Words matter. These are the best Robert Bilott Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
My family said that a big firm was where you’d get the most opportunities. 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.
You know, unfortunately, as to PFOS, it’s starting to look like all of us. This is all of our problems. You know, all of us have been exposed to some degree to these same chemicals.
If we can’t get where we need to go to protect people through our regulatory channels, through our legislative process, then unfortunately what we have left is our legal process.
You know, I started with the law firm of Taft Stettinius & Hollister in Cincinnati back in 1990.
We notified the EPA 18 years ago that PFOA in drinking water presented a public health threat, and in 2019 there are still no federal regulatory limits.
I was representing our chemical company clients, and I would routinely talk with or meet with the DuPont attorneys, would be there representing DuPont at these same cleanup sites. So I knew those folks.
There was pressure on the EPA to come out with a drinking water guideline, which it did in 2016. And when that guideline came out, it spurred even more testing across the country, including by the Department of Defense.
We’re talking about a chemical that’s out there. Not just on one farm in West Virginia, not even just in the public water of an entire community there, but it’s now in water all over the country, all over the planet, in the blood of virtually every living thing.
We found out that we were dealing with a completely unregulated chemical, this chemical PFOA. This was a chemical that was a completely manmade material invented right after World War Two, didn’t exist on the planet prior to the 1940s.
And in my world, when I was dealing with this for our chemical company clients, you had lists of regulated hazardous materials, and things were permitted. And if you had a landfill and you had a permit, you had to comply with certain limits.
But I suspect most people across the United States are still unfamiliar with PFAS and don’t realize the exposure that occurs. I’m going to continue doing what I can elevating that awareness.
I learned to question everything you read. Don’t take anything at face value. Don’t care what other people say. I liked that philosophy.
