黑水

看完电影很想了解原型人物的现状，于是就做了点功课。

因为剧中提到rob被降薪，也没有客户。

很怕他养不起三个孩子。

但想想应该也不会，毕竟赢了那么一大笔诉讼费，应该为律所赚了很多钱。

事实果然是这样，由于在发现和披露被称为PFAS的“永久化学品”（每氟烷基和多氟烷基化物质）对环境的影响，以及与杜邦公司长达数年的诉讼，Robert Bilott获得了享誉国际的知名度。

从2005年-2022年，Rob一共获得了20个来自美国国内的重要律师奖项，其中包括，2005年由公共司法审判律师基金会提名的，美国年度最佳审判律师；以及环境领域最重要的——2017年 正确生活方式奖（The Right Livelihood），也称诺贝尔替代奖(Alternative Nobel Prize)或诺贝尔环境奖。

如今Rob依然是Taft的合伙人，而且经常被邀请在世界各地的法学院、大学、学院、社区和其他组织发表演讲，同时也被邀请在美国联邦和州国会、欧盟、英国以及联合国委员会的一些诉讼上作证。

Rob在律所Taft官网上的个人简介至于Rob所在的律所Taft Stettinius & Hollister LLP在2020年与总部位于明尼苏达州明尼阿波利斯的Briggs & Morgan进行了合并。

合并后的后的Taft共有律师675名，业务也遍及全美。

在美国知名法律媒体《国家法律杂志》（National Law Journal）公布了一年一度的2021 The NLJ 500排名中，由2020年的第102位上升至84位。

看来经过这个事件，Rob和律所的现状都还不错。

这也让观影的我稍感一点欣慰吧。

毕竟还是希望那些勇敢站出来的吹哨者，可以不寒心的生活。

No.38 追求真相和正义的孤胆英雄目前这个光景，门是不敢出了，但电影该看还是要看。

本周由观影团推选的周限定电影《黑水》也是一个直刺社会现实的诚意佳作，影片讲述了马克叔扮演的律师Rob Bilott单枪匹马对阵美国最大的化学集团——杜邦集团的故事。

电影改编自一篇《纽约时报》的报道(原文：The Lawyer Who Became DuPont’s Worst Nightmare 作者： Nathaniel Rich)，上映后收获了不少好评，目前豆瓣8.3，烂番茄89%新鲜度。

现在话不多说，看看观影团小伙伴们对这个新片如何评价吧。

本周周限定共有25人参加，平均分为6.6分。

震撼人心的事实真相这个电影改编的真实事件就有足够的震慑力。

一名律师为何只身对抗一个化学工业巨头？

因为总得有人去抗争， 每个民众都应该有得知真相的权利。

之所以死磕杜邦，是因为PFOA，这是一种曾经广泛应用在包括不粘锅在内的许多日用品里的合成化学品。

杜邦公司早在六七十年代就知道了PFOA对人体健康和环境会造成危害，但为了巨大的商业利益一直对此进行隐瞒，刻意误导公众和美国的监管机构，甚至还随意丢弃含有PFOA的工业垃圾，对美国不少城市的地下水系统造成了污染。

直到1999年，这名律师因为偶然的机会接触到其中的材料，随后在16年的时间里和杜邦打官司，才让这一切大白于天下，让公众知道了PFOA的危害，也让世人看清了杜邦的贪婪与丑恶。

目前各国都已经限制了PFOA的使用。

电影曾经充当着人类社会最伟大的目击者、记录者和见证者，看到《黑水》《聚焦》《华盛顿邮报》后，我想现在还是有人在重视电影见证和记录的意义的。

（部分文字来自@渡辺dudu @野凡 的短评）@野凡 ：8/10 总得有人去抗争，与巨大的利益集团抗争，与雄厚的权势抗争，与不为人知的神秘幕后抗争。

@扶不起先生：8/10 一潭黑水投入大石必定泛起涟漪，可混浊不堪的水面却将结果推向未知。

20年的接力赛跑其中的辛酸可想而知，体制中无形的高墙却将终点掩盖而去。

影片以独有稳当的视角进行阐述，其中夹带几许阴谋论的调调值得玩味，实则是个体代表集体发声，冲破并完善体制本身的壮举。

@NanSLi: 8/10 文本从本质上与《聚焦》有些许异曲同工之妙，但其深处又未像前者那般细致入微又抽丝剥茧，与其说是揭露真相史，不如说是自我捍卫的心灵史。

沉着又的清透微光色调，湛蓝中夹杂着细微冷意。

亦如人物细致入微的内心刻画，浅淡窥见一斑却尽显清晰、分明。

清亮的配乐下阴郁与邃然逐丝逐缕渗透、牵引。

看尽时间流逝，看尽世间真相，受尽冷眼质疑。

依旧用着那副早已千疮百孔的身躯，那个疲乏的姿态，向世间掷出足以振聋发聩的声音...@蝠蝠：8/10 自由是什么？

只能墙沿欢笑罢了。

@笑语在午夜场： 8/10 社会良心题材，对标《聚焦》。

绝对不是所谓「工整」的平庸之作，影片的力道可以化骨。

主角几十年的精力损耗才换来一点点成功和补偿，这需要的不仅仅是正义，还有能站出来能担大事的勇气和决心，真正的天将降大任于斯人也。

电影的价值和意义有一部分就体现在反映现实境况、彰显社会责任上，《黑水》是一部佳作@贝克街的大盗：8/10 他们想让我们认为 体制会保护我们 但那就是个谎言 是我们保护我们自己 没有别人 作为一名河流水环境相关专业的学生 看的真的挺揪心的 尤其再加上最近这个疫情的社会背景 好不容易在质疑中七年等来了报告 杜邦的一句反悔付之东流 挺绝望的 好在最后一口气3000多桩慢慢算 还算好了一点 唉。

想想现在的一幕幕魔幻现实主义@@渡辺dudu： 8/10 现实意义大于电影本身。

电影曾经充当着人类社会最伟大的目击者、记录者和见证者，看到《黑水》《聚焦》《华盛顿邮报》后，我想现在还是有人在重视电影见证和记录的意义的。

@叶底藏花： 8/10 这TM才是现实主义，在国内看到这种以一己之力对抗庞然大物的电影大概是永远不可能。

整体拍得很工整，从事情的揭露到调查再到诉讼，故事有条不紊地展开。

整体的色调是偏暗的，中间低沉的配乐也让电影显得压抑。

反高潮的处理也值得称道 ，并不是那种所谓皆大欢喜而是有着工作的枯燥和个人的痛苦。

最触目惊心的应该是最后，C8已经存在于地球上99％的人体内......与我而已，我永远钦佩那些秉持着公平正义与良心的人，然而在中..国，这样的人大概是404吧。

@鹳鸟踟蹰: 8/10 我们无数次的探头寻找so called正义，在漫长的等待中，谁是赢家？

黑色的水，化学污染，强权和金钱，层层无法剥离的阴霾。

沉稳冷静地叙述着体制无法拯救的苦难。

人物塑造上却是如此无力了。

@无火：7/10 说起个人对抗体制这类题材，韩国和美国涉及的最多，强弱对立的悲壮感的极力渲染，很容易打动观众。

然而本片貌似并没有刻意渲染这种情绪，而是去展现个人在对抗体制过程给身边亲近的人带来的诸多困境与冷落，这一点很不错。

当一个人选择为理想、正义、天下而奋不顾身时，他内心斗志或者是执念至少可以抚慰他，但他的亲人却要被动性的承受太多苦痛。

英雄可敬，但英雄背后的人更伟大。

@臻圣：7/10 当下时机看这部片子感受颇深。

“既然干了，我就干到底”罗伯特这股锲而不舍的劲儿令人钦佩，“为众人抱薪者”——顶住压力公然向大公司挑战，值得一部电影铭记。

全片近八成的画面充斥着冷峻阴郁的蓝色调。

导演采用大量的主观镜头停留于报纸、书页、照片、屏幕，去体现罗伯特调查取证收集线索的复杂和艰难。

时间跨度很大，气氛沉闷又有压迫感，社会这滩黑水才是真的深不见底。

片尾的一串串数字触目惊心。

片尾触目惊心的数字同时本片也有强大的班底保驾护航。

首先，出品公司Participant Media，制作了不少颁奖季的冲奥片，主打社会性强的现实题材影片，如颁奖季大热的《美国工厂》《绿皮书》《华盛顿邮报》等，而主演马克鲁法洛与安妮海瑟薇还有男配提姆罗宾斯，都是一等一的演技实力派。

特别是马克叔这次的发挥，非常扎实稳重。

@☄①号试管： 9/10 印象最深刻的是Rob在车里颤颤巍巍插钥匙发动汽车，重压下处在奔溃边缘的氛围令人窒息。

全片都笼罩着一股阴郁的气息，即使结局正义得到伸张时总算喘了口气，字幕又冰冷的弹出了“据研究，99%的生物体内都含有特氟龙，包括人类”。

再作妖下去人类还有几年命数哦…… ” @cinedreamer_：8/10 以一己之力对抗一家巨头产业乃至整个政府，需要多少勇气和毅力？

又需要多久的等待多大的牺牲？

题材其实并不陌生，整体拍得也很平很严肃，但得益于Todd Haynes的出色功力，整部片的节奏都非常稳、故事线也清晰，虽时长两小时有余却并不显冗长，而那种压抑与震惊感又是随着故事不断发展逐渐渗透着的，很敢拍也的确拍的很好。

马克叔还是呆呆的，安妮大概算是正常发挥（波浪长发还是美到我昏厥啊呜呜呜），以及一度对影片中事件的真实性存疑，没想到居然真的是以真事为基础？

太细思极恐了。

@铁甲依然在：7/10 黑水，四颗星。

“他甘愿为了一个需要他帮助的陌生人冒着所有的风险”改编自真实事件，被主角坚持不懈的努力感动。

面对这些巨头，几乎不可能取胜，政府已经被操控了，一直是我们自己在保护自己，看看现在的社会吧，太真实了。

欣慰的是依然有人在伸张正义，默默前行。

@董小__： 7/10 还是一个常规对抗体制的故事。

对人物的刻画好，主角从不愿意做到想见好就收再到持续致力，人物变化清晰，在无畏背后有脆弱，愤怒背后还有不甘。

故事四平八稳，社会意义大于剧情吸引力。

@空曲成歌：7/10 有点闷 故事节奏过慢 像一部纪录片 马克叔饰演的人物以微薄之力对付一家庞大的公司实在钦佩 意味着要面临着许多许多的牺牲 p.s.安妮女神的戏份也太少了！

长发还是很美!真实归真实，但真的拍的一般而观影团内另一种声音则认为事件真实归真实，震撼归震撼，但是从电影层面而言，问题还是非常多的，首先是克制冷静的风格下叙事没有亮点，节奏也偏慢偏闷，拍的太像纪录片。

人物塑造上过度的突出主人公一人，把马克叔自己的角色塑造的非常出色，但其他配角没有起到很好的作用，引用@Supremacyacron 的一句短评就是“导演也没像他的成名作《卡罗尔》那般去多方面挖掘人物的内心戏，以至于安妮海瑟薇等人的角色与路人无二。

”@玻璃球游戏🎱： 5.5/10 全片节奏就像弗吉尼亚的那滩黑水死气沉沉，所有的戏剧性被看似沉稳实则空洞的叙事屠戮了。

Robert作为主角则从头到尾都像木偶一样机械般无知觉地左支右绌，真正称得上危机的事件只有结尾处所谓托拉斯对于个人权益的抹杀，然而这难道不理所应当作为全片贯彻始终的主题，而非刻意编排成反转似的强权的反扑吗？

