黑水

电影的剧情就不必说了，在这里谈谈我看完这部电影的感受。

一、男主对于正义的坚持。

男主是一名专门帮助化工公司处理纠纷的律师，已经做到了律所合伙人的高度，可见其业务能力之高，也可见其对于化工公司的实力是有着深入的了解的。

但是当他发现这种PFOA的物质正在威胁人们的健康时，他依旧果断地提起了诉讼，当然，据我不太清晰的了解，在美国的司法制度之下，做这种大额标的的诉讼代理，将会收获巨额的律师费，但是这完全不影响我对男主的品质的评价。

相反，我会感谢这样的制度，使在巨大困境中坚持正义的人可以获得一些金钱上的补偿。

因为单从本案来看，跨度将近二十年，整整一代人的时光。

二、面对庞然大物时的勇气。

在电影中，我们可以清晰地感受到，男主作为受害者的代理律师，不仅要面对杜邦公司这个化工领域的庞然大物，还要面对来自委托人、当地居民、杜邦的工人、自己领导和家人等各方面的职责。

想想这困难程度就令人瑟瑟发抖。

三、看完影片，我不禁反问，做一个对人类有益但是短时间无法证明的事情，需要什么。

首先，我想肯定是来自志同道合者的支持，本片中，男主在关键时刻得到了律所领导的支持，并且片中也表现出了一些其他律师对其工作的支持。

其次，还有来自制度的支持，虽然片中美国政府和杜邦公司沆瀣一气，但是依稀可以感到男主对于法律的信任以及司法的中立。

试想，如果法官也和杜邦公司同流合污，那么正义是不是彻底不能伸张了。

四、对于坚持做对的事的奖励。

本剧中只提及一句，“如果胜诉，会有高额的律师费”，我不知道他最终获得的律师费是否足够高额。

五、利益被侵犯后，“只有我们自己保护自己”，并且，补偿永远不能覆盖损失。

仅本片中，杜邦对吼赔偿的数额都不如其一年以此种物质获得的利润。

但他造成的损失呢？

全世界99%的人身体中都含有这种物质。

我们永远无法弥补利益被侵犯所造成的损失，补偿和赔偿也仅仅事一些挽回，这是多么悲哀的事啊。

而这其中，又有多少普通人在未被发现的地方被庞然大物所吞噬呢？

最后，粗鄙见解，仅作个人观影留念。

文/蠡湖野人（野评人）这部影片叫《黑水》。

标题为什么说你家锅有毒？

因为里面有一种材料叫特氟龙。

一、什么是特氟龙首先我们来了解一下本片的大佬——特氟龙，是个啥东西。

特氟龙是一个商标，英文叫Teflon®，是美国杜邦公司注册的。

它的化学名叫聚四氟乙烯（Polytetrafluoroethylene），英文缩写为PTFE，俗称“塑料王，哈拉”。

用它做成的材料，300℃才能分解，400℃才能水解，抗酸抗碱抗各种溶剂，连王水都溶解不了，再加上耐高温、摩擦系数低，广泛应用于原子能、国防、航天、电子、电气、化工、机械、仪器、仪表、建筑等领域。

民用领域也和我们的生活朝夕相伴，最常见的如不粘锅、雨衣雨具和衣服等。

二、特氟龙和杜邦公司杜邦是一家1802年诞生于美国的化学制品和销售公司，经营内容涉及食品、保健、家具、交通、服装等领域。

2018年总收入279.4亿美元，员工52000人，在世界五百强中排名171。

我在网上查证了资料，有和影片对得上的也有对不上的，对不上的部分我以影片为准。

接下来我以杜邦公司为主角，撸一下它与特氟龙的前世今生。

三、我对影片的看法首先，影片的话题意义超过艺术价值，这是毋庸置疑的。

电影对社会和法制的推动，韩国的《熔炉》是杰出代表，它直接推动政府出台了未成年人保护法，美国电影人也喜欢把一起起事件搬上银幕，让观众了解事件的始末，这无疑会加强民众对政府和公司的警惕性和监控，而且美国是个案例法的国家，作用就更大了。

《黑水》同个班底拍摄制作的另一部同类题材影片《聚焦》，获得了2016年奥斯卡最佳电影，推荐一看。

反过来看我们这里，现实题材的影片就少了点，我十分期待有人把华为251事件搬上银幕。

《我不是药神》开了个好头，但到目前为止还没有后续的作品接上。

值得一提的是，《我不是药神》》是现实题材改编，而且改得非常多。

真正好的现实题材电影是需要制作者从骨子里坚持现实主义的，我们这里可能有现实题材，但目前来看还缺乏现实主义。

其次，如上所述，影片的表现手法比较普通，一般观众容易觉得无聊，即使对于喜欢这类题材的观众，最后半小时也很差强人意，因为没有做到情绪上的连贯性。

如果说前面一个半小时通过一系列细节让人的情绪保持在一条水平线上（和《聚焦》相比确实很平），那最后半小时就往下滑了，直到最后也没有拉一个高潮起来。

导演和编剧也知道这一点，所以安排了比洛特夫妻吵架、晕倒送医的戏份，但故事进展到这样的环节，观众已经无法被主线之外的情节吸引。

第三，部分情节缺乏说服力，如一开始比洛特律师接下养殖场的案子，影片交代的动机是乡情，并且使用《乡村小路带我回家》来渲染情绪，固然感人，但理智上缺乏说服力。

又比如最后半部分，角色们全部处于等待状态，而等待的结果是杜邦公司反悔，作为一名资深律师，难道一开始没想到这一点？

影片中比洛特把责任都推给了政府和杜邦公司，这都是情绪上的宣泄。

如果影片在前面作出一些技术性的交代如杜邦公司的律师找出了法律漏洞留作后路，那杜邦公司的突然反悔就有说服力很多。

当然，影片还是非常值得一看的，尤其是对于关注社会新闻的朋友更是不可错过。

对于我来说，看完这部片子之后，多认识了一种叫特氟龙的人工合成材料，而且它就在我们身边（欧美国家已经禁止使用，我国国家质检总局2019年才开始开始论证特氟龙是否危害人体健康，目前仅靠厂商自觉）。

以后买锅碗瓢盆塑料制品这些东西查看组成材料的时候，就会特别注意聚四氟乙烯、PFOA、PFOS、C-8这些字眼了。

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你也许没有听说过Participant Media——参与者传媒，但你一定听说过去年大火的奥斯卡最佳影片《绿皮书》。

当然，如果你关注奥斯卡的时间再长久一些，你肯定还会了解2016年的奥斯卡最佳影片《聚焦》、18年的提名作品《华盛顿邮报》、以及刚在年底新鲜出炉的冲奥力作《黑水》。

而它们的背后都有一个共同的名字，那就是出品方——Participant Media(参与者传媒，以下简称“Participant”)。

关注每年年底的欧美颁奖季已经是我雷打不动的观影习惯之一。

每年这个时候，总有很多优秀电影通过在电影节上映，提名颁奖季等方式走进我们的视线。

颁奖季在商业片占据了影视行业的聚光灯几近一年后，人们终于将视线重新转回艺术片，得以让那些在视听上不那么绚丽夺目，却在人文表达上格外动人的艺术片在大浪淘沙的影视市场中脱颖而出，有机会在千万人眼中绽放它们的光芒。

而在这几年的颁奖季上，Participant绝对是其中的大赢家和佼佼者，提名无数，获奖众多，各种“小金人”拿到手软。

别的不说，手握的两座奥斯卡最佳影片奖就足以让它骄傲上一阵子了。

2016年，participant出品电影获奖现场但今天我们要讨论的，不是Participant的功绩或者工业化水准，而是它出品的一类重要作品——聚焦民主权益的长篇电影，以及它背后传递出的深刻的价值观。

在2016年的颁奖季中，我第一次关注到Participant的相关作品——也就是当年的奥斯卡最佳影片——《聚焦》。

那时候我还不了解Participant，甚至对这个名字闻所未闻，观看《聚焦》也纯粹是因为它有奥斯卡最佳影片这顶桂冠。

然而，当时我才16岁，浅薄的思想和学历并不能理解影片中表现出的精神内核。

尽管如此，但我看完这部电影，仍会意识到这是一部伟大而深刻的作品。

但它伟大的地方在哪儿？

它深刻的地方在哪儿？

我不知道。

但我知道，时间会给我答案。

时间也的确给了我一个答案。

当2017年底，在偶然的情况下，我重看了《聚焦》这部电影。

这一次，我完全地陷入了这个真实事件改编的故事里。

也是在那次观影后，出于对电影的兴趣，我开始了解影片的幕后故事。

也是在那是，我第一次认识了Participant，了解到这个有深刻价值观的出品公司。

《聚焦》讲述了一个并不复杂的故事:由“绿巨人”马克·鲁弗洛和瑞秋·麦克亚当斯为代表的“聚焦”栏目独立调查小组，毅然决然对抗美国宗教界，克服重重困难，最后将宗教人士性侵孩童的惊人真相公之于众。

但这样一个简单的故事，却传递出十分动人的精神内核，那就是记者群体对于真相的追求、系统的拷问和新闻自由的不懈追求。

美国是一个以基督教为国教的国家，宗教界具有极强的势力，因此才能数十年包庇性侵孩童的宗教人士，使“聚焦”小组的调查之旅步履维艰。

他们在法律界碰壁，在宗教界碰壁，在新闻业上级碰壁，甚至要承载受害者们“为时已晚”的指责。

但对于正义和真相的坚守，让他们赢得了最终的胜利。

可喜的是，影片没有把所有的成果都归功于“聚焦”这个调查小组，将其打造成一个英雄主义式的故事，而是从一个更宏观的角度，去抽丝剥茧地审视在这个现代版“螳臂当车”的社会故事里的每一个角色，每一道光影，试图阐述更高层次的概念。

