The State of West Virginia issued the DuPont company a permit for them to run their contaminated waste water down through two farms here down into this stream of water. Storyville: Poisoning America: The Devil We Know, BBC 2018
In 1945 Dupont began making Teflon. Today, one of the chemicals used to make it is in the blood of 99% of all Americans. This is where it began. ibid.
DuPont Reassigns 50 Women Workers In Chemical Case: Substance, Produced by 3M, Was Linked During Test. ibid. The Wall Street Journal 8 April 1981
‘The documents in this case they really tell the story about what the company knew.’ ibid.
In 2001, Dupont settled with the Tennants for an undisclosed sum. Mr Tennant was diagnosed with cancer before suffering a fatal heart attack in 2009 at the age of 67. His wife died of cancer two years later. ibid.
‘They called this Fluorine chemical ‘the devil’s piss’ it was so potent.’ ibid.
3M pledged to phase out C8 by the end of 2002. That very same year, DuPont began producing C8 at its plant in Fayetteville, North Carolina. ibid.
In 2002 the US Environmental Protection Agency launched a priority review to determine whether C8 should be regulated. ibid.
The US Environmental Protection Agency fined DuPont $16.5 million dollars for failing to report the health risks related to C8 exposure. ibid.
Gen X is just one of 88,000 unregulated chemicals used in everyday products. ibid.
When I was a little girl I remember driving on I-44 with my mom past the desolate remains of what used to be Times Beach. The street sat empty save for the dark windowless husks of decaying abandoned houses. And she would always tell me the story about how that was where everyone had to be evacuated because of toxic waste contamination. The Cover Up at Times Beach, Truthstream Media 2017
The by-product of Agent Orange was manufactured … Times beach was disincorporated, evacuated and quarantined save for one elderly couple who refused to leave. ibid.
The largest civilian dioxin exposure in US history. ibid.
A suspected dioxin dump site. ibid.
Bliss [haulage company] subsequently testified came from a Monsanto research lab. ibid.
They [resident family] didn’t just lose their house … They had been exposed to all these harmful chemicals and hazardous toxic waste. ibid.
The discovery of PCBs in the town. ibid.
‘Every member of my family was ill with something different.’ ibid. resident
Russell Bliss [haulage] was never convicted of any crime. ibid.
In the 1982 the DOJ … withheld documents from a Congressional investigation on the Times Beach clean-up … They cite executive privilege. ibid.
‘Plutonium lake’ feeds into the Techa river, which is the region’s main water source and one of the most contaminated places on Earth. City 40, caption, Netflix 2016
In the 1990s strange things began to happen in the small town of Corby. Mothers began to give birth to children with severe deformities. As the number of cases grew, the mothers demanded to know why this had happened to their children. This is the unknown story of the worst child poisoning case since Thalidomide. A case that changed our understanding of the dangers of air pollution. Horizon: Toxic Town: The Corby Poisonings, BBC 2020
‘Mothers all from the same small area all of whom had given to birth to children with very similar deformities.’ ibid. Stephen Bevan, Sunday Time journalist
The waste sites were located on land where the town’s steel works once stood. Corby started life as a village but in the 1930s one of the largest steel plants in Europe was built. But in 1980, faced with huge government cuts, the steel work shut down, leaving 11,000 people unemployed. Corby Council devised a plan to regenerate the town (1983). This tiny council took on the biggest land reclamation project in Europe with a ten-year regeneration programme to help bring Corby back to life. But demolishing a steel work is a complex process: steel making generates toxic waste that must be carefully disposed of. ibid.
As this story spread, more and more mothers started coming forward. ibid.
‘It was such a cover up.’ ibid.
With the Council claiming no evidence of a cluster, the mother’s fight for answers seemed to be over … ‘My reading the article in the Sunday Times was complete happenstance … I had back in the day worked in the steel works.’ ibid. Des Collins, solicitor
‘It isn’t normal for secret documents to turn up; it’s like something out of a John Grisham novel.’ ibid.