所有共情在如此流水账的演绎下变得毫无可能，力求纪录片式的展现却缺失了观众得知真相的震感，早早地将杜邦公司的罪行和盘托出，余下一场场的庭审和质问戏乏味且毫无悬念，传递出的胶着感源于剧作上做作的原地踏步，弗吉尼亚阴郁的气质也仅仅停留在前半段不再流动。

@Cor cordium： 6.5/10 作为托德海因斯的电影，未免太一般了，细腻的感情也丢了，最后只剩空洞的故事和事实，此类电影和韩国那一套未免太过相似。

海因斯向来可以处理各种复杂问题，像《天鹅绒金矿》把大的时代音乐映射在小的人物身上，暗流涌动，狂野无比。

《卡罗尔》和《远离天堂》对感情的细腻拿捏都是恰到好处，后者更是能融汇多个问题，并相得益彰，实在是强。

但是这部电影，我们除了看到纪实，就没有别的了，有个别几处镜头相当有趣，以及马克叔抖手的诸多小细节，除此之外，言无他物，这也许是这类电影的通性吧。

@wild life： 7/10 冲这个真实事件给三星，没想到是个聚焦2.0，聚焦我就没太大兴趣，这个也是同理，这题材也就国外能做了，国内？

呵呵。

@mdr skywalker: 7/10 这部电影可能在拍的时候导演根本就没想太多，没有花哨的手法，他只想告诉我们一个事实，让我们跟随Rob这个律师一步步探索真相，坚守真相，以一人对抗杜邦这个利益集团，乃至背后的体制。

马克叔的表演一如既往地扎实稳重，安妮依然漂亮。

但是简单的单一时间线和过分突出的单一主角也确实难入颁奖季的法眼，节奏也偏闷偏慢，有些遗憾。

@Supremacyacron: 6/10 叙事风格稳健，对时间线的重视超过了故事本身，所以在中后期的叙事上力度显得不太够，稍微有点拖沓。

追击真相这个事件本身就很具有说服力，能够十几年如一日的坚守到真相大白于世也确实不容易。

马克鲁法洛的表现也是中规中矩，但是话说回来，表演没有十几年前演《救赎之路》那般相对出彩，导演也没像他的成名作《卡罗尔》那般去多方面挖掘人物的内心戏，以至于安妮海瑟薇等人的角色与路人无二。

@素素素素素丶: 6/10 Participant的这种片子看多了多少会有点麻木啊，经典老套的大情节设计，一切都为了核心服务。

相对于其他几部角色塑造又少，整体太过于规整，完全就是冲着颁奖季而拍的电影，感觉拍成纪录片会更好一点，多一星给社会意义。

@莫莫：4/10 电影的社会现实性比电影本身更具意义。

仅打分：@Polaris.J：7/10 @Anyslus: 8/10

本期的周限定观影大致就到这里了，祝各位友邻身体健康，多看好片。

附：【春天的放牛班】往期回顾【春天的放牛班】 观影团 周限定观影片单

临近2020颁奖季，热门爆款影片看不停：火了大半年金棕榈得主《寄生虫》、叫好又叫座的《小丑》、马丁·斯科塞斯九年磨一剑的《爱尔兰人》、细腻温柔的黑马选手《婚姻故事》……这其中，还有一部星光熠熠的佳作不该被忽略。

《卡罗尔》导演托德·海因斯执导，马克·鲁弗洛、安妮·海瑟薇、蒂姆·罗宾斯强强联手。

《卡罗尔》(2015)曾出品《聚焦》《华盛顿邮报》《绿皮书》等佳作的公司Participant，再度触及社会题材。

由真实事件改编，这部电影，或许与你我息息相关——

黑水 (2019)8.62019 / 美国 / 剧情 / 托德·海因斯 / 马克·鲁法洛 安妮·海瑟薇主角名叫Rob Bilott，本片的故事就是讲述他一个人单枪匹马对阵美国最大的化学工业公司——杜邦集团（Dupont, 1802-2017，于2017年8月与Dow Chemical Company合并成为了DowDupont)。

没错，就是电影《狐狸猎手》里史蒂夫·卡瑞尔饰演的继承人约翰·杜邦一枪打死了自己的摔跤教练的那个杜邦集团。

《狐狸猎手》(2014)该片改编自Nathaniel Rich于2016年发布在《纽约时报》的一篇报道《成为杜邦集团噩梦的律师》。

Dark Water，中文译名为《黑水》，或是《黑暗水域》，由《卡罗尔》的导演托德·海因斯执导，马克·鲁弗洛参与制片并出演Bilott，安妮·海瑟薇饰演女主Sarah。

上映两周，该片目前在烂番茄获得92%的好评，豆瓣8.3分，IMDb 7.6分。

Rob Bilott，一位在俄亥俄州工作的环境法律师，刚刚在律所Taft升级到了小合伙人，有一天接到了来自老家外婆/祖母（英文中统称grandma因此不确定）邻居Tennant的电话，说他的牲口都死光了，他怀疑是杜邦集团在买下了土地之后，在用化学废品污染土地。

收到电话的Bilott很为难，作为一名企业事务律师，他的专长是为大型化工企业辩护，也就是Tennant的对立面，他甚至多次和杜邦集团的律师合作过。

Bilott带着Tennant的录像带回家，通知他的妻子Sarah要回一次家去侦察一下，看自己有什么可以帮忙的。

当Bilott来到Tennant的土地，面前是一片荒芜，“这个农场简直像是一片墓地”，他这样形容。

所有的牲口都死光了，死去的牲口身体器官各种病变，惨不忍睹。

回到公司，Bilott和他的老板，公司的大合伙人Terp报告说想要接下这个案件。

Terp勉强答应了，以为只是简单的提交些文件诉讼走个基本程序，毕竟Taft的生意是辩护大集团而不是把他们告上法庭。

他没想到的是，这一次点头，揭开了杜邦集团整整半个多世纪的“黑色水域”。

在杜邦集团的文件里，Bilott发现有一个字母缩写PFOA被反复提起，却没有人知道是什么。

直到他询问了以为化学专家，才知道是一种有碳元素合成的新化学物质。

在整整半个多世纪里，杜邦一直在使用这种PFOA，后被改名为C8（由3M公司发明）的物质来生产他们的名产品不粘锅Teflon。

自从1950年，3M和杜邦就开始进行有关C8的实验。

他们发现在Teflon生产线上的女工生下的7个婴儿中有2个有先天畸形，老鼠在长期接触C8后会发生肝脏病变等。

杜邦在得知实验结果之后并没有通知任何机构，甚至把这些有毒化学物质倾倒到水域，Bilott答应去看牲口的时候以为只是一个小镇，但最后水质检测却发现在West Virginia有整整6块城镇区域C8超标，影响了超过数十万人口。

最后法院决定抽取被影响区域市民的血液样本进行分析判断C8是否和病变有直接联系。

7万市民提供了血液样本，随之而来的便是漫长的等待。

一年过去了，两年过去了，每天每天，律所的老板，起诉的市民，Bilott的家庭，他生活中的每一个人都在向他施压，Bilott甚至因为精神压力过大而昏倒进了急救室……终于在第7年，Bilott接到了医学研究的结果，C8直接导致包括肾癌，甲状腺癌等疾病。

本片虽未重现鲁弗洛2016年出演的同类型传记片《聚焦》的辉煌，但依然是一部引人深省的好电影。

全片冷静却不乏细腻的情感，虽然不是导演海因斯最熟悉的故事类型，但依然注入了一丝柔软，比如里面角色的刻画都非常细致，不仅是Bilott的挣扎，也把Terp和Sarah想为正义发声但不断被或是律所或是家庭关系所捆绑的内心矛盾。

电影中很多段对话都很让人感动：在律所投票决定要不要继续接这个案子的时候，Terp斥责那些投否决票的律师，他质问何为正义感，难道帮助他人不正是身为律师应该履行的义务吗。

当Bilott请求Terp继续支付账单并许诺这个案子结案的时候一定可以收支平衡，Terp问“你以为我接这个案子是为钱吗？

”

Sarah在医院急救室告诉Terp，Rob长大的时候搬了10次家，直到他来到了Taft，Taft对他来说远远不只是一个律所，而是他安顿下来的家庭。

Sarah说：”他愿意牺牲他的工作和家庭，只为了一个陌生人。

我不知道这是什么，但这绝不是失败。

”

当然还有在得知杜邦打算一一上诉整整3535件案件的时候，Bilott的那番话。

他挂了电话之后脸上的绝望让人唏嘘不已，他说我们都以为政府机关会保护我们，以为各种机构（例如EPA, United States Envioronmental Protection Agency) 会保护我们。

但是没有人，没有任何机构，组织，政府在保护着民众。

”只有我们自己保护自己。

”

一般一年可以庭审4个案件，算下来要审整整800年。

很多大企业都用这种耗时间的方式来逼起诉人放弃，很多人没有等到他们的案子被审就去世了。

但是Bilott花了他职业生涯过去整整20年和杜邦抗衡，他决不放弃。

于是2015年底Bilott出席法庭，3535个案件，他一个个接下。

第一个案件获赔160万美金，第二个案件获赔350万，到2017年杜邦集团赔偿总额6.71亿美金，解决了3535案件。

是啊，6.71亿美金，听起来是个天价数字，但是对于杜邦集团算什么呢。

2005年的时候杜邦由于使用C8而污染毒害居民水域被EPA罚款1650万美金，是EPA历史上最大的罚单，但是Bilott计算下来这不过Teflon一个产品三天的利润，都不是收入，而是利润，那么6.71亿的法律赔偿仅仅是一个产品120天的利润。

短短四个月的利润，对于千千万万的家庭来说是3535条鲜活的生命。

电影中还有不少细节让人心酸：Tennant家庭因为去找了律师导致整个小镇最大的雇主杜邦被起诉而遭到了整个小镇的排挤，Parkersburg更是失业率暴增，劳动部门办公室门前是失业市民排起的长龙。

当小镇在采集抽血液样本的时候，居民更是直接和Bilott说一定不会有病变，“杜邦可都是好人”。

杜邦养育了整个小镇几代人，给他们买房，供他们的子女上大学，但是代价是肺癌，胰腺癌，畸形儿。

直到出生的孩子先天畸形，直到工作数年的杜邦员工们都一个个生病倒下，才揭开了这个企业的真实面目。

Bilott实为人民英雄。

他是一名极为优秀的律师，仅仅是开车经过是看到一位小姑娘的牙齿发黑就联想到污染物质是在水里。

当杜邦用整整一个储藏室的超过11万页的文件来整他的时候，丝毫不退缩，几个月的时间每天每天的坐在储藏室标记一份又一份文件。

如今99%的世界人口身体里都含有C8，通过饮用水，不粘锅涂层等途径。

还有更多超过6万种未被审核的化学物质在被各化工企业广泛使用。

Bilott的战斗依然没有停止。

他在Tennant之后再也没有接过一个企业客户，而选择贡献他整个职业生涯来真正的保护这个世界。

也要感谢主创马克·鲁弗洛对环境的热诚，用他自己的方式把这个故事传递给全世界。

现实改编，律师对抗大企业、政府，甚至科学家，有多难？

无法想象的难。

故事是按时间顺序讲的，但有些主题是贯穿整部戏的。

1. 质疑 农民：他们说什么，你就全都相信了？

杜邦说没问题，你就信了？

事实上，每个知道这些事情的科学家，都在为这些企业工作。

还以为政府、制度能帮普通人对抗大企业，结果政府机构不管，法庭也让大企业逃脱责任。

2. 流程 起诉杜邦：即使和对方法务私人关系很好，也是公事公办，先财产索赔起诉。

为了确认化学品与疾病相关，只能耐心等独立的科学家做研究，7年。

3. 坚持！！！

杜邦寄来了一卡车的资料（想让主角知难而退），主角就抱怨了2句，坐下来就开始整理资料了。

抱怨是无法解决问题；哪有人会在这时候帮忙呢？

大家都是锦上添花，看到成功的机会才会来的。

而他居然真的把所有的资料整理好了。

降薪、没人找他打官司了，妻子没收入，家里3个娃要读书，压力大到差点中风，受害者的质疑，抗了十几年，难以想象怎么坚持下来。

杜邦不接受集体诉讼，要受害者一个一个来索赔，就想把受害者拖垮、把律师拖垮，不战而胜；连法官都说，这么多案件，得搞到2890年了。

原告律师呢？

我。

你还在？

是的，我还在。

背景音乐响起：I won't back down。

那个驼背缩头的律师，顿时高大了～整部电源的高光时刻啊4. 责任 律师事务所老板：公司就像人，而这个公司明显过线了。

我们有责任让美国商业做得更好。

其实律师事务所老板也很不容易，他是真金白银的支持主角去帮助这些人的，不过剧情需要，他的形象并不高大。

5. 自我认知 你对你角色的认知会影响你的行为。

重点说一下主角老婆，从一开始的不理解、质疑，到后来的容忍，甚至支持她老公，很了不起。

质疑：你不是律师吗？

你把律师的事做好就好了，你现在在做什么？

忍耐：丈夫把所有的精力都投在案子里了，无暇顾及家里的任何事情，默默把所有东西都扛下来了 支持：丈夫进了医院，她对着他的老板说，不要让他感觉是个失败者，他是为了所有的受害者赌上他的所有，他的事业、他的家庭，不要让这样一个勇敢的人、不要让他觉得自己是失败者。