这样的处理方式，在Participant之后出品的另外两部电影——17年的《华盛顿邮报》和19年的《黑水》——中，完美地承袭了下来。

从宏观的角度看，Participant的这三部作品有其异曲同工之妙。

这三部电影都是由真实事件改编，讲述小人物与大制度、大系统、大财阀对抗，寻求正义、公平和真相的故事。

《聚焦》讲述的是调查记者与宗教势力的对抗。

《华盛顿邮报》讲述的是媒体行业与政府的对抗;《黑水》讲述的是律师群体与垄断集团的对抗。

而这三部影片，也大多围绕新闻行业和法律行业来展开，目的昭然若揭:新闻和法律，是民众捍卫自身权益的重要武器。

只有活着的新闻行业，才能逼迫当权者吐露真相;只有活着的法律行业，才能逼迫当权者认错赔偿。

而在Participant出品的这三部电影中，我们看到的新闻业和法律行业，是活着的:调查记者们愿意相信受害者的“片面之词”，毅然开始对宗教系统的调查;报社主编愿意冒毕生事业毁于一旦的风险，不畏强权，将政府的丑闻公之于众;良心律师愿意为一群“不知好歹”的无辜百姓，对抗垄断大公司20年，只为讨回公道。

在他们眼中:

在影片中，主角们在捍卫弱势群体的权益，但在我们看来，他们更是在捍卫自己，捍卫这个国家的民主权益，他们在捍卫言论自由，捍卫新闻和出版自由，捍卫法律意识。

相信着言论自由和法律良知的信念推动着他们去对抗世界，而这个世界也用最后的成果回报他们，在我看来，这是一个美好如童话的良性循环。

但正如影片所表达的那样，建立一个公平公正公开的社会环境，不仅需要这些满怀赤子之心的工作者们，更需要一个对各方权力有所制衡和牵制的制度。

假如国家机器或者大财阀可以轻而易举地扼杀言论，甚至伤害这些追求正义与真相的有志之士，使“天下之人，不敢言而敢怒”，社会噤若寒蝉，那影片中美好结局也就无从谈起了。

而从影片内容回归现实世界:当你打开这三部电影的豆瓣主页，你会发现观众对这三部影片的评价都非常相似:“非常工整，四平八稳”“题材不新颖，情节没有水花”“太过主旋律，追求政治正确”。

也许在部分人看来，Participant出品的这几部影片像是一张张完成度极高，却不带感情色彩的“好莱坞答卷”，但我的看法却有所不同。

在我看来，这样的表现形式正是Participant有意而为。

在漂亮地完成剧本和表演之余，Participant展现出一种难能可贵的克制。

无论是《聚焦》也好，《华盛顿邮报》、《黑水》也好，影片都没有利用激昂的配乐和情节的冲突去刺激观众的情绪，而是让观众在一种冷静而克制的状态下，设身处地，一步步了解事情的真相，直至最后触碰到它内核时，情绪依然是平和的。

但当你回过头去品味，影片中展现的那种对民主、对自由、对平等的追求和向往，却在平静中显得更加深刻，动人，深入人心。

Participant的官方网页上，有一段“关于Participant”的介绍:Participant Media——参与者影业，是一家前沿的传媒公司，致力于激发和推动社会变革的娱乐活动。

也许Participant的电影，体现的也正是它自身的核心价值观:使电影不仅仅是娱乐，更是激发和推动社会变革的工具。

以铁肩扛道义，以妙笔著文章。

进入Participant的网站的每个人，都会首先看到这样的一行字:You are not a viewer. These are your stories. You are a Participant.Just act.你不是观众。

这些是你的故事。

你是参与者。

行动吧。

Participant，翻译过来便是“参与者”，也许这个小小的传媒公司，从名字就在向我们传达着一个讯息:我们每个人都是故事的参与者、戏中人，没有人能永远冷眼旁观，隔岸观火。

德国著名神学家兼信义宗牧师马丁·尼莫拉写过一首举世闻名的小诗，诗名叫《我没有说话》。

诗中是这样写的:起初纳粹杀共产党时，我没有出声——因为我不是共产党员；接着他们迫害犹太人，我没有出声——因为我不是犹太人；然后他们杀工会成员，我没有出声——因为我不是工会成员；后来他们迫害天主教徒，我没有出声——因为我是新教徒；最后当他们开始对付我的时候，已经没有人能站出来为我发声了。

迫害就像海上蔓延的雾，你永远不能期待它会在你面前停下来。

所以，也许保护自己最后的方式，不是独善其身，而且从一开始，就把自己当做一个参与者，把自己当成最初的那个共产党人，那个犹太人，那个工会成员，那个天主教徒，最后，当你把自己当成自己时，也会有千千万万的人站出来，把自己，当成你。

首先要感谢这部电影的制作团队，感谢你们把真相告诉了世界。

其次要感谢律师罗伯，感谢你为揭露真相付出的努力，没有你也就没有这部电影。

为什么要感谢这部电影，因为这部电影所讲述的东西离我们都很近，因为他告诉我们一些事情的真相。

电影根据律师罗伯的真实故事改编，讲述了浩克饰演的律师罗伯和杜邦公司打官司的过程。

不得不说这个过程很漫长，漫长到跨度十几年。

但庆新的是这个漫长的等待是值得的，最后等到了杜邦公司的为他犯下的错买单。

罗伯在和杜邦斗争的过程不仅漫长，还很艰难。

你要知道以一己之力去对抗一个世界500的企业，没有坚韧的毅力和正义的心，很容易被击垮。

不说别的，就说罗伯梳理的杜邦公司所提供的一堆的资料，都够让人放弃的。

还不说杜邦公司可以凭借其财力和势力去对你做出各种骚扰，比如去到证人家搜证据，比如利用自己的影响力勾结行业专家，比如申请禁令不让你去作证等等。

这些都不算，杜邦还能在证据确凿后翻脸不认。

电影虽然是讲的罗伯和杜邦的事，但对我启发最大的还是电影关于对PFOA的曝光，这东西太恐怖了。

首先这东西能致病，而且还是像癌症那种高死亡率的病。

其次这东西覆盖范围太广泛了，几乎存在于地球上每个生物的血液中，包括99%的人类。

而且这个东西是不容易分解的，可以在人体内留存40几年，等到积累到一定的量就会致病。

虽然这东西现在被全球大部分国家所禁止，但在禁止前我们已经使用了几十年。

这些年人类患各种病的人越来阅读哦，是否跟这个有关呢？

电影中的3500多人因为这个患病是不幸的，但他们又是幸运的，幸运的是还有罗伯这样的律师去帮他们，还能得到杜邦的赔偿。

那现实中还有很多可能因为这些而致病的人，又能去告谁，找谁去赔偿，甚至连找谁去帮忙都不知道。

就算是因为PFOA致病的，也不知道是因为这个，只是怪自己命不好。

从来没有想过不是自己命不好，而是有人为了利益，不顾普罗大众的健康——《黑水》首发于微信公众号“看世界电影”，欢迎朋友们关注

《黑水》一位农民，一个集团，一位律师，开启了一段维权的故事，如果说纯粹是维权也不合适，不如说是维护家园的故事。

很多事实摆在眼前，可还有很多人视而不见，那些人不是良心坏了，是因为钱比良心重要，否则他们的良心比谁都好。

提出环保的是他们，破坏环境的也是他们，不知道是资本控制了权利还是权利的终极目标是资本。

试想一下，一个区域，资本和政权狼狈为奸，又设立了一个让大家信服的司法机构，这个机构还是由政权建立的，资本来给他们发工资，试问这个司法机构是独立的吗？

那么这个区域是不是比黑水所描述的更肮脏，更黑暗。

就像罗翔老师说的一句话“没有监管的权利就是最大的恶”。

故事到最后很扎心，一位农民这么说“这个世界没有人会帮我们，包括科学家，法律，政府，能帮我们都只有我们自己”，我们这个社会需要像罗这样的人，也需要那些能站出来敢于发声的人，他们维护的才是真正的和平和正义，一个社会的稳定不正需要这些吗？

