The Ohio led lawsuit against DuPont has finally come to a close after a five year long battle. The lawsuit began back in 2018 under Governor Mike DeWine when he was serving as Ohio’s Attorney General. DeWine initiated the battle against DuPont for the Washington Works facility’s damages to the Ohio River. This company’s facility was located along the Ohio River in Parkersburg, West Virginia, which is directly across from Washington County, Ohio; therefore, any Ohioans that resided on the border were severely affected by the company’s pollution for the past seven decades that DuPont was knowingly contaminating the area.
DuPont is a national chemical company that uses science and innovation to make the world a safer, healthier, and better place to live. They are best known for being one of the world’s largest producers of chemical and science based products and winning many awards for such achievements. While they are renowned for their sustainability work, they were also caught in a scandal of emitting PFA’s into the environment, especially along the Ohio River.
“PFA’s do not break down in the environment and can contaminate the soil and water. The PFAs bioaccumulate in the bloodstream of animals including humans. This could potentially lead to health issues which affect growth and development,” said Mrs. Wagar, AP Environmental Science teacher.
DuPont was manufacturing Teflon products using the manmade chemical perfluorooctanoic acid, commonly known as PFOA. Teflon is a polytetrafluoroethylene, or a PTFE, that is most commonly seen in firefighting foam, but can also be in water/stain resistant textiles, and some food packaging. This manmade chemical is a type of PFA that has been known to cause harm to humans. The health issues that are most commonly associated with PFA pollution are cancer-specifically kidney and testicular- thyroid disease, high cholesterol, and low birth weight. Despite knowing the health issues associated with the chemicals they were working with, DuPont continued their chemical production along the Ohio River for the past 70 plus years.
DeWine began the battle five years ago in his previous position, but Ohio’s current Attorney General, Dave Yost, was able to see the lawsuit through to the settlement. Ohio was the first state to hold DuPont accountable for their decades-long PFA contamination, and legally challenge their Washington Works facility. They are responsible for releasing PFOA-containing emissions into the air and dumping the PFOA discharges into the Ohio River, with the knowledge of the health and environmental risks. The settlement gives Ohio $110 million in environmental restoration funds, on top of the $670 million that DuPont and Chemours- a branch of the DuPont company that split in 2015, granted for the injuries obtained by the citizens that led personal injury lawsuits throughout DuPont’s Teflon manufacturing years.
“DuPont ignored the fact that the chemicals they were releasing were toxic, and this settlement ensures that they are held responsible for the pollution they knowingly caused to the environment. I applaud Attorney General Yost for aggressively pursuing this case and for bringing it to a successful conclusion,” said DeWine during his announcement about the eventual settlement with DuPont.
The money gifted by DuPont and Chemours goes to specific citizens that were affected by DuPont’s environmental and health; thus, the remaining settlement money, specifically from DuPont, gets split up to successfully restore Ohio’s environmental damage from the PFA pollution. The majority of the money, approximately 80%, goes towards restoring the damage from the Washington Works Plant in Washington County along the Ohio River. The remaining funds go towards addressing damages from the Teflon products, which is 16% of the settlement money, and mitigating the damages to natural resources, which is the last 4%.
“We are pleased to have the flexibility through this agreement to preserve our right to advocate for the health of Ohioans and our state’s environment,” said Yost.
While the settlement gives members of Washington County the ability to recover from years of pollution, the end of this lawsuit also gives Ohio the opportunity to continue its protection of its people and drinking water. Under the Clean Water Act set forth by the United States Environmental Protection Agency, or the EPA, PFA pollution in stormwater is prohibited, and the DuPont polluters are to be held accountable for their actions. With the help from the settlement with DuPont’s pollution and the EPA’s regulations, Ohio preserves the authority to create stricter drinking water standards and prevent any similar situations to that of DuPont from reoccurring again in the future.
The Lawyer Who Became DuPont’s Worst Nightmare: Robert Bilott
Robert Bilott is a corporate defense lawyer from Cincinnati, Ohio who has led several lawsuits against chemical companies that have knowingly emitted hazardous chemicals, specifically, PFA’s, to the environment. Bilott has been a large part of the PFA environmental crisis over the years because he is upset that several companies and people were found to have knowingly put these chemicals into water, soil, and wildlife, and he wants to hold them accountable for the several health problems they have caused. Bilott’s goal is “not to get money damages but to have a federal court require that a new scientific panel be set up that would have the ability to look at this mix of PFAS chemicals in our blood and confirm the extent to which they are in fact causing harm. We want the companies to fund independent scientists to do whatever science might be needed to confirm these harms.”