这类真实改编的电影真是不错，情节丰富，多角度的利益冲突，从不同人的立场来看待问题：主角、主角老婆、老板、受害者、大企业。

谁对谁错？

不一定重要，重要的是how to make things right.

结局字幕“特富龙存在于99%的人类中”，浑身汗毛竖起。

冲突从头到尾，戏剧张力拉满，从犹豫要不要帮助老农场主，到一路坚持到“still there”，小镇居民反对、案头工作的繁琐、律所的利益冲突、家庭和正义抉择，现实主义的好题材，一坚持就是自己的整个职业生涯，不可思议。

看完更让人明白法律程序是多么耗时以及冗长。

资本家明知有害，放不下数十亿美元的利益，他们有的是钱和时间，足以和这些小屁民耗，没人在乎底层百姓的健康，甚至百姓自己都在为杜邦辩护，因为杜邦给当地提供了就业、税收。

大企业处于垄断地位，自己制定标准，自检自批自控，有绝对的话语权，没人监管，他们每年上百亿利益，害死几千个家庭，赔偿几个亿，反而是一桩看似非常“划算”的生意，想起了罗祥老师那句“人性的幽暗没有止境”。

监管这些垄断，让政府左右为难，打压会抑制经济，影响就业，不打压放任怪物成长，强大到能左右政府，更别提大企业可能会贿赂政客，左右政策，影响司法公正。

农场主Tennant为了自己的正义，伤害了小镇的现实利益——他们失去了工作，现实世界总是一种秩序的平衡，而不是绝对的正义。

电影的最后台词：“整个体制都被操控了，他们想让人以为体制会保护我们，那就是个谎言，是我们自己保护我们自己，没有别人。

”

“立体的人物塑造“众所周知，美国是一个非常推崇个人主义，英雄主义的国家。

这一特点在《黑水》中体现地淋漓尽致。

主人公Rob义无反顾地帮助无辜大众，不顾自己的律所的地位，不顾家庭的经济压力，不顾家人的误解，不顾旁观者的白眼。

乍一看，他不过是脸谱化的正义使者，鸡汤文中的赞美对象。

但，真的仅仅是这样吗？

托德·海因斯告诉你，nonono，别把事情简单化。

首先，Rob是完全出于自己的正义感而帮助那些弱势民众吗？

影片通过安妮·海瑟薇之口告诉我们；Rob是一个没有童年的可怜孩子。

多次搬家，没有朋友，没有联系，他的童年记忆里承载的只有他的家人，他的友邻。

所以，他才不愿意辜负祖母的期望，不愿意辜负曾经邻居大叔的期望，作为一个有能力的环境律师，助他们一臂之力。

既是出于公德，也是出于私义。

其次，作为一个丈夫，Rob并不完美。

关于案情，他对妻子三缄其口；对于家庭，他并不上心。

很难想象，作为律师，本应是滔滔不绝，口若悬河的形象，而他在面对家人的时候却甚至很难说出一句完整的话。

再次，Rob还是一个虔诚的天主教徒。

人们通常认为天主教徒是保守死板的，在堕胎持枪等问题上愚昧不堪。

但一枚硬币是有两面的。

正是由于他们的虔诚，所以他们的道德感比一般人更强，由此也可以解释Rob的行为动机。

“正义的代价“本片最核心的戏剧冲突就在于主角Rob面临的种种压力，其中来自杜邦的压力和家庭的压力都属于显性压力，最引人深思的压力来自于大众的压力。

被Rob帮助的大众不停地催促他，责难他；与事件无关的群众只是把他当作摇钱树，甚至为杜邦辩护，认为杜邦是清白的。

在这种种压力之下，Rob终于顶不住了。

他的手总是止不住地颤抖，他开始出现幻觉，怀疑杜邦的人要来害他，甚至插入车钥匙，发动汽车都要耗上巨大的勇气。

但面对这些，他还是选择不告诉身边的亲友，所以我说，这是一个纠结的英雄，默默坚持自己认为对的事。

话说回来，尽管本片的结局是he，但我还是对“正义会迟到，但从不缺席”这句话持怀疑态度。

因为这其中存在巨大的变数，what if Rob没有等到胜利到来的那一天就挂了，what if杜邦没有把完整的资料交给Rob。

即使是片中那样的he，我们也很难说实现了完全的公平。

对一个产业巨头来说，这些补偿或许会大伤元气，但不至倒闭。

更何况时代会忘记，人们会忘记，倒下一个巨头，还有另一个巨头，因为资本但逻辑没有改变。

我们唯一能做的，就是祈祷“正义的使者”能够及时出现，国家的监管能够有效执行。

我想，这就是本片打动人的一个关键点所在，尽管我们对英雄主义有些抗拒，有些怀疑，但在内心深处，我们都渴望这样的“正义使者”来拯救我们充满谎言的世界。

整个体制都被操控了，他们想让我们认为体制会保护我们，但那是个谎言，是我们自己保护自己。

——《黑水》01《黑水》是由Participant Media公司出品，改编自罗伯特·比洛特律师揭露美国杜邦公司长达几十年的化学污染骗局的真实事件。

值得一提的是《美国工厂》、《聚焦》等社会事件改编的电影均是出自这一公司之手。

影片极高程度地还原了事件，使得其现实意义远大于电影艺术本身。

1938年，世界500强的杜邦公司意外发明了聚四氟乙烯（PTFE），中文名称特氟龙。

因其超级稳定的化学性质，被冠以“塑料之王”的称号，广泛应用于原子能、国防、航天、电子建筑等领域。

1954年，杜邦集团开始用特氟龙制造不粘锅，一时间成为其最赚钱的项目。

真正有毒的物质并不是特氟龙而是PFOA（全氟辛酸铵），它一种制作特氟龙聚合反应过程中添加的助剂，而并非合成特氟龙的原料。

02全片大部分的画面使用冷峻的蓝色调，采用大量的主观镜头停留于报纸、书页、照片、去体现罗伯特调查取证收集线索的复杂和艰难。

影片跨度十余年，气氛沉重，压迫感极强，大量的调查数字令人触目惊心。

抛开电影类型的固有分类，那这就是一部社会恐怖片。

罗伯特为了这次漫长的起诉浪费了自己20年的光阴，损害了健康，远离了家人，甚至遭到民众的攻击。

科学调查组对污染物标准模糊不定，政府通过各方面压力试图让罗伯特放弃起诉，杜邦公司更是公然撕毁条约竟无人问责。

最终杜邦公司交出的罚款和赔偿甚至远不及其一年的利润。

如今它仍是世界五百强企业，似乎这件事对它没有任何影响。

影片最后观众甚至不会感到正义获得胜利喜悦，更多的是和罗伯特一样五味杂陈的无奈与酸楚。

政府需要大公司的经济效益，民众需要政府保护权益。

该怎么选？

亦或有了答案。

03电影是人类社会最伟大的记录者和见证者，看到《黑水》《聚焦》后，不禁为这些依旧重视电影记录意义的人喝彩。

个人对抗体制的现实电影，在韩国和美国很常见，然而这样的影片在国内却少之又少。

本以为《我不是药神》会是一个开端，但现在看来大概也是结尾。

当然过分苛责中国电影人并不会对中国电影有推动作用。

审查机制如何改革，电影分级何时推行，这也许才能真正改变现状。

即使带着镣铐跳舞，也希望中国电影人能舞得漂亮。

04近年来，我国兴建了多个大型氟化工基地，世界各大氟化工巨头也纷纷在华兴建含氟聚合物生产设施。

氟化工产业快速发展导致了中国前几年PFOA/PFO的大量应用和排放。

研究表明，中国每年PFOA/PFO的环境排放量从2004年的近20吨/年增至2012年的逾50吨/年，超过欧美等氟化工发达国家排放量的总和。

按照当前世界各国氟化工生产状况和污染治理措施推算，预计全世界2005年～2050年间PFOA/PFO的总排放可能在475吨～950吨水平，其中大部分将来自中国。

中国暂无专门针对PFOA/PFO环境风险的管控政策。

过去十年，欧洲和美洲逐步淘汰PFOA，国际公约《斯德哥尔摩公约》也逐步将C8类污染物（包括PFOA和PFOS）拉入黑名单。

中国虽然也是公约缔约国之一，不过作为一个化工大国，早就已经接棒成为生产的第一大国了。

在中国，多个地方的河流土壤、食品及人体内，都检测出明显超标的C8含量。

不过公众知之甚少，国家层面也没有环境质量标准、排放标准及检测技术规范，甚至还没有进行环境监测。

既然生活在国家的体制内，我们没有理由攻击或歧视它，但亡羊补牢为时不晚。

第一步也许是应该揭开问题的盖子。

这些事实，望周知。

首先，不得不承认这是一部好电影，作为一名业余化学爱好者的我，观影体验是很不错的。

正是因为有一点化学基础的我，观影后明显感觉到了不对劲。

那就是这部电影刻意地混淆了特氟龙和PFOA的区别，以至于误导了很多观众，结果是很明显的，就连被豆瓣顶到榜首的科普贴对特氟龙的认识都是错误的混淆！！！！

特氟龙是高分子聚合物，本身是无毒的(绝大部分高分子化合物人体是吸收不了的，包括高分子营养物，所以不要相信那些补充蛋白的广告)，这个世界还没有堕落到让一种电影中体现的剧毒物在现实中如此普遍的使用，我们家家户户都在使用的特氟龙不粘锅大多数是不会让胎儿畸形的。

有毒的是生产特氟龙的过程中用到了一种分散剂--PFOA(全氟辛酸胺)或者叫C8, 这种东西不是杜邦发明的，是3M发明的。

是杜邦向3M采购的PFOA，而3M也告知过杜邦PFOA的毒性。

(补充一下这段科学，特氟龙在合成过程中会产生极高的热量甚至有爆炸的风险，最好的方法是在水中合成以及时冷却，但氟化物原料又有很好的驱水性，使得它不能很好的分布在水中，这样就需要一种亲水亲氟化物的分散剂。