我们唯一能做的就是支持。

4⭐↑

“立体的人物塑造“众所周知，美国是一个非常推崇个人主义，英雄主义的国家。

这一特点在《黑水》中体现地淋漓尽致。

主人公Rob义无反顾地帮助无辜大众，不顾自己的律所的地位，不顾家庭的经济压力，不顾家人的误解，不顾旁观者的白眼。

乍一看，他不过是脸谱化的正义使者，鸡汤文中的赞美对象。

但，真的仅仅是这样吗？

托德·海因斯告诉你，nonono，别把事情简单化。

首先，Rob是完全出于自己的正义感而帮助那些弱势民众吗？

影片通过安妮·海瑟薇之口告诉我们；Rob是一个没有童年的可怜孩子。

多次搬家，没有朋友，没有联系，他的童年记忆里承载的只有他的家人，他的友邻。

所以，他才不愿意辜负祖母的期望，不愿意辜负曾经邻居大叔的期望，作为一个有能力的环境律师，助他们一臂之力。

既是出于公德，也是出于私义。

其次，作为一个丈夫，Rob并不完美。

关于案情，他对妻子三缄其口；对于家庭，他并不上心。

很难想象，作为律师，本应是滔滔不绝，口若悬河的形象，而他在面对家人的时候却甚至很难说出一句完整的话。

再次，Rob还是一个虔诚的天主教徒。

人们通常认为天主教徒是保守死板的，在堕胎持枪等问题上愚昧不堪。

但一枚硬币是有两面的。

正是由于他们的虔诚，所以他们的道德感比一般人更强，由此也可以解释Rob的行为动机。

“正义的代价“本片最核心的戏剧冲突就在于主角Rob面临的种种压力，其中来自杜邦的压力和家庭的压力都属于显性压力，最引人深思的压力来自于大众的压力。

被Rob帮助的大众不停地催促他，责难他；与事件无关的群众只是把他当作摇钱树，甚至为杜邦辩护，认为杜邦是清白的。

在这种种压力之下，Rob终于顶不住了。

他的手总是止不住地颤抖，他开始出现幻觉，怀疑杜邦的人要来害他，甚至插入车钥匙，发动汽车都要耗上巨大的勇气。

但面对这些，他还是选择不告诉身边的亲友，所以我说，这是一个纠结的英雄，默默坚持自己认为对的事。

话说回来，尽管本片的结局是he，但我还是对“正义会迟到，但从不缺席”这句话持怀疑态度。

因为这其中存在巨大的变数，what if Rob没有等到胜利到来的那一天就挂了，what if杜邦没有把完整的资料交给Rob。

即使是片中那样的he，我们也很难说实现了完全的公平。

对一个产业巨头来说，这些补偿或许会大伤元气，但不至倒闭。

更何况时代会忘记，人们会忘记，倒下一个巨头，还有另一个巨头，因为资本但逻辑没有改变。

我们唯一能做的，就是祈祷“正义的使者”能够及时出现，国家的监管能够有效执行。

我想，这就是本片打动人的一个关键点所在，尽管我们对英雄主义有些抗拒，有些怀疑，但在内心深处，我们都渴望这样的“正义使者”来拯救我们充满谎言的世界。

1.PFAS的简要介绍黑水电影中提到由3M公司研发的化学涂料PFOA，根据American Cancer Society 网站上对于PFOA和PFOS的定义[1]：- Perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) and perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS) are part of a large group of lab-made chemicals known as perfluoroalkyl and poly-fluoroalkyl substances (PFAS). -全氟辛酸 (PFOA) 和全氟辛烷磺酸 (PFOS) 是一大类实验室制造的化学品的一部分，这些化学品被称为全氟烷基和多氟烷基物质 (PFAS)。

-总而言之言而总之， PFAS也被称为PFC（全氟化学物），而PFOA和PFOS是PFAS大家族中最为出名的两大类。

这类化学品在日常生活中其实比较常见，cdc指出[2]这一类化学品含有耐热、耐油、耐污渍、耐油脂和耐水的优秀特质（如下），譬如曾经被用于坦克的防水涂料、杜邦公司创造的不粘锅，甚至连常见汉堡包包装纸都可能含有PFAS[3]。

-Perfluorochemicals (PFCs) are a group of chemicals used to make fluoropolymer coatings and products that resist heat, oil, stains, grease, and water。

2.特氟龙和PFOA之间的关系一开始只是出于黑水这部电影，产生了对这类化学物质的好奇心，并提醒了我的母亲和朋友，不要购买特氟龙相关的不粘锅产品。

但是出于我有但并不多的严谨性，我的脑子思索了一会Teflon特氟龙和PFOA之间的关系，并上Amazon和淘宝都搜索了相关的产品，亚马上的产品大部分会标注PFOA-free，而在IKEA上还是有特氟龙涂层的不粘锅在售。

所以被禁止的到底是PFOA还是特氟龙呢，谷歌给出了答案：

3.不粘锅的定义和国内不粘锅是否含有PFOA的简要调查。

作为一个非常挂记我家人安全的留学生，“关于中国的不粘锅有没有PFOA呢？

”这样一个问题出现在我的脑海里，为了研究这个问题，要首先了解不粘锅的组成成分。

大致来说，不粘锅可以分成锅体和涂层。

锅体可以分成铝合金，不锈钢和铁锅,涂层可以分为特氟龙涂层和陶瓷涂层。

其间优劣我不做赘述。

还有一种广泛使用的不粘锅，麦饭石不粘锅，他其实是一种铝合金锅，他只是有一种特殊的涂层而已，并非天然材料。

至于国内的不粘锅是否含有PFOA，根据国家文件《食品容器内壁聚四氟乙烯涂料卫生标准GB 11678-89》中可以了解到，聚四氟乙烯是不沾锅涂层的主要成分，而我们所讨论的PFOA是作为“一定助剂”出现在这份国标文件中的。

根据这段使用范围，我们可以得出两个简单的结论-不粘锅是不建议接触酸性食物的-使用温度限制在250度以下，因为聚四氟乙烯的最高使用温度为260C，根据杜邦公司记载，聚四氟乙烯在超过260C以上就会变质，可能释放出“一定助剂”。

如果不使用铁制锅铲、不干烧不粘锅，出现聚四氟乙烯中毒和 PFOA 中毒的可能性是极低的。

也没有实在的证据表明国内的不粘锅含有或不含有 PFOA，如果真的很介意的话，可以在购买的时候选择 PFOA-free 的产品(下图为 Amazon 随机产品的截图):

4. 关于PFOA的其他污染研究在浏览cdc关于PFOA污染的界面的时候，我发现PFOA感染来自于饮用了被污染的水源或者直接接触到含有PFOA的产品。

那么中国关于PFOA水资源感染的情况是如何的呢？

根据清华大学2021年在《Environmental Sciences Europe》上发表的一片研究[4]显示，中国66个城市和地区的饮用水中含有较高水平的全氟和多氟烷基物质（PFAS）其中有城市PFSA浓度最高达到502.9ng/L。

超过40%的被研究城市中饮用水污染情况超过了美国加州2019年发布的健康建议值，即PFOA 5.1ng/L和PFOS 6.5ng/L。

[5]作者发现与其他地区相比，华东和西南地区的人群暴露在PFAS中的风险相对较高。

长江沿岸的部分城市如自贡、九江和连云港等PFAS水平均超过了欧盟和美国机构发布的健康相关指南中的标准。

作者认为，中国部分城市和地区PFAS浓度较高主要是由于密集的工业生产活动（尤其是含氟聚合物的生产）和这些地区较高的人口密度。

[6]

中国饮用水中PFASs的空间分布

中国不同城市饮用水中全氟化学物的概况针对全氟化合物的治理与替代，中国科学院生态环境研究中心研究员、环境化学与生态毒理学国家重点实验室常务副主任郑明辉在接受中国环境报采访时表示，高风险化学品的替代研发在中国刚刚起步，将聚焦在新污染物的筛查、毒性效应识别以及绿色替代品开发方面，以更多的科研成果为新污染物治理提供有力的科技支撑：“我们要避免陷入替代品成为未来新污染物的怪圈”。

[6]与此同时，中国针对填补化学品监管漏洞也提出了相应的行动方案，期间曝光了一份《重点管控新污染物清单》[7],其中就有提到在2025年之前，中国针对PFAS类化学物的行动方针。

“严格限制全氟辛基磺 酸及其盐类和全氟辛基磺酰氟(PFOS 类)、全氟辛酸、其盐类及其 相关化合物(PFOA 类)、壬基酚的用途，规范抗生素药物的使用; 基本实现重点行业二噁英类达标排放。

”一个小插曲，如果大家希望能测定自己身边食物含氟浓度的话，这里附上国家标准的测定方法，有兴趣自行搜索哈。

5.不完全的解决办法既然事已至此，it is what it is, 我们个人对环境污染的解决能力是有限的，但是喝水这方面还是有一些解决的办法的，更何况我的爹妈是非常热爱喝茶的，常常去我高中学校后山上接山泉水喝，本人表示有一些小小慌张。

如何才能除去水中的氟呢？

我思索了一下除去氟和除去PFOA是否是一个事情呢？

这件事情我们先搁置一下，根据我在Minnesota政府网站上找到的“关于PFAS的家用解决办法”中[8]，如下图，活性炭和反渗透膜已经被有效的证明可以从水中去除PFAS。

说回去除氟这件事情，根据一个名为FlourideAlert.Org的网站描述，“十个远离氟的小办法”[9]中的第一条就是避免饮用被氟污染的水源，其中给出了三条建议：-喝矿泉水-使用过滤器，根据此网站描述，反渗透膜，去离子化，和活性氧化铝可以去除氟，而活性炭是不行的（而这一点和Minnesota的官方网站还有被点名的美国过滤壶官网的描述所不同），此网站特意点名了一个美国知名活性炭过滤壶的牌子，说他不行-蒸馏水：这方法在家里自行操作难度和成本太大，就不做赘述了如果是美国留学生的话，关于含氟量低的矿泉水的名单，我贴在附录，自行搜索哈。

[10]这里附上美国某B姓滤水壶的官网说明，在小字部分他提及该滤水壶可以保持健康的氟化物水平，并且增强牙齿的健康。

B姓滤水壶也确实是以活性炭为主的过滤壶哈。

6.总结1.特氟龙不粘锅可以买，介意的话可以选择PFOA-free2.建议喝自来水和过滤水保证饮用水健康[1] https://www.cancer.org/healthy/cancer-causes/chemicals/teflon-and-perfluorooctanoic-acid-pfoa.html[2] https://www.cdc.gov/biomonitoring/PFOA_FactSheet.html[3] https://www.consumerreports.org/health/food-contaminants/dangerous-pfas-chemicals-are-in-your-food-packaging-a3786252074/[4] Liu et al. Environ Sci Eur (2021) 33:6 https://doi.org/10.1186/s12302-020-00425-3 [5] https://chinadialogue.net/zh/7/85568/[6] https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/494120?language=chinese[7] https://www.mee.gov.cn/xxgk2018/xxgk/xxgk06/202110/W020211011600835423708.pdf[8] https://www.health.state.mn.us/communities/environment/hazardous/topics/pfashometreat.html[9] https://fluoridealert.org/content/top_ten/[10] https://fluoridealert.org/content/bottled-water/

