect it's had on the area of Parkersburg and surroundings may have resulted in a different outcome.