然后，已经因为安全问题被废弃的3M家的PFOA就重新找到了用武之地)。

另外，杜邦公司多年来一直强调他们生产的特氟龙成品已经过滤掉了PFOA. 我觉得这应该不会有假，因为世界上有上万亿件特氟龙制品，世界各国都有权威检测机构，你要是情愿花钱也可以把你家的不粘锅拿去检测，要是有超标，杜邦公司早就被打脸了！

但我不是说杜邦是无罪的，杜邦错就错在没有有效处理PFOA废料，导致工业污染坑害了当地居民和生产工人。

事实上的诉讼案针对的是工业废料污染伤害居民，如果杜邦明知道特氟龙有毒，还把他送进家家户户的厨房，美国ZF还偏护他这种灭绝人类的行为，各国监管今天还在放任不粘锅，那我严重怀疑各国监管人员是不是外星人派的卧底！

回头看一下电影，推敲台词，不难看出编剧明显是知道这个区别的，甚至引入了3M公司的梗。

可是电影还是刻意去混淆特氟龙和C8的概念，以至于非专业的观影群众很多都以为有毒的，致畸的，致癌的是特氟龙，搞得回家纠结该不该扔掉厨具了，弄不好要闹出家庭矛盾。

电影为什么要这么做？

我觉得很可能是想加强震惊的效果，让我们每个人都感觉到是受影响的一份子，加大电影的推广性，因为如果只是局部的污染案件，民众的关注性肯定不会太高。

电影的立意本身是很好的，刻画颂扬了一些敢于为弱势群体挑战高度权威的政商结合体。

他们确实是值得赞赏的，可是为了增强电影的观赏性和推广度去刻意地扭曲和混淆科学事实，那就不应该了，正如电影里批评杜邦的那样—“cross line”，越界了！！

最后，根据观影后的一些资料搜集，大体可以科普安利一下大家。

由于PFOA是曾经是生产特氟龙的助剂，成品里面可能也会有微量残留，所以买厨房用品一定要买大品牌的，不要贪小便宜。

大公司的提纯工艺和检验标准至少比小公司靠谱，而且现在已经有PFOA替代助剂了，大公司一般会走在行业技术的前列，小企业就难说了。

对于PFOA的警惕，国内目前都没有开始针对，就连PFOA和PFOS都没有专用的海关代码，原材料包装也不会做危险物警示，很难想象生产使用他的工厂是如何防止污染的，基于国内的工业管理现状，这才是真正值得广大人民担忧的。

但愿，电影立意的精神能影响到我们更加多的去保护自己，去影响ZF管制工业污染。

至于家里那口锅，不要过于纠结了。

识时务的人适应社会。

不识时务的人坚持试着让世界适应自己。

因此，所有的进步，都有赖于那不识时务的人 -- 萧伯纳 有人说一个人在其人生的关键时刻做出的选择，足以刻画他的个性全部。

从1998案件肇始到如今，已是二十一年。

二十一年，对大多数人来说，意味着职业生涯的2/3。

影片中每个人物都面临许许多多艰难的抉择，而这一个一个抉择，组成了一整条跌宕起伏，扣人心弦的故事线。

1. 非主流的律师你可以说Bilott是个非主流律师，也可以说他是个离经叛道者。

细心的观众会发现，Bilott在大多数精英荟萃的社交场合，都多少有些显得格格不入。

他略微有些佝偻着背，言语相对迟缓，神态略显木讷，怎么看都不像是个为大企业辩护的慷慨陈词的律师。

在不同场合的晚宴上，他总是显得略微拘束，仿佛总与这个白人主导的资本世界带有隔阂。

这固然和他的经历有关。

他的父亲是个空军上校，因此他从小就被迫跟随父亲四处辗转，直到碰到TAFT律所的Terp和他的妻子Sarah。

他毕业于俄亥俄州立大学的法学院。

大家如果了解美国的法学体系，或许知道，要找到最好的工作，往往需要进入所谓的T14（前十四位）。

事实上如果想要拿到法学领域最好的工作岗位，即企业律师(Coroprate Lawyer)，可能需要前六位的学校才有可能。

这就是精英社会的阶层观念，而俄亥俄州立大学显然不在其中。

因此Bilott从OSU毕业以后只找到一个环境法的律师职位。

值得一提的是，Bilott在最初加入TAFT律所时并没有什么崇高的理想，“我的家庭告诉我，大律所机会多，所以我想利用这个我能找到的最好的职业机会。

”

Bilott on the Courtroom2. 自杀式的选择Bilott加入TAFT的时候，合伙人/老板 Terp 对他的评价是，“Bilott是个特别出众的律师：非常聪明，充满活力，顽强，研究做得非常非常彻底”。

这点在影片中无疑得到验证。

当杜邦为了刁难他，将半个世纪的相关资料都送到了TAFT的地下室，他不是被巨量信息所征服，而是开始有条不紊地对信息进行整理和归档。

这正是一个优秀律师的素养体现。

然而职业能力与是否能够跻身顶级精英阶层觥筹交错，似不必然。

Tennant staring at 190 graveyards of his cows黑水非常打动我的一点，在于他所塑造的诸多冲突，不仅是人物关系层面的冲突，更是人物内心的冲突。

当西弗吉尼亚的农场主Tennant找到Bilott时，Bilott的职业生涯其实已经被写好了。

Tennant的农场在短短几年内死了190头牛。

在这之前，Tennant因为身体不适而又缺钱，所以卖了自己的66公顷土地给化工巨头杜邦公司。

杜邦公司随后把这些土地当作很好的垃圾堆放地，主要处理一种叫做PFOA的有害化工原料。

这类原料从上游流入Tennant家中，牛因此死亡，且器官和牙齿呈现异状，Tennant本人也被诊断患有癌症。

他知道整个小镇都被杜邦买通了，无法寻找当地律师，又熟悉Bilott的祖母，知道她的孙子是个不错的律师，所以找到了Bilott。

于是，刚升任合伙人的Bilott，必须面临一个极其严峻的考验。

他内心知道，当初自己学环境法，是因为他觉得“环境法看起来会对社会有真是可见的影响力，是你可以通过践行来改变些什么的”，他拿到这个案子的时候，听到Tennant浓重的阿帕拉契亚口音（他的祖母也有类似口音），就知道“我应该帮他，因为我感觉这是正确的事”。

他要做出的决定非常艰难，因为如果他选择放弃Tennant，他的良心将会受一辈子的谴责；如果他选择帮助Tennant，那么他将不可能再获得任何其他化工公司给他的单子。

这点非常严峻。

所以当他一开始起诉杜邦的时候，杜邦内部的律师Ripley在电话里特地说了一句，“我原谅你”，原因是假如Ripley选择与Bilott公然开撕，Bilott这辈子作为企业环境领域辩护律师的职业生涯就算是结束了。

尽管这个选择在电影中看起来水到渠成，但主人公内心的煎熬以及Bilott脸上忧虑的神色，是需要观众去细细品味的。

这件事对于农场主Tennant来说也是一个挑战。

小镇上的人因为杜邦而有了好的工作，他们憎恨Tennant曝光雇主可疑的行径，甚至连餐馆的服务员都不愿意搭理Tennant。

Tennant走投无路，成了小镇上的孤家寡人，连续换了四个教堂，每到一个教堂都要被人白眼。

后来事实证明，对杜邦的调查展开后，杜邦不得不裁撤了部分员工，“失业厅”门口排起了队伍。

Tennant为了伸张自己的权力和正义，无疑对某些和他社会阶层相仿的无辜的既得利益者造成了伤害。

社会领域的问题千丝万缕，正是因为有太多的利益相关者（Stakeholders），而这些利益相关者很多时候诉求又是相违背的。

有时你坚持的原则，对他们来说可能就是一种不公和伤害。

社会领域的研究者们用了很多经历和笔墨去刻画如何思考平衡各个利益相关者，然而最终能得出的结论往往是“世事难是非黑即白，往往要在灰色地带寻找一种平衡”。

从某种程度上说，Bilott和Tennant是同病相怜的，他们都与身边的社会多少有些脱节，有些格格不入，也有些特立独行。

他们的选择在一定意义上都是“自杀性”的，一个杀死了自己的职业生涯（在开始案件之后，Bilott再也没有能为律所带来化工行业的客户，对杜邦的诉讼成功成了他二十年来唯一的追求），一个杀死了自己的社交生活。

Tennant在教堂的最后一排参加礼拜，唱不出圣歌；Bilott在教堂的第一排参加礼拜，同样唱不出圣歌。

一个是高中毕业文凭，一个是法学博士，然而在生活的某一个节点，他们都发现，正义靠不住，联邦政府靠不住，看似公平的司法体系靠不住，耶稣基督大概更靠不住 -- 为了他们自己的声音，能靠得住的，只有他们自己。

3. 勇敢与正义很柔软

Terp and Ripley影片中另一个让我感到敬慕的人是Terp。

Terp是Bilott的老板，一直暗中支持Bilott对杜邦的控诉。

在一次内部合伙人会议中，最年轻的黑人合伙人滔滔不绝，陈述自己为什么认为律所不应该招惹自己的潜在客户，Terp拍案而起，说道，正是律师们放弃了自己的节操与尊严，才导致美国民众对律师这个行业如此没有信心，并宣布对杜邦开战。

笔者自己本科的时候曾经很想做律师，因此加入了北美最大的法学兄弟会，PAD(Phi Alpha Delta)。

作为唯一的亚洲人（事实上是唯一的非英语母语者），我常能体会到Bilott的那种“局外人”的感受。

有一次吃饭，大家聊到为什么想做律师，满桌的人都说是为了钱，R也如此说。

我和R关系很好，颇为诧异，因为我一直觉得他有些不同的理想。

R反问我，那你是为什么要读法学博士呢？

我说，我是为了正义（Justice）。

满桌的人都笑了。

R后来去了耶鲁法学院，毕业之后在名所Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton工作，他无疑实现了自己的理想。

但从这个小事例中，我们也可以窥见美国法律精英阶层中的主流思想。

Terp身处这样一个阶层之中，他面临的选择困境，不比Bilott的小。

一方面他是公司的大合伙人，不可能不管公司的盈利和Bilott的行为对公司客户造成的负面影响，另一方面他骨子里有正义感，觉得Bilott做得是对的，因此想要支持他。

所以当大规模抽血实验之后，化验结果迟迟下不来时，他不得不通过克扣Bilott的工资的形式，一方面对他施压，一方面平衡公司支出。

资本主义社会，没有管理者可以对现金流表说 NO，勇敢和正义，真的很柔软。

4. 不是输家

Sarah hugging her frustrated husband. 比起前面三个男人的选择，或许Sarah的选择才是最困难的。

她当初选择放弃自己的事业做家庭主妇，是因为Bilott升职，工资很高，她觉得自己可以把更多的时间和精力放到照顾孩子上面。

但当案子迟迟未决，Bilott工资四次被扣，三个孩子上学的经费都不一定有了的时候，她终于对丈夫爆发了。

她理解这个案子对丈夫的重要性，可是作为母亲，她也不能对孩子们的未来坐视不管。

当她和Terp一同对丈夫施压导致Bilott因为轻度中风被送进医院后，她突然觉醒了，明白了丈夫所追求一切的重要性。

当她一字一句地与Terp针锋相对时，她对丈夫的爱和她对丈夫事业的支持超过了她生命中其余的一切，“请不要让他觉得他失败了。

他绝不是一个失败者！

” 那一幕，安妮海瑟薇如此入戏，让我心中荡漾着感动，一波一波，向外扩去。

她或许意识到，她和Terp对Bilott精神上的支持，是Bilott活下去继续奋战的最终能量源泉。

5. 寡头势力与无尽战争

Dupont's chemical plant. Bilott成功搜集了69,000个血液样本，实现了现代流行病学最大样本的组建，并通过一个科学家小组确定无误地建立了PFOA与 肾癌，睾丸癌，溃疡性结肠炎，甲状腺疾病，高胆固醇血症，以及妊娠高血压 六种重疾的关系后，观众们大多都会觉得可以松一口气了。