No.38 追求真相和正义的孤胆英雄目前这个光景，门是不敢出了，但电影该看还是要看。

本周由观影团推选的周限定电影《黑水》也是一个直刺社会现实的诚意佳作，影片讲述了马克叔扮演的律师Rob Bilott单枪匹马对阵美国最大的化学集团——杜邦集团的故事。

电影改编自一篇《纽约时报》的报道(原文：The Lawyer Who Became DuPont’s Worst Nightmare 作者： Nathaniel Rich)，上映后收获了不少好评，目前豆瓣8.3，烂番茄89%新鲜度。

现在话不多说，看看观影团小伙伴们对这个新片如何评价吧。

本周周限定共有25人参加，平均分为6.6分。

震撼人心的事实真相这个电影改编的真实事件就有足够的震慑力。

一名律师为何只身对抗一个化学工业巨头？

因为总得有人去抗争， 每个民众都应该有得知真相的权利。

之所以死磕杜邦，是因为PFOA，这是一种曾经广泛应用在包括不粘锅在内的许多日用品里的合成化学品。

杜邦公司早在六七十年代就知道了PFOA对人体健康和环境会造成危害，但为了巨大的商业利益一直对此进行隐瞒，刻意误导公众和美国的监管机构，甚至还随意丢弃含有PFOA的工业垃圾，对美国不少城市的地下水系统造成了污染。

直到1999年，这名律师因为偶然的机会接触到其中的材料，随后在16年的时间里和杜邦打官司，才让这一切大白于天下，让公众知道了PFOA的危害，也让世人看清了杜邦的贪婪与丑恶。

目前各国都已经限制了PFOA的使用。

电影曾经充当着人类社会最伟大的目击者、记录者和见证者，看到《黑水》《聚焦》《华盛顿邮报》后，我想现在还是有人在重视电影见证和记录的意义的。

（部分文字来自@渡辺dudu @野凡 的短评）@野凡 ：8/10 总得有人去抗争，与巨大的利益集团抗争，与雄厚的权势抗争，与不为人知的神秘幕后抗争。

@扶不起先生：8/10 一潭黑水投入大石必定泛起涟漪，可混浊不堪的水面却将结果推向未知。

20年的接力赛跑其中的辛酸可想而知，体制中无形的高墙却将终点掩盖而去。

影片以独有稳当的视角进行阐述，其中夹带几许阴谋论的调调值得玩味，实则是个体代表集体发声，冲破并完善体制本身的壮举。

@NanSLi: 8/10 文本从本质上与《聚焦》有些许异曲同工之妙，但其深处又未像前者那般细致入微又抽丝剥茧，与其说是揭露真相史，不如说是自我捍卫的心灵史。

沉着又的清透微光色调，湛蓝中夹杂着细微冷意。

亦如人物细致入微的内心刻画，浅淡窥见一斑却尽显清晰、分明。

清亮的配乐下阴郁与邃然逐丝逐缕渗透、牵引。

看尽时间流逝，看尽世间真相，受尽冷眼质疑。

依旧用着那副早已千疮百孔的身躯，那个疲乏的姿态，向世间掷出足以振聋发聩的声音...@蝠蝠：8/10 自由是什么？

只能墙沿欢笑罢了。

@笑语在午夜场： 8/10 社会良心题材，对标《聚焦》。

绝对不是所谓「工整」的平庸之作，影片的力道可以化骨。

主角几十年的精力损耗才换来一点点成功和补偿，这需要的不仅仅是正义，还有能站出来能担大事的勇气和决心，真正的天将降大任于斯人也。

电影的价值和意义有一部分就体现在反映现实境况、彰显社会责任上，《黑水》是一部佳作@贝克街的大盗：8/10 他们想让我们认为 体制会保护我们 但那就是个谎言 是我们保护我们自己 没有别人 作为一名河流水环境相关专业的学生 看的真的挺揪心的 尤其再加上最近这个疫情的社会背景 好不容易在质疑中七年等来了报告 杜邦的一句反悔付之东流 挺绝望的 好在最后一口气3000多桩慢慢算 还算好了一点 唉。

想想现在的一幕幕魔幻现实主义@@渡辺dudu： 8/10 现实意义大于电影本身。

电影曾经充当着人类社会最伟大的目击者、记录者和见证者，看到《黑水》《聚焦》《华盛顿邮报》后，我想现在还是有人在重视电影见证和记录的意义的。

@叶底藏花： 8/10 这TM才是现实主义，在国内看到这种以一己之力对抗庞然大物的电影大概是永远不可能。

整体拍得很工整，从事情的揭露到调查再到诉讼，故事有条不紊地展开。

整体的色调是偏暗的，中间低沉的配乐也让电影显得压抑。

反高潮的处理也值得称道 ，并不是那种所谓皆大欢喜而是有着工作的枯燥和个人的痛苦。

最触目惊心的应该是最后，C8已经存在于地球上99％的人体内......与我而已，我永远钦佩那些秉持着公平正义与良心的人，然而在中..国，这样的人大概是404吧。

@鹳鸟踟蹰: 8/10 我们无数次的探头寻找so called正义，在漫长的等待中，谁是赢家？

黑色的水，化学污染，强权和金钱，层层无法剥离的阴霾。

沉稳冷静地叙述着体制无法拯救的苦难。

人物塑造上却是如此无力了。

@无火：7/10 说起个人对抗体制这类题材，韩国和美国涉及的最多，强弱对立的悲壮感的极力渲染，很容易打动观众。

然而本片貌似并没有刻意渲染这种情绪，而是去展现个人在对抗体制过程给身边亲近的人带来的诸多困境与冷落，这一点很不错。

当一个人选择为理想、正义、天下而奋不顾身时，他内心斗志或者是执念至少可以抚慰他，但他的亲人却要被动性的承受太多苦痛。

英雄可敬，但英雄背后的人更伟大。

@臻圣：7/10 当下时机看这部片子感受颇深。

“既然干了，我就干到底”罗伯特这股锲而不舍的劲儿令人钦佩，“为众人抱薪者”——顶住压力公然向大公司挑战，值得一部电影铭记。

全片近八成的画面充斥着冷峻阴郁的蓝色调。

导演采用大量的主观镜头停留于报纸、书页、照片、屏幕，去体现罗伯特调查取证收集线索的复杂和艰难。

时间跨度很大，气氛沉闷又有压迫感，社会这滩黑水才是真的深不见底。

片尾的一串串数字触目惊心。

片尾触目惊心的数字同时本片也有强大的班底保驾护航。

首先，出品公司Participant Media，制作了不少颁奖季的冲奥片，主打社会性强的现实题材影片，如颁奖季大热的《美国工厂》《绿皮书》《华盛顿邮报》等，而主演马克鲁法洛与安妮海瑟薇还有男配提姆罗宾斯，都是一等一的演技实力派。

特别是马克叔这次的发挥，非常扎实稳重。

@☄①号试管： 9/10 印象最深刻的是Rob在车里颤颤巍巍插钥匙发动汽车，重压下处在奔溃边缘的氛围令人窒息。

全片都笼罩着一股阴郁的气息，即使结局正义得到伸张时总算喘了口气，字幕又冰冷的弹出了“据研究，99%的生物体内都含有特氟龙，包括人类”。

再作妖下去人类还有几年命数哦…… ” @cinedreamer_：8/10 以一己之力对抗一家巨头产业乃至整个政府，需要多少勇气和毅力？

又需要多久的等待多大的牺牲？

题材其实并不陌生，整体拍得也很平很严肃，但得益于Todd Haynes的出色功力，整部片的节奏都非常稳、故事线也清晰，虽时长两小时有余却并不显冗长，而那种压抑与震惊感又是随着故事不断发展逐渐渗透着的，很敢拍也的确拍的很好。

马克叔还是呆呆的，安妮大概算是正常发挥（波浪长发还是美到我昏厥啊呜呜呜），以及一度对影片中事件的真实性存疑，没想到居然真的是以真事为基础？

太细思极恐了。

@铁甲依然在：7/10 黑水，四颗星。

“他甘愿为了一个需要他帮助的陌生人冒着所有的风险”改编自真实事件，被主角坚持不懈的努力感动。

面对这些巨头，几乎不可能取胜，政府已经被操控了，一直是我们自己在保护自己，看看现在的社会吧，太真实了。

欣慰的是依然有人在伸张正义，默默前行。

@董小__： 7/10 还是一个常规对抗体制的故事。

对人物的刻画好，主角从不愿意做到想见好就收再到持续致力，人物变化清晰，在无畏背后有脆弱，愤怒背后还有不甘。

故事四平八稳，社会意义大于剧情吸引力。

@空曲成歌：7/10 有点闷 故事节奏过慢 像一部纪录片 马克叔饰演的人物以微薄之力对付一家庞大的公司实在钦佩 意味着要面临着许多许多的牺牲 p.s.安妮女神的戏份也太少了！

长发还是很美!真实归真实，但真的拍的一般而观影团内另一种声音则认为事件真实归真实，震撼归震撼，但是从电影层面而言，问题还是非常多的，首先是克制冷静的风格下叙事没有亮点，节奏也偏慢偏闷，拍的太像纪录片。

人物塑造上过度的突出主人公一人，把马克叔自己的角色塑造的非常出色，但其他配角没有起到很好的作用，引用@Supremacyacron 的一句短评就是“导演也没像他的成名作《卡罗尔》那般去多方面挖掘人物的内心戏，以至于安妮海瑟薇等人的角色与路人无二。

”@玻璃球游戏🎱： 5.5/10 全片节奏就像弗吉尼亚的那滩黑水死气沉沉，所有的戏剧性被看似沉稳实则空洞的叙事屠戮了。

Robert作为主角则从头到尾都像木偶一样机械般无知觉地左支右绌，真正称得上危机的事件只有结尾处所谓托拉斯对于个人权益的抹杀，然而这难道不理所应当作为全片贯彻始终的主题，而非刻意编排成反转似的强权的反扑吗？

