Attorney Robert Bilott speaks about his lawsuit to ban forever chemicals in drinking water. (Eran Fann | Photo Editor)

Robert Bilott, an environmental lawyer best known for exposing corporations that dump forever chemicals, or perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), into the water supply, which can cause disease in people and animals, spoke in Graham Chapel on April 5 to an audience of around 120 people.

The legal battle against the chemical corporation DuPont, which began in 1999 and is recounted in movies, including “Dark Waters” (2019), established tighter environmental regulations for companies and led to standards for PFOA and PFOS in drinking water. PFOA and PFOS are toxic synthetic chemicals that can cause cancer and other diseases. 

“Almost 30 years ago, we started to realize that there are completely man-made chemicals that never existed on planet Earth prior to the 1940s that were being found in our air, our water, our soil, our food, and in all of us,” Bilott said. “We now know that they are incredibly toxic.”

The legal battle against DuPont began with a cattle farmer in Parkersburg, West Virginia, who reached out to Bilott because white foam polluting the creek on his property caused sickness in his cows. He had significant video footage of the unusual white foam and images of the cows’ various ailments.

The farmer, Wilbur Tennant, had tried to seek help from state agencies, which told him that none of the tests they ran indicated anything wrong with the water.

The culprit turned out to be DuPont, which had a plant nearby. Bilott said he took the case and began working with DuPont and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), assuming they would investigate the white foam, find the responsible chemical, and stop contaminating the water. 

“If it’s something this obvious, we can probably get to the bottom of it,” Bilott said. After DuPont assembled scientists, ran tests, and came back to Bilott saying they detected nothing hazardous in the water, and even accused Tennant of abusing his cows, he said he realized it was time for a deeper investigation. 

Bilott’s team pored over decades of DuPont’s records and found that the company had conducted various tests on animals and humans exposed to forever chemicals, or perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), a group of synthetic chemicals. Bilott realized DuPont was aware that forever chemicals posed threats to health and did not report the results to the EPA, in violation of the law. 

“These chemicals break down on geologic time scales,” Bilott said. “It would take millions of years for them to break down. They would be on planet Earth after humans are gone.” 

In the 80s, after DuPont scientists realized the harm and abundance of forever chemicals in their Parkersburg facility’s output, they tried to cover up the chemicals by disposing 7,000 tons of contaminated waste in a landfill in West Virginia, which was upstream of the cattle farmer’s property. The chemical runoff was contaminating the drinking water of around 70,000 people. 

Even after a tumultuous case that successfully exposed massive liability and the concealment of dangerous water contamination, Bilott said legal battles have continued for over 25 years to hold DuPont and other companies who were dumping forever chemicals accountable. 

He added that the legal system is not built to help communities going up against corporations, particularly in the field of environmental law. 

“One of the real problems we’ve seen is who has the burden of proof on a lot of these things,” Bilott said. “It’s the victims’ burden to prove that the chemicals are harmful and to provide experts to prove exactly why. And unfortunately, a lot of times, the victims aren’t the ones who have access to that information. It’s the folks on the other side.”

Bilott was a key advocate for the EPA’s first drinking water standard for forever chemicals, announced in 2024. Amid questions from the audience about the future of environmental regulations, Bilott said he doesn’t think the protections he fought to secure will disappear under the Trump administration.

“I’m trying to remain optimistic,” Bilott said. “These problems have been occurring through many administrations controlled by both parties; they’re caused by deep systemic problems with our regulatory and legal systems. It took a long time to make the system see forever chemicals as a public health problem, so I’m hopeful they will remain a concern.”

Juliana Morera, a junior who attended the event, said she appreciated his optimism.

“It was enlightening to hear him say that this has been a problem for years, and this administration won’t necessarily change it,” Morera said. “I think he’s supposed to be optimistic, but I’m still fearful.”

Susan Kim, an Adjunct Professor of Engineering Ethics in the McKelvey School of Engineering, said that even telling stories about environmental and public health wrongdoings is productive.

“I think a lot of people face issues like this and it feels so overwhelming,” Kim said. “There was a huge company, and the federal and state governments were completely unresponsive. But just hearing stories like this, where change happens, helps us learn how to address them.”