然而由于PFOA是环境保护署（EPA）下非受管制的化学品(Non-regulated chemicals)，杜邦得以利用法律的空子，全部翻盘，否认一切科学实验证明，并拒绝科学小组研究的合理性。

这就是寡头格局带来的后果。

“政府被捕获了(Captive Government)”，Bilott在一家中国餐馆外绝望地与妻子Sarah对望着，无情的世界冷眼旁观。

充满韧性的Bilott决定与杜邦抗争到底，而杜邦一开始也采取了80年代美国烟草行业的应对措施，即一个一个案件审，拖延时间。

因为有3500个案件，如果按照一年4-5个案子的速度来赔偿，需要700-900年才能把案件审理完毕。

法官开庭问了一句，“你还在呀"，Bilott转转脖子，精神抖擞地说，“法官大人，是的，我还在”。

这令人感动的一幕，无疑是影片的点睛之笔。

这里补充一下：后续的故事是，杜邦用6亿多美金平息了这个案子，作为3500多个受害人的赔偿。

这个结局或许比烟草行业的拖延战术好一些。

随后杜邦和道合并，将化工产业部门作为子公司分拆了出去，变成了现在的科慕公司（Chemour）。

在影片中，Terp对杜邦宣战时提到，“我们把公司看作法人，当这个人越界了，我们就要惩罚他”，通过这句话，影片将杜邦人格化了。

当这个被人格化了的厚颜无耻的杜邦，通过资本市场惯用的手法，将“有毒资产”打包到一个新的公司，以新的名号改头换面出现，并在分拆协议中将所有未来可能需要清偿相应赔付的责任都归于这个公司后，每当与PFOA相关的新闻再次出现，科慕的股价都会应声下跌。

今年5月，科慕终于忍不住了，开始和自己曾经的“母体”打官司。

看来杜邦这个“法人”还真是不招人喜欢啊。

结语：在《论职责》（On Duties）一书中，西塞罗（Cicero）提到了一个海格力斯的比喻（Fable of Hercules)。

海格力斯在两条分叉的道路前必须做一个选择。

他可以选择Virtue，也可以选择Pleasure。

拉丁文中这两个词的现实翻译为延迟享受(Delayed Gratification)和即时享受(Instant Gratification)，海格力斯选择了延迟享受（Virtue），作为他必将经历的十二大磨难之一。

对于很多人（比如本剧中的Tennant）来说，享受本就是个太过奢侈的词汇，无论是即时的，还是延迟的。

剧中的主人公Bilott则选择了Virtue，放弃了升任合伙人能给他带来的巨大当下财富和名誉，而将人们生命和正义的重要性高置头顶。

他与化工企业中的哥利赛(Goliath)巨人的较量，一开始，便好似没有终结一般令人绝望。

Bilott还在谱写历史，化工企业们还在通过联袂抵制的方式负隅顽抗，而我们的身体里，或许会因为Bilott的努力，少积累一些永不降解的化学物质 -- 又或许不会。

但我想说：Bilott，我敬佩你。

Bilott，我为你喝彩，为你加油。

Rob Bilott was a corporate defense attorney for eight years. Then he took on an environmental suit that would upend his entire career — and expose a brazen, decades-long history of chemical pollution.

Rob Bilott on land owned by the Tennants near Parkersburg, W.Va. Credit: Bryan Schutmaat for The New York TimesBy Nathaniel Rich Jan. 6, 2016Just months before Rob Bilott made partner at Taft Stettinius & Hollister, he received a call on his direct line from a cattle farmer. The farmer, Wilbur Tennant of Parkersburg, W.Va., said that his cows were dying left and right. He believed that the DuPont chemical company, which until recently operated a site in Parkersburg that is more than 35 times the size of the Pentagon, was responsible. Tennant had tried to seek help locally, he said, but DuPont just about owned the entire town. He had been spurned not only by Parkersburg’s lawyers but also by its politicians, journalists, doctors and veterinarians. The farmer was angry and spoke in a heavy Appalachian accent. Bilott struggled to make sense of everything he was saying. He might have hung up had Tennant not blurted out the name of Bilott’s grandmother, Alma Holland White.White had lived in Vienna, a northern suburb of Parkersburg, and as a child, Bilott often visited her in the summers. In 1973 she brought him to the cattle farm belonging to the Tennants’ neighbors, the Grahams, with whom White was friendly. Bilott spent the weekend riding horses, milking cows and watching Secretariat win the Triple Crown on TV. He was 7 years old. The visit to the Grahams’ farm was one of his happiest childhood memories.When the Grahams heard in 1998 that Wilbur Tennant was looking for legal help, they remembered Bilott, White’s grandson, who had grown up to become an environmental lawyer. They did not understand, however, that Bilott was not the right kind of environmental lawyer. He did not represent plaintiffs or private citizens. Like the other 200 lawyers at Taft, a firm founded in 1885 and tied historically to the family of President William Howard Taft, Bilott worked almost exclusively for large corporate clients. His specialty was defending chemical companies. Several times, Bilott had even worked on cases with DuPont lawyers. Nevertheless, as a favor to his grandmother, he agreed to meet the farmer. ‘‘It just felt like the right thing to do,’’ he says today. ‘‘I felt a connection to those folks.’’The connection was not obvious at their first meeting. About a week after his phone call, Tennant drove from Parkersburg with his wife to Taft’s headquarters in downtown Cincinnati. They hauled cardboard boxes containing videotapes, photographs and documents into the firm’s glassed-in reception area on the 18th floor, where they sat in gray midcentury-modern couches beneath an oil portrait of one of Taft’s founders. Tennant — burly and nearly six feet tall, wearing jeans, a plaid flannel shirt and a baseball cap — did not resemble a typical Taft client. ‘‘He didn’t show up at our offices looking like a bank vice president,’’ says Thomas Terp, a partner who was Bilott’s supervisor. ‘‘Let’s put it that way.’’Terp joined Bilott for the meeting. Wilbur Tennant explained that he and his four siblings had run the cattle farm since their father abandoned them as children. They had seven cows then. Over the decades they steadily acquired land and cattle, until 200 cows roamed more than 600 hilly acres. The property would have been even larger had his brother Jim and Jim’s wife, Della, not sold 66 acres in the early ’80s to DuPont. The company wanted to use the plot for a landfill for waste from its factory near Parkersburg, called Washington Works, where Jim was employed as a laborer. Jim and Della did not want to sell, but Jim had been in poor health for years, mysterious ailments that doctors couldn’t diagnose, and they needed the money.DuPont rechristened the plot Dry Run Landfill, named after the creek that ran through it. The same creek flowed down to a pasture where the Tennants grazed their cows. Not long after the sale, Wilbur told Bilott, the cattle began to act deranged. They had always been like pets to the Tennants. At the sight of a Tennant they would amble over, nuzzle and let themselves be milked. No longer. Now when they saw the farmers, they charged.Wilbur fed a videotape into the VCR. The footage, shot on a camcorder, was grainy and intercut with static. Images jumped and repeated. The sound accelerated and slowed down. It had the quality of a horror movie. In the opening shot the camera pans across the creek. It takes in the surrounding forest, the white ash trees shedding their leaves and the rippling, shallow water, before pausing on what appears to be a snowbank at an elbow in the creek. The camera zooms in, revealing a mound of soapy froth.‘‘I’ve taken two dead deer and two dead cattle off this ripple,’’ Tennant says in voice-over. ‘‘The blood run out of their noses and out their mouths. ... They’re trying to cover this stuff up. But it’s not going to be covered up, because I’m going to bring it out in the open for people to see.’’The video shows a large pipe running into the creek, discharging green water with bubbles on the surface. ‘‘This is what they expect a man’s cows to drink on his own property,’’ Wilbur says. ‘‘It’s about high time that someone in the state department of something-or-another got off their cans.’’At one point, the video cuts to a skinny red cow standing in hay. Patches of its hair are missing, and its back is humped — a result, Wilbur speculates, of a kidney malfunction. Another blast of static is followed by a close-up of a dead black calf lying in the snow, its eye a brilliant, chemical blue. ‘‘One hundred fifty-three of these animals I’ve lost on this farm,’’ Wilbur says later in the video. ‘‘Every veterinarian that I’ve called in Parkersburg, they will not return my phone calls or they don’t want to get involved. Since they don’t want to get involved, I’ll have to dissect this thing myself. ... I’m going to start at this head.’’The video cuts to a calf’s bisected head. Close-ups follow of the calf’s blackened teeth (‘‘They say that’s due to high concentrations of fluoride in the water that they drink’’), its liver, heart, stomachs, kidneys and gall bladder. Each organ is sliced open, and Wilbur points out unusual discolorations — some dark, some green — and textures. ‘‘I don’t even like the looks of them,’’ he says. ‘‘It don’t look like anything I’ve been into before.’’Bilott watched the video and looked at photographs for several hours. He saw cows with stringy tails, malformed hooves, giant lesions protruding from their hides and red, receded eyes; cows suffering constant diarrhea, slobbering white slime the consistency of toothpaste, staggering bowlegged like drunks. Tennant always zoomed in on his cows’ eyes. ‘‘This cow’s done a lot of suffering,’’ he would say, as a blinking eye filled the screen.‘‘This is bad,’’ Bilott said to himself. ‘‘There’s something really bad going on here.’’Bilott decided right away to take the Tennant case. It was, he says again, ‘‘the right thing to do.’’ Bilott might have had the practiced look of a corporate lawyer — soft-spoken, milk-complected, conservatively attired — but the job had not come naturally to him. He did not have a typical Taft résumé. He had not attended college or law school in the Ivy League. His father was a lieutenant colonel in the Air Force, and Bilott spent most of his childhood moving among air bases near Albany; Flint, Mich.; Newport Beach, Calif.; and Wiesbaden, West Germany. Bilott attended eight schools before graduating from Fairborn High, near Ohio’s Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. As a junior, he received a recruitment letter from a tiny liberal-arts school in Sarasota called the New College of Florida, which graded pass/fail and allowed students to design their own curriculums. Many of his friends there were idealistic, progressive — ideological misfits in Reagan’s America. He met with professors individually and came to value critical thinking. ‘‘I learned to question everything you read,’’ he said. ‘‘Don’t take anything at face value. Don’t care what other people say. I liked that philosophy.’’ Bilott studied political science and wrote his thesis about the rise and fall of Dayton. He hoped to become a city manager.But his father, who late in life enrolled in law school, encouraged Bilott to do the same. Surprising his professors, he chose to attend law school at Ohio State, where his favorite course was environmental law. ‘‘It seemed like it would have real-world impact,’’ he said. ‘‘It was something you could do to make a difference.’’ When, after graduation, Taft made him an offer, his mentors and friends from New College were aghast. They didn’t understand how he could join a corporate firm. Bilott didn’t see it that way. He hadn’t really thought about the ethics of it, to be honest. ‘‘My family said that a big firm was where you’d get the most opportunities,’’ he said. ‘‘I knew nobody who had ever worked at a firm, nobody who knew anything about it. I just tried to get the best job I could. I don’t think I had any clue of what that involved.’’At Taft, he asked to join Thomas Terp’s environmental team. Ten years earlier, Congress passed the legislation known as Superfund, which financed the emergency cleanup of hazardous-waste dumps. Superfund was a lucrative development for firms like Taft, creating an entire subfield within environmental law, one that required a deep understanding of the new regulations in order to guide negotiations among municipal agencies and numerous private parties. Terp’s team at Taft was a leader in the field.As an associate, Bilott was asked to determine which companies contributed which toxins and hazardous wastes in what quantities to which sites. He took depositions from plant employees, perused public records and organized huge amounts of historical data. He became an expert on the Environmental Protection Agency’s regulatory framework, the Safe Drinking Water Act, the Clean Air Act, the Toxic Substances Control Act. He mastered the chemistry of the pollutants, despite the fact that chemistry had been his worst subject in high school. ‘‘I learned how these companies work, how the laws work, how you defend these claims,’’ he said. He became the consummate insider.Bilott was proud of the work he did. The main part of his job, as he understood it, was to help clients comply with the new regulations. Many of his clients, including Thiokol and Bee Chemical, disposed of hazardous waste long before the practice became so tightly regulated. He worked long hours and knew few people in Cincinnati. A colleague on Taft’s environmental team, observing that he had little time for a social life, introduced him to a childhood friend named Sarah Barlage. She was a lawyer, too, at another downtown Cincinnati firm, where she defended corporations against worker’s-compensation claims. Bilott joined the two friends for lunch. Sarah doesn’t remember him speaking. ‘‘My first impression was that he was not like other guys,’’ she says. ‘‘I’m pretty chatty. He’s much quieter. We complemented each other.’’