所有共情在如此流水账的演绎下变得毫无可能，力求纪录片式的展现却缺失了观众得知真相的震感，早早地将杜邦公司的罪行和盘托出，余下一场场的庭审和质问戏乏味且毫无悬念，传递出的胶着感源于剧作上做作的原地踏步，弗吉尼亚阴郁的气质也仅仅停留在前半段不再流动。

@Cor cordium： 6.5/10 作为托德海因斯的电影，未免太一般了，细腻的感情也丢了，最后只剩空洞的故事和事实，此类电影和韩国那一套未免太过相似。

海因斯向来可以处理各种复杂问题，像《天鹅绒金矿》把大的时代音乐映射在小的人物身上，暗流涌动，狂野无比。

《卡罗尔》和《远离天堂》对感情的细腻拿捏都是恰到好处，后者更是能融汇多个问题，并相得益彰，实在是强。

但是这部电影，我们除了看到纪实，就没有别的了，有个别几处镜头相当有趣，以及马克叔抖手的诸多小细节，除此之外，言无他物，这也许是这类电影的通性吧。

@wild life： 7/10 冲这个真实事件给三星，没想到是个聚焦2.0，聚焦我就没太大兴趣，这个也是同理，这题材也就国外能做了，国内？

呵呵。

@mdr skywalker: 7/10 这部电影可能在拍的时候导演根本就没想太多，没有花哨的手法，他只想告诉我们一个事实，让我们跟随Rob这个律师一步步探索真相，坚守真相，以一人对抗杜邦这个利益集团，乃至背后的体制。

马克叔的表演一如既往地扎实稳重，安妮依然漂亮。

但是简单的单一时间线和过分突出的单一主角也确实难入颁奖季的法眼，节奏也偏闷偏慢，有些遗憾。

@Supremacyacron: 6/10 叙事风格稳健，对时间线的重视超过了故事本身，所以在中后期的叙事上力度显得不太够，稍微有点拖沓。

追击真相这个事件本身就很具有说服力，能够十几年如一日的坚守到真相大白于世也确实不容易。

马克鲁法洛的表现也是中规中矩，但是话说回来，表演没有十几年前演《救赎之路》那般相对出彩，导演也没像他的成名作《卡罗尔》那般去多方面挖掘人物的内心戏，以至于安妮海瑟薇等人的角色与路人无二。

@素素素素素丶: 6/10 Participant的这种片子看多了多少会有点麻木啊，经典老套的大情节设计，一切都为了核心服务。

相对于其他几部角色塑造又少，整体太过于规整，完全就是冲着颁奖季而拍的电影，感觉拍成纪录片会更好一点，多一星给社会意义。

@莫莫：4/10 电影的社会现实性比电影本身更具意义。

仅打分：@Polaris.J：7/10 @Anyslus: 8/10

本期的周限定观影大致就到这里了，祝各位友邻身体健康，多看好片。

附：【春天的放牛班】往期回顾【春天的放牛班】 观影团 周限定观影片单

Rob Bilott was a corporate defense attorney for eight years. Then he took on an environmental suit that would upend his entire career — and expose a brazen, decades-long history of chemical pollution.

Rob Bilott on land owned by the Tennants near Parkersburg, W.Va. Credit: Bryan Schutmaat for The New York TimesBy Nathaniel Rich Jan. 6, 2016Just months before Rob Bilott made partner at Taft Stettinius & Hollister, he received a call on his direct line from a cattle farmer. The farmer, Wilbur Tennant of Parkersburg, W.Va., said that his cows were dying left and right. He believed that the DuPont chemical company, which until recently operated a site in Parkersburg that is more than 35 times the size of the Pentagon, was responsible. Tennant had tried to seek help locally, he said, but DuPont just about owned the entire town. He had been spurned not only by Parkersburg’s lawyers but also by its politicians, journalists, doctors and veterinarians. The farmer was angry and spoke in a heavy Appalachian accent. Bilott struggled to make sense of everything he was saying. He might have hung up had Tennant not blurted out the name of Bilott’s grandmother, Alma Holland White.White had lived in Vienna, a northern suburb of Parkersburg, and as a child, Bilott often visited her in the summers. In 1973 she brought him to the cattle farm belonging to the Tennants’ neighbors, the Grahams, with whom White was friendly. Bilott spent the weekend riding horses, milking cows and watching Secretariat win the Triple Crown on TV. He was 7 years old. The visit to the Grahams’ farm was one of his happiest childhood memories.When the Grahams heard in 1998 that Wilbur Tennant was looking for legal help, they remembered Bilott, White’s grandson, who had grown up to become an environmental lawyer. They did not understand, however, that Bilott was not the right kind of environmental lawyer. He did not represent plaintiffs or private citizens. Like the other 200 lawyers at Taft, a firm founded in 1885 and tied historically to the family of President William Howard Taft, Bilott worked almost exclusively for large corporate clients. His specialty was defending chemical companies. Several times, Bilott had even worked on cases with DuPont lawyers. Nevertheless, as a favor to his grandmother, he agreed to meet the farmer. ‘‘It just felt like the right thing to do,’’ he says today. ‘‘I felt a connection to those folks.’’The connection was not obvious at their first meeting. About a week after his phone call, Tennant drove from Parkersburg with his wife to Taft’s headquarters in downtown Cincinnati. They hauled cardboard boxes containing videotapes, photographs and documents into the firm’s glassed-in reception area on the 18th floor, where they sat in gray midcentury-modern couches beneath an oil portrait of one of Taft’s founders. Tennant — burly and nearly six feet tall, wearing jeans, a plaid flannel shirt and a baseball cap — did not resemble a typical Taft client. ‘‘He didn’t show up at our offices looking like a bank vice president,’’ says Thomas Terp, a partner who was Bilott’s supervisor. ‘‘Let’s put it that way.’’Terp joined Bilott for the meeting. Wilbur Tennant explained that he and his four siblings had run the cattle farm since their father abandoned them as children. They had seven cows then. Over the decades they steadily acquired land and cattle, until 200 cows roamed more than 600 hilly acres. The property would have been even larger had his brother Jim and Jim’s wife, Della, not sold 66 acres in the early ’80s to DuPont. The company wanted to use the plot for a landfill for waste from its factory near Parkersburg, called Washington Works, where Jim was employed as a laborer. Jim and Della did not want to sell, but Jim had been in poor health for years, mysterious ailments that doctors couldn’t diagnose, and they needed the money.DuPont rechristened the plot Dry Run Landfill, named after the creek that ran through it. The same creek flowed down to a pasture where the Tennants grazed their cows. Not long after the sale, Wilbur told Bilott, the cattle began to act deranged. They had always been like pets to the Tennants. At the sight of a Tennant they would amble over, nuzzle and let themselves be milked. No longer. Now when they saw the farmers, they charged.Wilbur fed a videotape into the VCR. The footage, shot on a camcorder, was grainy and intercut with static. Images jumped and repeated. The sound accelerated and slowed down. It had the quality of a horror movie. In the opening shot the camera pans across the creek. It takes in the surrounding forest, the white ash trees shedding their leaves and the rippling, shallow water, before pausing on what appears to be a snowbank at an elbow in the creek. The camera zooms in, revealing a mound of soapy froth.‘‘I’ve taken two dead deer and two dead cattle off this ripple,’’ Tennant says in voice-over. ‘‘The blood run out of their noses and out their mouths. ... They’re trying to cover this stuff up. But it’s not going to be covered up, because I’m going to bring it out in the open for people to see.’’The video shows a large pipe running into the creek, discharging green water with bubbles on the surface. ‘‘This is what they expect a man’s cows to drink on his own property,’’ Wilbur says. ‘‘It’s about high time that someone in the state department of something-or-another got off their cans.’’At one point, the video cuts to a skinny red cow standing in hay. Patches of its hair are missing, and its back is humped — a result, Wilbur speculates, of a kidney malfunction. Another blast of static is followed by a close-up of a dead black calf lying in the snow, its eye a brilliant, chemical blue. ‘‘One hundred fifty-three of these animals I’ve lost on this farm,’’ Wilbur says later in the video. ‘‘Every veterinarian that I’ve called in Parkersburg, they will not return my phone calls or they don’t want to get involved. Since they don’t want to get involved, I’ll have to dissect this thing myself. ... I’m going to start at this head.’’The video cuts to a calf’s bisected head. Close-ups follow of the calf’s blackened teeth (‘‘They say that’s due to high concentrations of fluoride in the water that they drink’’), its liver, heart, stomachs, kidneys and gall bladder. Each organ is sliced open, and Wilbur points out unusual discolorations — some dark, some green — and textures. ‘‘I don’t even like the looks of them,’’ he says. ‘‘It don’t look like anything I’ve been into before.’’Bilott watched the video and looked at photographs for several hours. He saw cows with stringy tails, malformed hooves, giant lesions protruding from their hides and red, receded eyes; cows suffering constant diarrhea, slobbering white slime the consistency of toothpaste, staggering bowlegged like drunks. Tennant always zoomed in on his cows’ eyes. ‘‘This cow’s done a lot of suffering,’’ he would say, as a blinking eye filled the screen.‘‘This is bad,’’ Bilott said to himself. ‘‘There’s something really bad going on here.’’Bilott decided right away to take the Tennant case. It was, he says again, ‘‘the right thing to do.’’ Bilott might have had the practiced look of a corporate lawyer — soft-spoken, milk-complected, conservatively attired — but the job had not come naturally to him. He did not have a typical Taft résumé. He had not attended college or law school in the Ivy League. His father was a lieutenant colonel in the Air Force, and Bilott spent most of his childhood moving among air bases near Albany; Flint, Mich.; Newport Beach, Calif.; and Wiesbaden, West Germany. Bilott attended eight schools before graduating from Fairborn High, near Ohio’s Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. As a junior, he received a recruitment letter from a tiny liberal-arts school in Sarasota called the New College of Florida, which graded pass/fail and allowed students to design their own curriculums. Many of his friends there were idealistic, progressive — ideological misfits in Reagan’s America. He met with professors individually and came to value critical thinking. ‘‘I learned to question everything you read,’’ he said. ‘‘Don’t take anything at face value. Don’t care what other people say. I liked that philosophy.’’ Bilott studied political science and wrote his thesis about the rise and fall of Dayton. He hoped to become a city manager.But his father, who late in life enrolled in law school, encouraged Bilott to do the same. Surprising his professors, he chose to attend law school at Ohio State, where his favorite course was environmental law. ‘‘It seemed like it would have real-world impact,’’ he said. ‘‘It was something you could do to make a difference.’’ When, after graduation, Taft made him an offer, his mentors and friends from New College were aghast. They didn’t understand how he could join a corporate firm. Bilott didn’t see it that way. He hadn’t really thought about the ethics of it, to be honest. ‘‘My family said that a big firm was where you’d get the most opportunities,’’ he said. ‘‘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. I don’t think I had any clue of what that involved.’’At Taft, he asked to join Thomas Terp’s environmental team. Ten years earlier, Congress passed the legislation known as Superfund, which financed the emergency cleanup of hazardous-waste dumps. Superfund was a lucrative development for firms like Taft, creating an entire subfield within environmental law, one that required a deep understanding of the new regulations in order to guide negotiations among municipal agencies and numerous private parties. Terp’s team at Taft was a leader in the field.As an associate, Bilott was asked to determine which companies contributed which toxins and hazardous wastes in what quantities to which sites. He took depositions from plant employees, perused public records and organized huge amounts of historical data. He became an expert on the Environmental Protection Agency’s regulatory framework, the Safe Drinking Water Act, the Clean Air Act, the Toxic Substances Control Act. He mastered the chemistry of the pollutants, despite the fact that chemistry had been his worst subject in high school. ‘‘I learned how these companies work, how the laws work, how you defend these claims,’’ he said. He became the consummate insider.Bilott was proud of the work he did. The main part of his job, as he understood it, was to help clients comply with the new regulations. Many of his clients, including Thiokol and Bee Chemical, disposed of hazardous waste long before the practice became so tightly regulated. He worked long hours and knew few people in Cincinnati. A colleague on Taft’s environmental team, observing that he had little time for a social life, introduced him to a childhood friend named Sarah Barlage. She was a lawyer, too, at another downtown Cincinnati firm, where she defended corporations against worker’s-compensation claims. Bilott joined the two friends for lunch. Sarah doesn’t remember him speaking. ‘‘My first impression was that he was not like other guys,’’ she says. ‘‘I’m pretty chatty. He’s much quieter. We complemented each other.’’