The advice included that the contractors cover their lorries and make sure no dust is created particularly on public roads … ‘Lorries weren’t covered with sludge raining out of the back of these dump trucks. All the roads in this area are judged covered in this silt. And that’s where things went pear-shaped … A tremendous amount of pollution over the whole of the district. That is basically a toxic soup of dust hanging over a town … over many many years.’ ibid. Environmental health officer
18 families were now involved in the fight for compensation, and they were finally ready to go to trial … A case that had never been proven before: 10 years after their battle began, all 18 mothers made their way to court … The judge visited the reclamation site … The issue of how far the dust could travel … [Corby Council] was hit with a legal bill of almost £15 million. It was the first case in the world to rule that air pollution could harm babies in the womb. ibid.
In 2018 the people of Salisbury were faced with an unprecedented crisis. A chemical weapons attack on a British city. Based on first-hand accounts and extensive interviews, this is their story. The Salisbury Poisonings I, caption, BBC 2020
Tell you what, mate. Let’s let Trumpton give that [bench] a proper hose down. God knows what’s happened here. ibid. rozzer on scene
Sergei was a high-level MI6 agent inside Russia’s GRU Intelligence service. Now he was moved to the UK as part of the spy swap. ibid. senior rozzer
This is one of the most toxic substances on Earth. That has been specifically designed to be invisible, undetectable. And for the 46,500 people in Salisbury we are their only line of defence. ibid. Tracy, public health lady
Roundup herbicide: It doesn’t say biodegradable any more … Not harmful to humans, animals or their environment. Copyright Monsanto, made in Belgium. The World According to Monsanto, 2008
On its website Monsanto positions itself as an agricultural company that aims to help farmers produce healthier food … Its leading product is Roundup ... Also the world leader in biotechnology. ibid.
It was one of the largest chemical companies of the 20th century. ibid.
Agent Orange, aspartame, bovine growth hormone, PCBs … ibid.
Washington Post 2002: Monsanto Hid Decades of Pollution. ibid.
Roundup’s toxicity was hidden to protect the development of GMOs. ibid.
‘Monsanto did not they deny they made the offer of one to two million …’ ibid. Dr Shiv Chopra, Health Canada
Britain’s new emissions scandal: after VW cheated pollutions tests then what became known as dieselgate, welcome to lorrygate: we’ve uncovered cheating of pollution controls on a massive scale. Dispatches: Britain’s Diesel Scandal, Channel 4 2018
Lorries with emulators make that air quality worse. ibid.
They [hauliers] could be prosecuted in the magistrates’ court but so far none have. ibid.
As a drought hits Britain and a fifth of drinking water goes to waste through leaks, we investigate why water companies are still dumping untreated sewage into our rivers and seas. And reveal how companies are breaking the law. Dispatches: Britain’s Water Scandal, Channel 4 2022
Why the Environment Agency is not up to the job. ibid.
The state of our rivers and seas is so bad that some water companies are now under criminal investigation over their sewage dumping practices. ibid.
I’m not a pessimist. I’ve always had a great deal of faith in people that we wouldn’t succumb to frenzy or rage or greed. That we’d figure out a solution without destroying the things that we love. Josh Fox, Gasland 2010 *****
‘Hydraulic fracturing has been characterized as environmentally risky and inadequately regulated. Press reports and websites alleging that six states have documented over 1,000 incidents of ground water contamination resulting from the practice of hydraulic fracturing – such reports are not accurate.’ ibid. evidence to sub-committee on Energy & Minerals
In 1972 Richard Nixon signed the clean water act into law. ibid.
One day I got a letter in the mail; it was from a natural gas company. The letter told me my land was on top of a formation called the Marcellus Shale which stretched across Pennsylvania, New York, Ohio and West Virginia. And that the Marcellus Shale was the Saudi Arabia of natural gas. I could lease my land to this company and I would receive a signing bonus of $4,750 an acre. Having 19.5 acres that was nearly $100,000 there in my hand. ibid.
The 2005 Energy Bill pushed through Congress by Dick Cheney exempts the oil and natural gas industries from the Safe Drinking Water Act. They were also exempt from the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the Superfund Law and about a dozen other environmental and democratic legislations. ibid.
The method of gas drilling they used is called hydraulic fracturing ... Like a mini-earthquake ... A mix of over 596 chemicals. ibid.
Shortly after their well was drilled their water started bubbling and fizzing – it turned out to be natural gas. ibid.
I’d heard reports of oil and gas waste-water known as produced water, the water that comes back up out of the ground that’s contaminated with the fracking fluids being dumped illegally on to fields and into streams, and I’d heard of workers who had chemical burns on their hands and faces. ibid.