The road to one of the Tennant farms. Credit: Bryan Schutmaat for The New York TimesThey married in 1996. The first of their three sons was born two years later. He felt secure enough at Taft for Barlage to quit her job and raise their children full-time. Terp, his supervisor, recalls him as ‘‘a real standout lawyer: incredibly bright, energetic, tenacious and very, very thorough.’’ He was a model Taft lawyer. Then Wilbur Tennant came along.The Tennant case put Taft in a highly unusual position. The law firm was in the business of representing chemical corporations, not suing them. The prospect of taking on DuPont ‘‘did cause us pause,’’ Terp concedes. ‘‘But it was not a terribly difficult decision for us. I’m a firm believer that our work on the plaintiff’s side makes us better defense lawyers.’’Bilott sought help with the Tennant case from a West Virginia lawyer named Larry Winter. For many years, Winter was a partner at Spilman, Thomas & Battle — one of the firms that represented DuPont in West Virginia — though he had left Spilman to start a practice specializing in personal-injury cases. He was amazed that Bilott would sue DuPont while remaining at Taft.‘‘His taking on the Tennant case,’’ Winter says, ‘‘given the type of practice Taft had, I found to be inconceivable.’’Bilott, for his part, is reluctant to discuss his motivations for taking the case. The closest he came to elaborating was after being asked whether, having set out ‘‘to make a difference’’ in the world, he had any misgivings about the path his career had taken.‘‘There was a reason why I was interested in helping out the Tennants,’’ he said after a pause. ‘‘It was a great opportunity to use my background for people who really needed it.’’Bilott filed a federal suit against DuPont in the summer of 1999 in the Southern District of West Virginia. In response, DuPont’s in-house lawyer, Bernard Reilly, informed him that DuPont and the E.P.A. would commission a study of the property, conducted by three veterinarians chosen by DuPont and three chosen by the E.P.A. Their report did not find DuPont responsible for the cattle’s health problems. The culprit, instead, was poor husbandry: ‘‘poor nutrition, inadequate veterinary care and lack of fly control.’’ In other words, the Tennants didn’t know how to raise cattle; if the cows were dying, it was their own fault.This did not sit well with the Tennants, who began to suffer the consequences of antagonizing Parkersburg’s main employer. Lifelong friends ignored the Tennants on the streets of Parkersburg and walked out of restaurants when they entered. ‘‘I’m not allowed to talk to you,’’ they said, when confronted. Four different times, the Tennants changed churches.Wilbur called the office nearly every day, but Bilott had little to tell him. He was doing for the Tennants what he would have done for any of his corporate clients — pulling permits, studying land deeds and requesting from DuPont all documentation related to Dry Run Landfill — but he could find no evidence that explained what was happening to the cattle. ‘‘We were getting frustrated,’’ Bilott said. ‘‘I couldn’t blame the Tennants for getting angry.’’FURTHER READINGFor more about DuPont's FPOA pollution, see ‘‘The Teflon Toxin’’ by Sharon Lerner (The Intercept, Aug. 17, 2015) and ‘‘Welcome to Beautiful Parkersburg, West Virginia’’ by Mariah Blake (The Huffington Post, Aug. 27, 2015).With the trial looming, Bilott stumbled upon a letter DuPont had sent to the E.P.A. that mentioned a substance at the landfill with a cryptic name: ‘‘PFOA.’’ In all his years working with chemical companies, Bilott had never heard of PFOA. It did not appear on any list of regulated materials, nor could he find it in Taft’s in-house library. The chemistry expert that he had retained for the case did, however, vaguely recall an article in a trade journal about a similar-sounding compound: PFOS, a soaplike agent used by the technology conglomerate 3M in the fabrication of Scotchgard.Bilott hunted through his files for other references to PFOA, which he learned was short for perfluorooctanoic acid. But there was nothing. He asked DuPont to share all documentation related to the substance; DuPont refused. In the fall of 2000, Bilott requested a court order to force them. Against DuPont’s protests, the order was granted. Dozens of boxes containing thousands of unorganized documents began to arrive at Taft’s headquarters: private internal correspondence, medical and health reports and confidential studies conducted by DuPont scientists. There were more than 110,000 pages in all, some half a century old. Bilott spent the next few months on the floor of his office, poring over the documents and arranging them in chronological order. He stopped answering his office phone. When people called his secretary, she explained that he was in the office but had not been able to reach the phone in time, because he was trapped on all sides by boxes.‘‘I started seeing a story,’’ Bilott said. ‘‘I may have been the first one to actually go through them all. It became apparent what was going on: They had known for a long time that this stuff was bad.’’Bilott is given to understatement. (‘‘To say that Rob Bilott is understated,’’ his colleague Edison Hill says, ‘‘is an understatement.’’) The story that Bilott began to see, cross-legged on his office floor, was astounding in its breadth, specificity and sheer brazenness. ‘‘I was shocked,’’ he said. That was another understatement. Bilott could not believe the scale of incriminating material that DuPont had sent him. The company appeared not to realize what it had handed over. ‘‘It was one of those things where you can’t believe you’re reading what you’re reading,’’ he said. ‘‘That it’s actually been put in writing. It was the kind of stuff you always heard about happening but you never thought you’d see written down.’’The story began in 1951, when DuPont started purchasing PFOA (which the company refers to as C8) from 3M for use in the manufacturing of Teflon. 3M invented PFOA just four years earlier; it was used to keep coatings like Teflon from clumping during production. Though PFOA was not classified by the government as a hazardous substance, 3M sent DuPont recommendations on how to dispose of it. It was to be incinerated or sent to chemical-waste facilities. DuPont’s own instructions specified that it was not to be flushed into surface water or sewers. But over the decades that followed, DuPont pumped hundreds of thousands of pounds of PFOA powder through the outfall pipes of the Parkersburg facility into the Ohio River. The company dumped 7,100 tons of PFOA-laced sludge into ‘‘digestion ponds’’: open, unlined pits on the Washington Works property, from which the chemical could seep straight into the ground. PFOA entered the local water table, which supplied drinking water to the communities of Parkersburg, Vienna, Little Hocking and Lubeck — more than 100,000 people in all.Bilott learned from the documents that 3M and DuPont had been conducting secret medical studies on PFOA for more than four decades. In 1961, DuPont researchers found that the chemical could increase the size of the liver in rats and rabbits. A year later, they replicated these results in studies with dogs. PFOA’s peculiar chemical structure made it uncannily resistant to degradation. It also bound to plasma proteins in the blood, circulating through each organ in the body. In the 1970s, DuPont discovered that there were high concentrations of PFOA in the blood of factory workers at Washington Works. They did not tell the E.P.A. at the time. In 1981, 3M — which continued to serve as the supplier of PFOA to DuPont and other corporations — found that ingestion of the substance caused birth defects in rats. After 3M shared this information, DuPont tested the children of pregnant employees in their Teflon division. Of seven births, two had eye defects. DuPont did not make this information public.In 1984, DuPont became aware that dust vented from factory chimneys settled well beyond the property line and, more disturbing, that PFOA was present in the local water supply. DuPont declined to disclose this finding. In 1991, DuPont scientists determined an internal safety limit for PFOA concentration in drinking water: one part per billion. The same year, DuPont found that water in one local district contained PFOA levels at three times that figure. Despite internal debate, it declined to make the information public.(In a statement, DuPont claimed that it did volunteer health information about PFOA to the E.P.A. during those decades. When asked for evidence, it forwarded two letters written to West Virginian government agencies from 1982 and 1992, both of which cited internal studies that called into question links between PFOA exposure and human health problems.)By the ’90s, Bilott discovered, DuPont understood that PFOA caused cancerous testicular, pancreatic and liver tumors in lab animals. One laboratory study suggested possible DNA damage from PFOA exposure, and a study of workers linked exposure with prostate cancer. DuPont at last hastened to develop an alternative to PFOA. An interoffice memo sent in 1993 announced that ‘‘for the first time, we have a viable candidate’’ that appeared to be less toxic and stayed in the body for a much shorter duration of time. Discussions were held at DuPont’s corporate headquarters to discuss switching to the new compound. DuPont decided against it. The risk was too great: Products manufactured with PFOA were an important part of DuPont’s business, worth $1 billion in annual profit.‘His taking on the Tennant case, given the type of practice Taft had, I found to be inconceivable.’But the crucial discovery for the Tennant case was this: By the late 1980s, as DuPont became increasingly concerned about the health effects of PFOA waste, it decided it needed to find a landfill for the toxic sludge dumped on company property. Fortunately they had recently bought 66 acres from a low-level employee at the Washington Works facility that would do perfectly.By 1990, DuPont had dumped 7,100 tons of PFOA sludge into Dry Run Landfill. DuPont’s scientists understood that the landfill drained into the Tennants’ remaining property, and they tested the water in Dry Run Creek. It contained an extraordinarily high concentration of PFOA. DuPont did not tell this to the Tennants at the time, nor did it disclose the fact in the cattle report that it commissioned for the Tennant case a decade later — the report that blamed poor husbandry for the deaths of their cows. Bilott had what he needed.In August 2000, Bilott called DuPont’s lawyer, Bernard Reilly, and explained that he knew what was going on. It was a brief conversation.The Tennants settled. The firm would receive its contingency fee. The whole business might have ended right there. But Bilott was not satisfied.‘‘I was irritated,’’ he says.DuPont was nothing like the corporations he had represented at Taft in the Superfund cases. ‘‘This was a completely different scenario. DuPont had for decades been actively trying to conceal their actions. They knew this stuff was harmful, and they put it in the water anyway. These were bad facts.’’ He had seen what the PFOA-tainted drinking water had done to cattle. What was it doing to the tens of thousands of people in the areas around Parkersburg who drank it daily from their taps? What did the insides of their heads look like? Were their internal organs green?Bilott spent the following months drafting a public brief against DuPont. It was 972 pages long, including 136 attached exhibits. His colleagues call it ‘‘Rob’s Famous Letter.’’ ‘‘We have confirmed that the chemicals and pollutants released into the environment by DuPont at its Dry Run Landfill and other nearby DuPont-owned facilities may pose an imminent and substantial threat to health or the environment,’’ Bilott wrote. He demanded immediate action to regulate PFOA and provide clean water to those living near the factory. On March 6, 2001, he sent the letter to the director of every relevant regulatory authority, including Christie Whitman, administrator of the E.P.A., and the United States attorney general, John Ashcroft.DuPont reacted quickly, requesting a gag order to block Bilott from providing the information he had discovered in the Tennant case to the government. A federal court denied it. Bilott sent his entire case file to the E.P.A.‘‘DuPont freaked out when they realized that this guy was onto them,’’ says Ned McWilliams, a young trial lawyer who later joined Bilott’s legal team. ‘‘For a corporation to seek a gag order to prevent somebody from speaking to the E.P.A. is an extraordinary remedy. You could realize how bad that looks. They must have known that there was a small chance of winning. But they were so afraid that they were willing to roll the dice.’’With the Famous Letter, Bilott crossed a line. Though nominally representing the Tennants — their settlement had yet to be concluded — Bilott spoke for the public, claiming extensive fraud and wrongdoing. He had become a threat not merely to DuPont but also to, in the words of one internal memo, ‘‘the entire fluoropolymers industry’’ — an industry responsible for the high-performance plastics used in many modern devices, including kitchen products, computer cables, implantable medical devices and bearings and seals used in cars and airplanes. PFOA was only one of more than 60,000 synthetic chemicals that companies produced and released into the world without regulatory oversight.

