New Film, DARK WATERS, Mark Ruffalo: Chemical Waste, Corporate Corruption

[appalachiablue]

10. Many thanks to you & your colleagues for fighting corporate corruption.

The level of dangerous, unregulated chemicals in our environment is staggering. In the film, Dupont initially tried to attribute deaths of the farmer's cattle to 'poor animal husbandry,' but that didn't fly..I have friends and family in this area along the Ohio River and have heard about Dupont's reckless pollution for some time. Very glad to see the film.
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The lawyer in the film, Robert Billott who is portrayed by Mark Ruffalo spent more than a decade trying to expose Dupont for corporate malfeasance. A class action lawsuit was settled in 2017. The film project was aided by star and producer Mark Ruffalo, a longtime environmental activist against chemical pollution and fracking by Monsanto and other major corporations.

- TIME..PFAS chemicals are used in products ranging from waterproof jackets to shaving cream, and they can leach into water supplies in areas where they are disposed of or used in fire suppression (in particular on military bases, where they have been used for years). According to Bilott’s complaint, studies currently suggest that PFAS is present in the blood of around 99% of Americans.
The class of chemicals has broadly been linked to immune system disruption, while PFOA specifically has been found to be associated with cancers and other diseases. Bilott’s newest lawsuit, as with his prior cases, alleges that these companies knew for decades that PFAS chemicals, specifically PFOA, could be linked to serious health problems, and that they still assured the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and other U.S. government regulators that PFAS exposures were harmless...https://time.com/5737451/dark-waters-true-story-rob-bilott/



- Actor/producer Mark Ruffalo with real life Ohio lawyer Rob Billet who Mark portrays in the new film, 'Dark Waters.'

- The Guardian.. Dark Waters, director Todd Haynes’s true-life account of corporate defense attorney turned environmental activist Robert Bilott’s (Mark Ruffalo) decade-plus struggle to expose DuPont Chemical Company. His expensive, exhaustive crusade grew from his discovery that DuPont was knowingly poisoning West Virginia’s water supply with toxic chemicals (specifically, PFAs, or per-and-polyfluoroalkyl), which resulted in the conglomerate settling a class-action lawsuit to the tune of $671m in 2017..

The project was brought to him by star and producer Ruffalo, a longtime environmental activist who has used the film’s publicity tour to speak at length about the catastrophic effects of chemical pollution caused by the likes of DuPont, Monsanto and other giant corporations. Dark Waters has been called routine by some, but it is also clearly a passion project for its makers, with Ruffalo and Haynes the latest in a long line of Hollywood heavyweights to tackle real life corporate maleficence in the hopes of shaping public discourse and effecting actual political change.

To that end, they’re already making some people nervous: a recent report from a Wall Street analyst who watched Dark Waters described a scenario wherein the film, should it prove a big enough hit with audiences, causes DuPont’s stock price to drop. Others have also suggested heightened scrutiny may make it difficult for the company to settle an ongoing lawsuit...https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/nov/25/dark-waters-movie-dupont-company-toxic-chemicals