The road to one of the Tennant farms. Credit: Bryan Schutmaat for The New York TimesThey married in 1996. The first of their three sons was born two years later. He felt secure enough at Taft for Barlage to quit her job and raise their children full-time. Terp, his supervisor, recalls him as ‘‘a real standout lawyer: incredibly bright, energetic, tenacious and very, very thorough.’’ He was a model Taft lawyer. Then Wilbur Tennant came along.The Tennant case put Taft in a highly unusual position. The law firm was in the business of representing chemical corporations, not suing them. The prospect of taking on DuPont ‘‘did cause us pause,’’ Terp concedes. ‘‘But it was not a terribly difficult decision for us. I’m a firm believer that our work on the plaintiff’s side makes us better defense lawyers.’’Bilott sought help with the Tennant case from a West Virginia lawyer named Larry Winter. For many years, Winter was a partner at Spilman, Thomas & Battle — one of the firms that represented DuPont in West Virginia — though he had left Spilman to start a practice specializing in personal-injury cases. He was amazed that Bilott would sue DuPont while remaining at Taft.‘‘His taking on the Tennant case,’’ Winter says, ‘‘given the type of practice Taft had, I found to be inconceivable.’’Bilott, for his part, is reluctant to discuss his motivations for taking the case. The closest he came to elaborating was after being asked whether, having set out ‘‘to make a difference’’ in the world, he had any misgivings about the path his career had taken.‘‘There was a reason why I was interested in helping out the Tennants,’’ he said after a pause. ‘‘It was a great opportunity to use my background for people who really needed it.’’Bilott filed a federal suit against DuPont in the summer of 1999 in the Southern District of West Virginia. In response, DuPont’s in-house lawyer, Bernard Reilly, informed him that DuPont and the E.P.A. would commission a study of the property, conducted by three veterinarians chosen by DuPont and three chosen by the E.P.A. Their report did not find DuPont responsible for the cattle’s health problems. The culprit, instead, was poor husbandry: ‘‘poor nutrition, inadequate veterinary care and lack of fly control.’’ In other words, the Tennants didn’t know how to raise cattle; if the cows were dying, it was their own fault.This did not sit well with the Tennants, who began to suffer the consequences of antagonizing Parkersburg’s main employer. Lifelong friends ignored the Tennants on the streets of Parkersburg and walked out of restaurants when they entered. ‘‘I’m not allowed to talk to you,’’ they said, when confronted. Four different times, the Tennants changed churches.Wilbur called the office nearly every day, but Bilott had little to tell him. He was doing for the Tennants what he would have done for any of his corporate clients — pulling permits, studying land deeds and requesting from DuPont all documentation related to Dry Run Landfill — but he could find no evidence that explained what was happening to the cattle. ‘‘We were getting frustrated,’’ Bilott said. ‘‘I couldn’t blame the Tennants for getting angry.’’FURTHER READINGFor more about DuPont's FPOA pollution, see ‘‘The Teflon Toxin’’ by Sharon Lerner (The Intercept, Aug. 17, 2015) and ‘‘Welcome to Beautiful Parkersburg, West Virginia’’ by Mariah Blake (The Huffington Post, Aug. 27, 2015).With the trial looming, Bilott stumbled upon a letter DuPont had sent to the E.P.A. that mentioned a substance at the landfill with a cryptic name: ‘‘PFOA.’’ In all his years working with chemical companies, Bilott had never heard of PFOA. It did not appear on any list of regulated materials, nor could he find it in Taft’s in-house library. The chemistry expert that he had retained for the case did, however, vaguely recall an article in a trade journal about a similar-sounding compound: PFOS, a soaplike agent used by the technology conglomerate 3M in the fabrication of Scotchgard.Bilott hunted through his files for other references to PFOA, which he learned was short for perfluorooctanoic acid. But there was nothing. He asked DuPont to share all documentation related to the substance; DuPont refused. In the fall of 2000, Bilott requested a court order to force them. Against DuPont’s protests, the order was granted. Dozens of boxes containing thousands of unorganized documents began to arrive at Taft’s headquarters: private internal correspondence, medical and health reports and confidential studies conducted by DuPont scientists. There were more than 110,000 pages in all, some half a century old. Bilott spent the next few months on the floor of his office, poring over the documents and arranging them in chronological order. He stopped answering his office phone. When people called his secretary, she explained that he was in the office but had not been able to reach the phone in time, because he was trapped on all sides by boxes.‘‘I started seeing a story,’’ Bilott said. ‘‘I may have been the first one to actually go through them all. It became apparent what was going on: They had known for a long time that this stuff was bad.’’Bilott is given to understatement. (‘‘To say that Rob Bilott is understated,’’ his colleague Edison Hill says, ‘‘is an understatement.’’) The story that Bilott began to see, cross-legged on his office floor, was astounding in its breadth, specificity and sheer brazenness. ‘‘I was shocked,’’ he said. That was another understatement. Bilott could not believe the scale of incriminating material that DuPont had sent him. The company appeared not to realize what it had handed over. ‘‘It was one of those things where you can’t believe you’re reading what you’re reading,’’ he said. ‘‘That it’s actually been put in writing. It was the kind of stuff you always heard about happening but you never thought you’d see written down.’’The story began in 1951, when DuPont started purchasing PFOA (which the company refers to as C8) from 3M for use in the manufacturing of Teflon. 3M invented PFOA just four years earlier; it was used to keep coatings like Teflon from clumping during production. Though PFOA was not classified by the government as a hazardous substance, 3M sent DuPont recommendations on how to dispose of it. It was to be incinerated or sent to chemical-waste facilities. DuPont’s own instructions specified that it was not to be flushed into surface water or sewers. But over the decades that followed, DuPont pumped hundreds of thousands of pounds of PFOA powder through the outfall pipes of the Parkersburg facility into the Ohio River. The company dumped 7,100 tons of PFOA-laced sludge into ‘‘digestion ponds’’: open, unlined pits on the Washington Works property, from which the chemical could seep straight into the ground. PFOA entered the local water table, which supplied drinking water to the communities of Parkersburg, Vienna, Little Hocking and Lubeck — more than 100,000 people in all.Bilott learned from the documents that 3M and DuPont had been conducting secret medical studies on PFOA for more than four decades. In 1961, DuPont researchers found that the chemical could increase the size of the liver in rats and rabbits. A year later, they replicated these results in studies with dogs. PFOA’s peculiar chemical structure made it uncannily resistant to degradation. It also bound to plasma proteins in the blood, circulating through each organ in the body. In the 1970s, DuPont discovered that there were high concentrations of PFOA in the blood of factory workers at Washington Works. They did not tell the E.P.A. at the time. In 1981, 3M — which continued to serve as the supplier of PFOA to DuPont and other corporations — found that ingestion of the substance caused birth defects in rats. After 3M shared this information, DuPont tested the children of pregnant employees in their Teflon division. Of seven births, two had eye defects. DuPont did not make this information public.In 1984, DuPont became aware that dust vented from factory chimneys settled well beyond the property line and, more disturbing, that PFOA was present in the local water supply. DuPont declined to disclose this finding. In 1991, DuPont scientists determined an internal safety limit for PFOA concentration in drinking water: one part per billion. The same year, DuPont found that water in one local district contained PFOA levels at three times that figure. Despite internal debate, it declined to make the information public.(In a statement, DuPont claimed that it did volunteer health information about PFOA to the E.P.A. during those decades. When asked for evidence, it forwarded two letters written to West Virginian government agencies from 1982 and 1992, both of which cited internal studies that called into question links between PFOA exposure and human health problems.)By the ’90s, Bilott discovered, DuPont understood that PFOA caused cancerous testicular, pancreatic and liver tumors in lab animals. One laboratory study suggested possible DNA damage from PFOA exposure, and a study of workers linked exposure with prostate cancer. DuPont at last hastened to develop an alternative to PFOA. An interoffice memo sent in 1993 announced that ‘‘for the first time, we have a viable candidate’’ that appeared to be less toxic and stayed in the body for a much shorter duration of time. Discussions were held at DuPont’s corporate headquarters to discuss switching to the new compound. DuPont decided against it. The risk was too great: Products manufactured with PFOA were an important part of DuPont’s business, worth $1 billion in annual profit.‘His taking on the Tennant case, given the type of practice Taft had, I found to be inconceivable.’But the crucial discovery for the Tennant case was this: By the late 1980s, as DuPont became increasingly concerned about the health effects of PFOA waste, it decided it needed to find a landfill for the toxic sludge dumped on company property. Fortunately they had recently bought 66 acres from a low-level employee at the Washington Works facility that would do perfectly.By 1990, DuPont had dumped 7,100 tons of PFOA sludge into Dry Run Landfill. DuPont’s scientists understood that the landfill drained into the Tennants’ remaining property, and they tested the water in Dry Run Creek. It contained an extraordinarily high concentration of PFOA. DuPont did not tell this to the Tennants at the time, nor did it disclose the fact in the cattle report that it commissioned for the Tennant case a decade later — the report that blamed poor husbandry for the deaths of their cows. Bilott had what he needed.In August 2000, Bilott called DuPont’s lawyer, Bernard Reilly, and explained that he knew what was going on. It was a brief conversation.The Tennants settled. The firm would receive its contingency fee. The whole business might have ended right there. But Bilott was not satisfied.‘‘I was irritated,’’ he says.DuPont was nothing like the corporations he had represented at Taft in the Superfund cases. ‘‘This was a completely different scenario. DuPont had for decades been actively trying to conceal their actions. They knew this stuff was harmful, and they put it in the water anyway. These were bad facts.’’ He had seen what the PFOA-tainted drinking water had done to cattle. What was it doing to the tens of thousands of people in the areas around Parkersburg who drank it daily from their taps? What did the insides of their heads look like? Were their internal organs green?Bilott spent the following months drafting a public brief against DuPont. It was 972 pages long, including 136 attached exhibits. His colleagues call it ‘‘Rob’s Famous Letter.’’ ‘‘We have confirmed that the chemicals and pollutants released into the environment by DuPont at its Dry Run Landfill and other nearby DuPont-owned facilities may pose an imminent and substantial threat to health or the environment,’’ Bilott wrote. He demanded immediate action to regulate PFOA and provide clean water to those living near the factory. On March 6, 2001, he sent the letter to the director of every relevant regulatory authority, including Christie Whitman, administrator of the E.P.A., and the United States attorney general, John Ashcroft.DuPont reacted quickly, requesting a gag order to block Bilott from providing the information he had discovered in the Tennant case to the government. A federal court denied it. Bilott sent his entire case file to the E.P.A.‘‘DuPont freaked out when they realized that this guy was onto them,’’ says Ned McWilliams, a young trial lawyer who later joined Bilott’s legal team. ‘‘For a corporation to seek a gag order to prevent somebody from speaking to the E.P.A. is an extraordinary remedy. You could realize how bad that looks. They must have known that there was a small chance of winning. But they were so afraid that they were willing to roll the dice.’’With the Famous Letter, Bilott crossed a line. Though nominally representing the Tennants — their settlement had yet to be concluded — Bilott spoke for the public, claiming extensive fraud and wrongdoing. He had become a threat not merely to DuPont but also to, in the words of one internal memo, ‘‘the entire fluoropolymers industry’’ — an industry responsible for the high-performance plastics used in many modern devices, including kitchen products, computer cables, implantable medical devices and bearings and seals used in cars and airplanes. PFOA was only one of more than 60,000 synthetic chemicals that companies produced and released into the world without regulatory oversight.