Jim Tennant and his wife, Della, sold DuPont a 66-acre tract of land that became part of the Dry Run Landfill.‘‘Rob’s letter lifted the curtain on a whole new theater,’’ says Harry Deitzler, a plaintiff’s lawyer in West Virginia who works with Bilott. ‘‘Before that letter, corporations could rely upon the public misperception that if a chemical was dangerous, it was regulated.’’ Under the 1976 Toxic Substances Control Act, the E.P.A. can test chemicals only when it has been provided evidence of harm. This arrangement, which largely allows chemical companies to regulate themselves, is the reason that the E.P.A. has restricted only five chemicals, out of tens of thousands on the market, in the last 40 years.It was especially damning to see these allegations against DuPont under the letterhead of one of the nation’s most prestigious corporate defense firms. ‘‘You can imagine what some of the other companies that Taft was representing — a Dow Chemical — might have thought of a Taft lawyer taking on DuPont,’’ Larry Winter says. ‘‘There was a threat that the firm would suffer financially.’’ When I asked Thomas Terp about Taft’s reaction to the Famous Letter, he replied, not quite convincingly, that he didn’t recall one. ‘‘Our partners,’’ he said, ‘‘are proud of the work that he has done.’’Bilott, however, worried that corporations doing business with Taft might see things differently. ‘‘I’m not stupid, and the people around me aren’t stupid,’’ he said. ‘‘You can’t ignore the economic realities of the ways that business is run and the way clients think. I perceived that there were some ‘What the hell are you doing?’ responses.’’The letter led, four years later, in 2005, to DuPont’s reaching a $16.5 million settlement with the E.P.A., which had accused the company of concealing its knowledge of PFOA’s toxicity and presence in the environment in violation of the Toxic Substances Control Act. (DuPont was not required to admit liability.) At the time, it was the largest civil administrative penalty the E.P.A. had obtained in its history, a statement that sounds more impressive than it is. The fine represented less than 2 percent of the profits earned by DuPont on PFOA that year.Bilott never represented a corporate client again.The obvious next step was to file a class-action lawsuit against DuPont on behalf of everyone whose water was tainted by PFOA. In all ways but one, Bilott himself was in the ideal position to file such a suit. He understood PFOA’s history as well as anyone inside DuPont did. He had the technical and regulatory expertise, as he had proved in the Tennant case. The only part that didn’t make sense was his firm: No Taft lawyer, to anyone’s recollection, had ever filed a class-action lawsuit.It was one thing to pursue a sentimental case on behalf of a few West Virginia cattle farmers and even write a public letter to the E.P.A. But an industry-threatening class-action suit against one of the world’s largest chemical corporations was different. It might establish a precedent for suing corporations over unregulated substances and imperil Taft’s bottom line. This point was made to Terp by Bernard Reilly, DuPont’s in-house lawyer, according to accounts from Bilott’s plaintiff’s-lawyer colleagues; they say Reilly called to demand that Bilott back off the case. (Terp confirms that Reilly called him but will not disclose the content of the call; Bilott and Reilly decline to speak about it, citing continuing litigation.) Given what Bilott had documented in his Famous Letter, Taft stood by its partner.A lead plaintiff soon presented himself. Joseph Kiger, a night-school teacher in Parkersburg, called Bilott to ask for help. About nine months earlier, he received a peculiar note from the Lubeck water district. It arrived on Halloween day, enclosed in the monthly water bill. The note explained that an unregulated chemical named PFOA had been detected in the drinking water in ‘‘low concentrations,’’ but that it was not a health risk. Kiger had underlined statements that he found particularly baffling, like: ‘‘DuPont reports that it has toxicological and epidemiological data to support confidence that exposure guidelines established by DuPont are protective of human health.’’ The term ‘‘support confidence’’ seemed bizarre, as did ‘‘protective of human health,’’ not to mention the claim that DuPont’s own data supported its confidence in its own guidelines.Still, Kiger might have forgotten about it had his wife, Darlene, not already spent much of her adulthood thinking about PFOA. Darlene’s first husband had been a chemist in DuPont’s PFOA lab. (Darlene asked that he not be named so that he wouldn’t be involved in the local politics around the case.) ‘‘When you worked at DuPont in this town,’’ Darlene says today, ‘‘you could have everything you wanted.’’ DuPont paid for his education, it secured him a mortgage and it paid him a generous salary. DuPont even gave him a free supply of PFOA, which, Darlene says, she used as soap in the family’s dishwasher and to clean the car. Sometimes her husband came home from work sick — fever, nausea, diarrhea, vomiting — after working in one of the PFOA storage tanks. It was a common occurrence at Washington Works. Darlene says the men at the plant called it ‘‘Teflon flu.’’In 1976, after Darlene gave birth to their second child, her husband told her that he was not allowed to bring his work clothes home anymore. DuPont, he said, had found out that PFOA was causing health problems for women and birth defects in children. Darlene would remember this six years later when, at 36, she had to have an emergency hysterectomy and again eight years later, when she had a second surgery. When the strange letter from the water district arrived, Darlene says, ‘‘I kept thinking back to his clothing, to my hysterectomy. I asked myself, what does DuPont have to do with our drinking water?’’

Joe called the West Virginia Department of Natural Resources (‘‘They treated me like I had the plague’’), the Parkersburg office of the state’s Department of Environmental Protection (‘‘nothing to worry about’’), the water division (‘‘I got shut down’’), the local health department (‘‘just plain rude’’), even DuPont (‘‘I was fed the biggest line of [expletive] anybody could have been fed’’), before a scientist in the regional E.P.A. office finally took his call.‘‘Good God, Joe,’’ the scientist said. ‘‘What the hell is that stuff doing in your water?’’ He sent Kiger information about the Tennant lawsuit. On the court papers Kiger kept seeing the same name: Robert Bilott, of Taft Stettinius & Hollister, in Cincinnati.Bilott had anticipated suing on behalf of the one or two water districts closest to Washington Works. But tests revealed that six districts, as well as dozens of private wells, were tainted with levels of PFOA higher than DuPont’s own internal safety standard. In Little Hocking, the water tested positive for PFOA at seven times the limit. All told, 70,000 people were drinking poisoned water. Some had been doing so for decades.But Bilott faced a vexing legal problem. PFOA was not a regulated substance. It appeared on no federal or state list of contaminants. How could Bilott claim that 70,000 people had been poisoned if the government didn’t recognize PFOA as a toxin — if PFOA, legally speaking, was no different than water itself? In 2001, it could not even be proved that exposure to PFOA in public drinking water caused health problems. There was scant information available about its impact on large populations. How could the class prove it had been harmed by PFOA when the health effects were largely unknown?The best metric Bilott had to judge a safe exposure level was DuPont’s own internal limit of one part per billion. But when DuPont learned that Bilott was preparing a new lawsuit, it announced that it would re-evaluate that figure. As in the Tennant case, DuPont formed a team composed of its own scientists and scientists from the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection. It announced a new threshold: 150 parts per billion.Bilott found the figure ‘‘mind-blowing.’’ The toxicologists he hired had settled upon a safety limit of 0.2 parts per billion. But West Virginia endorsed the new standard. Within two years, three lawyers regularly used by DuPont were hired by the state D.E.P. in leadership positions. One of them was placed in charge of the entire agency. ‘‘The way that transpired was just amazing to me,’’ Bilott says. ‘‘I suppose it wasn’t so amazing to my fellow counsel in West Virginia who know the system there. But it was to me.’’ The same DuPont lawyers tasked with writing the safety limit, Bilott said, had become the government regulators responsible for enforcing that limit.Bilott devised a new legal strategy. A year earlier, West Virginia had become one of the first states to recognize what is called, in tort law, a medical-monitoring claim. A plaintiff needs to prove only that he or she has been exposed to a toxin. If the plaintiff wins, the defendant is required to fund regular medical tests. In these cases, should a plaintiff later become ill, he or she can sue retroactively for damages. For this reason, Bilott filed the class-action suit in August 2001 in state court, even though four of the six affected water districts lay across the Ohio border.Meanwhile the E.P.A., drawing from Bilott’s research, began its own investigation into the toxicity of PFOA. In 2002, the agency released its initial findings: PFOA might pose human health risks not only to those drinking tainted water, but also to the general public — anyone, for instance, who cooked with Teflon pans. The E.P.A. was particularly alarmed to learn that PFOA had been detected in American blood banks, something 3M and DuPont had known as early as 1976. By 2003 the average concentration of PFOA in the blood of an adult American was four to five parts per billion. In 2000, 3M ceased production of PFOA. DuPont, rather than use an alternative compound, built a new factory in Fayetteville, N.C., to manufacture the substance for its own use.Bilott’s strategy appeared to have worked. In September 2004, DuPont decided to settle the class-action suit. It agreed to install filtration plants in the six affected water districts if they wanted them and pay a cash award of $70 million. It would fund a scientific study to determine whether there was a ‘‘probable link’’ — a term that delicately avoided any declaration of causation — between PFOA and any diseases. If such links existed, DuPont would pay for medical monitoring of the affected group in perpetuity. Until the scientific study came back with its results, class members were forbidden from filing personal-injury suits against DuPont.