Jim Tennant and his wife, Della, sold DuPont a 66-acre tract of land that became part of the Dry Run Landfill.‘‘Rob’s letter lifted the curtain on a whole new theater,’’ says Harry Deitzler, a plaintiff’s lawyer in West Virginia who works with Bilott. ‘‘Before that letter, corporations could rely upon the public misperception that if a chemical was dangerous, it was regulated.’’ Under the 1976 Toxic Substances Control Act, the E.P.A. can test chemicals only when it has been provided evidence of harm. This arrangement, which largely allows chemical companies to regulate themselves, is the reason that the E.P.A. has restricted only five chemicals, out of tens of thousands on the market, in the last 40 years.It was especially damning to see these allegations against DuPont under the letterhead of one of the nation’s most prestigious corporate defense firms. ‘‘You can imagine what some of the other companies that Taft was representing — a Dow Chemical — might have thought of a Taft lawyer taking on DuPont,’’ Larry Winter says. ‘‘There was a threat that the firm would suffer financially.’’ When I asked Thomas Terp about Taft’s reaction to the Famous Letter, he replied, not quite convincingly, that he didn’t recall one. ‘‘Our partners,’’ he said, ‘‘are proud of the work that he has done.’’Bilott, however, worried that corporations doing business with Taft might see things differently. ‘‘I’m not stupid, and the people around me aren’t stupid,’’ he said. ‘‘You can’t ignore the economic realities of the ways that business is run and the way clients think. I perceived that there were some ‘What the hell are you doing?’ responses.’’The letter led, four years later, in 2005, to DuPont’s reaching a $16.5 million settlement with the E.P.A., which had accused the company of concealing its knowledge of PFOA’s toxicity and presence in the environment in violation of the Toxic Substances Control Act. (DuPont was not required to admit liability.) At the time, it was the largest civil administrative penalty the E.P.A. had obtained in its history, a statement that sounds more impressive than it is. The fine represented less than 2 percent of the profits earned by DuPont on PFOA that year.Bilott never represented a corporate client again.The obvious next step was to file a class-action lawsuit against DuPont on behalf of everyone whose water was tainted by PFOA. In all ways but one, Bilott himself was in the ideal position to file such a suit. He understood PFOA’s history as well as anyone inside DuPont did. He had the technical and regulatory expertise, as he had proved in the Tennant case. The only part that didn’t make sense was his firm: No Taft lawyer, to anyone’s recollection, had ever filed a class-action lawsuit.It was one thing to pursue a sentimental case on behalf of a few West Virginia cattle farmers and even write a public letter to the E.P.A. But an industry-threatening class-action suit against one of the world’s largest chemical corporations was different. It might establish a precedent for suing corporations over unregulated substances and imperil Taft’s bottom line. This point was made to Terp by Bernard Reilly, DuPont’s in-house lawyer, according to accounts from Bilott’s plaintiff’s-lawyer colleagues; they say Reilly called to demand that Bilott back off the case. (Terp confirms that Reilly called him but will not disclose the content of the call; Bilott and Reilly decline to speak about it, citing continuing litigation.) Given what Bilott had documented in his Famous Letter, Taft stood by its partner.A lead plaintiff soon presented himself. Joseph Kiger, a night-school teacher in Parkersburg, called Bilott to ask for help. About nine months earlier, he received a peculiar note from the Lubeck water district. It arrived on Halloween day, enclosed in the monthly water bill. The note explained that an unregulated chemical named PFOA had been detected in the drinking water in ‘‘low concentrations,’’ but that it was not a health risk. Kiger had underlined statements that he found particularly baffling, like: ‘‘DuPont reports that it has toxicological and epidemiological data to support confidence that exposure guidelines established by DuPont are protective of human health.’’ The term ‘‘support confidence’’ seemed bizarre, as did ‘‘protective of human health,’’ not to mention the claim that DuPont’s own data supported its confidence in its own guidelines.Still, Kiger might have forgotten about it had his wife, Darlene, not already spent much of her adulthood thinking about PFOA. Darlene’s first husband had been a chemist in DuPont’s PFOA lab. (Darlene asked that he not be named so that he wouldn’t be involved in the local politics around the case.) ‘‘When you worked at DuPont in this town,’’ Darlene says today, ‘‘you could have everything you wanted.’’ DuPont paid for his education, it secured him a mortgage and it paid him a generous salary. DuPont even gave him a free supply of PFOA, which, Darlene says, she used as soap in the family’s dishwasher and to clean the car. Sometimes her husband came home from work sick — fever, nausea, diarrhea, vomiting — after working in one of the PFOA storage tanks. It was a common occurrence at Washington Works. Darlene says the men at the plant called it ‘‘Teflon flu.’’In 1976, after Darlene gave birth to their second child, her husband told her that he was not allowed to bring his work clothes home anymore. DuPont, he said, had found out that PFOA was causing health problems for women and birth defects in children. Darlene would remember this six years later when, at 36, she had to have an emergency hysterectomy and again eight years later, when she had a second surgery. When the strange letter from the water district arrived, Darlene says, ‘‘I kept thinking back to his clothing, to my hysterectomy. I asked myself, what does DuPont have to do with our drinking water?’’