The chemical site near Parkersburg, W.Va., source of the waste at the center of the DuPont class-action lawsuit.A reasonable expectation, at this point, was that the lawyers would move on. ‘‘In any other class action you’ve ever read about,’’ Deitzler says, ‘‘you get your 10 bucks in the mail, the lawyers get paid and the lawsuit goes away. That’s what we were supposed to do.’’ For three years, Bilott had worked for nothing, costing his firm a fortune. But now Taft received a windfall: Bilott and his team of West Virginian plaintiff lawyers received $21.7 million in fees from the settlement. ‘‘I think they were thinking, This guy did O.K.,’’ Deitzler says. ‘‘I wouldn’t be surprised if he got a raise.’’Not only had Taft recouped its losses, but DuPont was providing clean water to the communities named in the suit. Bilott had every reason to walk away.He didn’t.‘‘There was a gap in the data,’’ Bilott says. The company’s internal health studies, as damning as they were, were limited to factory employees. DuPont could argue — and had argued — that even if PFOA caused medical problems, it was only because factory workers had been exposed at exponentially higher levels than neighbors who drank tainted water. The gap allowed DuPont to claim that it had done nothing wrong.Bilott represented 70,000 people who had been drinking PFOA-laced drinking water for decades. What if the settlement money could be used to test them? ‘‘Class members were concerned about three things,’’ Winter says. ‘‘One: Do I have C8 in my blood? Two: If I do, is it harmful? Three: If it’s harmful, what are the effects?’’ Bilott and his colleagues realized they could answer all three questions, if only they could test their clients. Now, they realized, there was a way to do so. After the settlement, the legal team pushed to make receipt of the cash award contingent on a full medical examination. The class voted in favor of this approach, and within months, nearly 70,000 West Virginians were trading their blood for a $400 check.The team of epidemiologists was flooded with medical data, and there was nothing DuPont could do to stop it. In fact, it was another term of the settlement that DuPont would fund the research without limitation. The scientists, freed from the restraints of academic budgets and grants, had hit the epidemiological jackpot: an entire population’s personal data and infinite resources available to study them. The scientists designed 12 studies, including one that, using sophisticated environmental modeling technology, determined exactly how much PFOA each individual class member had ingested.It was assured that the panel would return convincing results. But Bilott could not predict what those results would be. If no correlation was found between PFOA and illness, Bilott’s clients would be barred under the terms of the agreement from filing any personal-injury cases. Because of the sheer quantity of data provided by the community health study and the unlimited budget — it ultimately cost DuPont $33 million — the panel took longer than expected to perform its analysis. Two years passed without any findings. Bilott waited. A third year passed. Then a fourth, a fifth, a sixth. Still the panel was quiet. Bilott waited.It was not a peaceful wait. The pressure on Bilott at Taft had built since he initiated the class-action suit in 2001. The legal fees had granted him a reprieve, but as the years passed without resolution, and Bilott continued to spend the firm’s money and was unable to attract new clients, he found himself in an awkward position.‘‘This case,’’ Winter says, ‘‘regardless of how hugely successful it ends up, will never in the Taft firm’s mind replace what they’ve lost in the way of legal business over the years.’’The longer it took for the science panel to conduct its research, the more expensive the case became. Taft continued to pay consultants to interpret the new findings and relay them to the epidemiologists. Bilott counseled class members in West Virginia and Ohio and traveled frequently to Washington to attend meetings at the E.P.A., which was deciding whether to issue advisories about PFOA. ‘‘We were incurring a lot of expenses,’’ Bilott says. ‘‘If the scientific panel found no link with diseases, we’d have to eat it all.’’

Land where Tennant cattle once grazed. Credit: Bryan Schutmaat for The New York TimesClients called Bilott to say that they had received diagnoses of cancer or that a family member had died. They wanted to know why it was taking so long. When would they get relief? Among those who called was Jim Tennant. Wilbur, who had cancer, had died of a heart attack. Two years later, Wilbur’s wife died of cancer. Bilott was tormented by ‘‘the thought that we still hadn’t been able to hold this company responsible for what they did in time for those people to see it.’’Taft did not waver in its support of the case, but the strain began to show. ‘‘It was stressful,’’ Sarah Barlage, Bilott’s wife, says. ‘‘He was exasperated that it was lasting a long time. But his heels were so dug in. He’s extremely stubborn. Every day that went by with no movement gave him more drive to see it through. But in the back of our minds, we knew that there are cases that go on forever.’’His colleagues on the case detected a change in Bilott. ‘‘I had the impression that it was extremely tough on him,’’ Winter says. ‘‘Rob had a young family, kids growing up, and he was under pressure from his firm. Rob is a private person. He didn’t complain. But he showed signs of being under enormous stress.’’In 2010, Bilott began suffering strange attacks: His vision would blur, he couldn’t put on his socks, his arms felt numb. His doctors didn’t know what was happening. The attacks recurred periodically, bringing blurry vision, slurred speech and difficulty moving one side of his body. They struck suddenly, without warning, and their effects lasted days. The doctors asked whether he was under heightened stress at work. ‘‘Nothing different than normal,’’ Bilott told them. ‘‘Nothing it hadn’t been for years.’’The doctors ultimately hit upon an effective medication. The episodes ceased and their symptoms, apart from an occasional tic, are under control, but he still doesn’t have a diagnosis.‘‘It was stressful,’’ Bilott says, ‘‘not to know what the heck was going on.’’In December 2011, after seven years, the scientists began to release their findings: there was a ‘‘probable link’’ between PFOA and kidney cancer, testicular cancer, thyroid disease, high cholesterol, pre-eclampsia and ulcerative colitis.‘‘There was relief,’’ Bilott says, understated nearly to the point of self-effacement. ‘‘We were able to deliver what we had promised to these folks seven years earlier. Especially since, for all those years, DuPont had been saying that we were lying, trying to scare and mislead people. Now we had a scientific answer.’’As of October, 3,535 plaintiffs have filed personal-injury lawsuits against DuPont. The first member of this group to go to trial was a kidney-cancer survivor named Carla Bartlett. In October, Bartlett was awarded $1.6 million. DuPont plans to appeal. This may have ramifications well beyond Bartlett’s case: Hers is one of five ‘‘bellwether’’ cases that will be tried over the course of this year. After that, DuPont may choose to settle with every afflicted class member, using the outcome of the bellwether cases to determine settlement awards. Or DuPont can fight each suit individually, a tactic that tobacco companies have used to fight personal-injury lawsuits. At the rate of four trials a year, DuPont would continue to fight PFOA cases until the year 2890.DuPont’s continuing refusal to accept responsibility is maddening to Bilott. ‘‘To think that you’ve negotiated in good faith a deal that everybody has abided by and worked on for seven years, you reach a point where certain things were to be resolved but then remain contested,’’ he says. ‘‘I think about the clients who have been waiting for this, many of whom are sick or have died while waiting. It’s infuriating.’’In total, 70,000 people were drinking poisoned water. Some had been doing so for decades.As part of its agreement with the E.P.A., DuPont ceased production and use of PFOA in 2013. The five other companies in the world that produce PFOA are also phasing out production. DuPont, which is currently negotiating a merger with Dow Chemical, last year severed its chemical businesses: They have been spun off into a new corporation called Chemours. The new company has replaced PFOA with similar fluorine-based compounds designed to biodegrade more quickly — the alternative considered and then discarded by DuPont more than 20 years ago. Like PFOA, these new substances have not come under any regulation from the E.P.A. When asked about the safety of the new chemicals, Chemours replied in a statement: ‘‘A significant body of data demonstrates that these alternative chemistries can be used safely.’’Last May, 200 scientists from a variety of disciplines signed the Madrid Statement, which expresses concern about the production of all fluorochemicals, or PFASs, including those that have replaced PFOA. PFOA and its replacements are suspected to belong to a large class of artificial compounds called endocrine-disrupting chemicals; these compounds, which include chemicals used in the production of pesticides, plastics and gasoline, interfere with human reproduction and metabolism and cause cancer, thyroid problems and nervous-system disorders. In the last five years, however, a new wave of endocrinology research has found that even extremely low doses of such chemicals can create significant health problems. Among the Madrid scientists’ recommendations: ‘‘Enact legislation to require only essential uses of PFASs’’ and ‘‘Whenever possible, avoid products containing, or manufactured using, PFASs. These include many products that are stain-resistant, waterproof or nonstick.’’When asked about the Madrid Statement, Dan Turner, DuPont’s head of global media relations, wrote in an email: ‘‘DuPont does not believe the Madrid Statement reflects a true consideration of the available data on alternatives to long-chain perfluorochemicals, such as PFOA. DuPont worked for more than a decade, with oversight from regulators, to introduce its alternatives. Extensive data has been developed, demonstrating that these alternatives are much more rapidly eliminated from the body than PFOA, and have improved health safety profiles. We are confident that these alternative chemistries can be used safely — they are well characterized, and the data has been used to register them with environmental agencies around the world.’’Every year Rob Bilott writes a letter to the E.P.A. and the West Virginia D.E.P., urging the regulation of PFOA in drinking water. In 2009, the E.P.A. set a ‘‘provisional’’ limit of 0.4 parts per billion for short-term exposure, but has never finalized that figure. This means that local water districts are under no obligation to tell customers whether PFOA is in their water. In response to Bilott’s most recent letter, the E.P.A. claimed that it would announce a ‘‘lifetime health advisory level for PFOA’’ by ‘‘early 2016.’’This advisory level, if indeed announced, might be a source of comfort to future generations. But if you are a sentient being reading this article in 2016, you already have PFOA in your blood. It is in your parents’ blood, your children’s blood, your lover’s blood. How did it get there? Through the air, through your diet, through your use of nonstick cookware, through your umbilical cord. Or you might have drunk tainted water. The Environmental Working Group has found manufactured fluorochemicals present in 94 water districts across 27 states (see sidebar beginning on Page 38). Residents of Issaquah, Wash.; Wilmington, Del.; Colorado Springs; and Nassau County on Long Island are among those whose water has a higher concentration of fluorochemicals than that in some of the districts included in Rob Bilott’s class-action suit. The drinking water in Parkersburg itself, whose water district was not included in the original class-action suit and has failed to compel DuPont to pay for a filtration system, is currently tainted with high levels of PFOA. Most residents appear not to know this.Where scientists have tested for the presence of PFOA in the world, they have found it. PFOA is in the blood or vital organs of Atlantic salmon, swordfish, striped mullet, gray seals, common cormorants, Alaskan polar bears, brown pelicans, sea turtles, sea eagles, Midwestern bald eagles, California sea lions and Laysan albatrosses on Sand Island, a wildlife refuge on Midway Atoll, in the middle of the North Pacific Ocean, about halfway between North America and Asia.‘‘We see a situation,’’ Joe Kiger says, ‘‘that has gone from Washington Works, to statewide, to the United States, and now it’s everywhere, it’s global. We’ve taken the cap off something here. But it’s just not DuPont. Good God. There are 60,000 unregulated chemicals out there right now. We have no idea what we’re taking.’’Bilott doesn’t regret fighting DuPont for the last 16 years, nor for letting PFOA consume his career. But he is still angry. ‘‘The thought that DuPont could get away with this for this long,’’ Bilott says, his tone landing halfway between wonder and rage, ‘‘that they could keep making a profit off it, then get the agreement of the governmental agencies to slowly phase it out, only to replace it with an alternative with unknown human effects — we told the agencies about this in 2001, and they’ve essentially done nothing. That’s 14 years of this stuff continuing to be used, continuing to be in the drinking water all over the country. DuPont just quietly switches over to the next substance. And in the meantime, they fight everyone who has been injured by it.’’Bilott is currently prosecuting Wolf v. DuPont, the second of the personal-injury cases filed by the members of his class. The plaintiff, John M. Wolf of Parkersburg, claims that PFOA in his drinking water caused him to develop ulcerative colitis. That trial begins in March. When it concludes, there will be 3,533 cases left to try.A correction was made on Jan. 24, 2016:An article on Jan 10. about legal action against DuPont for chemical pollution referred incorrectly to DuPont’s response in the 1970s when the company discovered high concentrations of PFOA in the blood of workers at Washington Works, a DuPont factory. DuPont withheld the information from the E.P.A., not from its workers. The article also misstated the year DuPont agreed to a $16.5 million settlement with the E.P.A. It was 2005, not 2006. In addition, the article misidentified the water district where a resident received a letter from the district noting that PFOA had been detected in the drinking water. It was Lubeck, W.Va. — not Little Hocking, Ohio. The article also misidentified the district where water tested positive for PFOA at seven times the limit. It was Little Hocking, not Lubeck. And the article misidentified the city in Washington State that has fluorochemicals in its drink-ing water. It is Issaquah, not Seattle._________Nathaniel Rich is a contributing writer for the magazine and the author of ‘‘Odds Against Tomorrow.’’ He lives in New Orleans and is a frequent contributor to The New York Review of Books and The Atlantic.