Joe called the West Virginia Department of Natural Resources (‘‘They treated me like I had the plague’’), the Parkersburg office of the state’s Department of Environmental Protection (‘‘nothing to worry about’’), the water division (‘‘I got shut down’’), the local health department (‘‘just plain rude’’), even DuPont (‘‘I was fed the biggest line of [expletive] anybody could have been fed’’), before a scientist in the regional E.P.A. office finally took his call.‘‘Good God, Joe,’’ the scientist said. ‘‘What the hell is that stuff doing in your water?’’ He sent Kiger information about the Tennant lawsuit. On the court papers Kiger kept seeing the same name: Robert Bilott, of Taft Stettinius & Hollister, in Cincinnati.Bilott had anticipated suing on behalf of the one or two water districts closest to Washington Works. But tests revealed that six districts, as well as dozens of private wells, were tainted with levels of PFOA higher than DuPont’s own internal safety standard. In Little Hocking, the water tested positive for PFOA at seven times the limit. All told, 70,000 people were drinking poisoned water. Some had been doing so for decades.But Bilott faced a vexing legal problem. PFOA was not a regulated substance. It appeared on no federal or state list of contaminants. How could Bilott claim that 70,000 people had been poisoned if the government didn’t recognize PFOA as a toxin — if PFOA, legally speaking, was no different than water itself? In 2001, it could not even be proved that exposure to PFOA in public drinking water caused health problems. There was scant information available about its impact on large populations. How could the class prove it had been harmed by PFOA when the health effects were largely unknown?The best metric Bilott had to judge a safe exposure level was DuPont’s own internal limit of one part per billion. But when DuPont learned that Bilott was preparing a new lawsuit, it announced that it would re-evaluate that figure. As in the Tennant case, DuPont formed a team composed of its own scientists and scientists from the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection. It announced a new threshold: 150 parts per billion.Bilott found the figure ‘‘mind-blowing.’’ The toxicologists he hired had settled upon a safety limit of 0.2 parts per billion. But West Virginia endorsed the new standard. Within two years, three lawyers regularly used by DuPont were hired by the state D.E.P. in leadership positions. One of them was placed in charge of the entire agency. ‘‘The way that transpired was just amazing to me,’’ Bilott says. ‘‘I suppose it wasn’t so amazing to my fellow counsel in West Virginia who know the system there. But it was to me.’’ The same DuPont lawyers tasked with writing the safety limit, Bilott said, had become the government regulators responsible for enforcing that limit.Bilott devised a new legal strategy. A year earlier, West Virginia had become one of the first states to recognize what is called, in tort law, a medical-monitoring claim. A plaintiff needs to prove only that he or she has been exposed to a toxin. If the plaintiff wins, the defendant is required to fund regular medical tests. In these cases, should a plaintiff later become ill, he or she can sue retroactively for damages. For this reason, Bilott filed the class-action suit in August 2001 in state court, even though four of the six affected water districts lay across the Ohio border.Meanwhile the E.P.A., drawing from Bilott’s research, began its own investigation into the toxicity of PFOA. In 2002, the agency released its initial findings: PFOA might pose human health risks not only to those drinking tainted water, but also to the general public — anyone, for instance, who cooked with Teflon pans. The E.P.A. was particularly alarmed to learn that PFOA had been detected in American blood banks, something 3M and DuPont had known as early as 1976. By 2003 the average concentration of PFOA in the blood of an adult American was four to five parts per billion. In 2000, 3M ceased production of PFOA. DuPont, rather than use an alternative compound, built a new factory in Fayetteville, N.C., to manufacture the substance for its own use.Bilott’s strategy appeared to have worked. In September 2004, DuPont decided to settle the class-action suit. It agreed to install filtration plants in the six affected water districts if they wanted them and pay a cash award of $70 million. It would fund a scientific study to determine whether there was a ‘‘probable link’’ — a term that delicately avoided any declaration of causation — between PFOA and any diseases. If such links existed, DuPont would pay for medical monitoring of the affected group in perpetuity. Until the scientific study came back with its results, class members were forbidden from filing personal-injury suits against DuPont.

The chemical site near Parkersburg, W.Va., source of the waste at the center of the DuPont class-action lawsuit.A reasonable expectation, at this point, was that the lawyers would move on. ‘‘In any other class action you’ve ever read about,’’ Deitzler says, ‘‘you get your 10 bucks in the mail, the lawyers get paid and the lawsuit goes away. That’s what we were supposed to do.’’ For three years, Bilott had worked for nothing, costing his firm a fortune. But now Taft received a windfall: Bilott and his team of West Virginian plaintiff lawyers received $21.7 million in fees from the settlement. ‘‘I think they were thinking, This guy did O.K.,’’ Deitzler says. ‘‘I wouldn’t be surprised if he got a raise.’’Not only had Taft recouped its losses, but DuPont was providing clean water to the communities named in the suit. Bilott had every reason to walk away.He didn’t.‘‘There was a gap in the data,’’ Bilott says. The company’s internal health studies, as damning as they were, were limited to factory employees. DuPont could argue — and had argued — that even if PFOA caused medical problems, it was only because factory workers had been exposed at exponentially higher levels than neighbors who drank tainted water. The gap allowed DuPont to claim that it had done nothing wrong.Bilott represented 70,000 people who had been drinking PFOA-laced drinking water for decades. What if the settlement money could be used to test them? ‘‘Class members were concerned about three things,’’ Winter says. ‘‘One: Do I have C8 in my blood? Two: If I do, is it harmful? Three: If it’s harmful, what are the effects?’’ Bilott and his colleagues realized they could answer all three questions, if only they could test their clients. Now, they realized, there was a way to do so. After the settlement, the legal team pushed to make receipt of the cash award contingent on a full medical examination. The class voted in favor of this approach, and within months, nearly 70,000 West Virginians were trading their blood for a $400 check.The team of epidemiologists was flooded with medical data, and there was nothing DuPont could do to stop it. In fact, it was another term of the settlement that DuPont would fund the research without limitation. The scientists, freed from the restraints of academic budgets and grants, had hit the epidemiological jackpot: an entire population’s personal data and infinite resources available to study them. The scientists designed 12 studies, including one that, using sophisticated environmental modeling technology, determined exactly how much PFOA each individual class member had ingested.It was assured that the panel would return convincing results. But Bilott could not predict what those results would be. If no correlation was found between PFOA and illness, Bilott’s clients would be barred under the terms of the agreement from filing any personal-injury cases. Because of the sheer quantity of data provided by the community health study and the unlimited budget — it ultimately cost DuPont $33 million — the panel took longer than expected to perform its analysis. Two years passed without any findings. Bilott waited. A third year passed. Then a fourth, a fifth, a sixth. Still the panel was quiet. Bilott waited.It was not a peaceful wait. The pressure on Bilott at Taft had built since he initiated the class-action suit in 2001. The legal fees had granted him a reprieve, but as the years passed without resolution, and Bilott continued to spend the firm’s money and was unable to attract new clients, he found himself in an awkward position.‘‘This case,’’ Winter says, ‘‘regardless of how hugely successful it ends up, will never in the Taft firm’s mind replace what they’ve lost in the way of legal business over the years.’’The longer it took for the science panel to conduct its research, the more expensive the case became. Taft continued to pay consultants to interpret the new findings and relay them to the epidemiologists. Bilott counseled class members in West Virginia and Ohio and traveled frequently to Washington to attend meetings at the E.P.A., which was deciding whether to issue advisories about PFOA. ‘‘We were incurring a lot of expenses,’’ Bilott says. ‘‘If the scientific panel found no link with diseases, we’d have to eat it all.’’

Land where Tennant cattle once grazed. Credit: Bryan Schutmaat for The New York TimesClients called Bilott to say that they had received diagnoses of cancer or that a family member had died. They wanted to know why it was taking so long. When would they get relief? Among those who called was Jim Tennant. Wilbur, who had cancer, had died of a heart attack. Two years later, Wilbur’s wife died of cancer. Bilott was tormented by ‘‘the thought that we still hadn’t been able to hold this company responsible for what they did in time for those people to see it.’’Taft did not waver in its support of the case, but the strain began to show. ‘‘It was stressful,’’ Sarah Barlage, Bilott’s wife, says. ‘‘He was exasperated that it was lasting a long time. But his heels were so dug in. He’s extremely stubborn. Every day that went by with no movement gave him more drive to see it through. But in the back of our minds, we knew that there are cases that go on forever.’’His colleagues on the case detected a change in Bilott. ‘‘I had the impression that it was extremely tough on him,’’ Winter says. ‘‘Rob had a young family, kids growing up, and he was under pressure from his firm. Rob is a private person. He didn’t complain. But he showed signs of being under enormous stress.’’In 2010, Bilott began suffering strange attacks: His vision would blur, he couldn’t put on his socks, his arms felt numb. His doctors didn’t know what was happening. The attacks recurred periodically, bringing blurry vision, slurred speech and difficulty moving one side of his body. They struck suddenly, without warning, and their effects lasted days. The doctors asked whether he was under heightened stress at work. ‘‘Nothing different than normal,’’ Bilott told them. ‘‘Nothing it hadn’t been for years.’’The doctors ultimately hit upon an effective medication. The episodes ceased and their symptoms, apart from an occasional tic, are under control, but he still doesn’t have a diagnosis.‘‘It was stressful,’’ Bilott says, ‘‘not to know what the heck was going on.’’In December 2011, after seven years, the scientists began to release their findings: there was a ‘‘probable link’’ between PFOA and kidney cancer, testicular cancer, thyroid disease, high cholesterol, pre-eclampsia and ulcerative colitis.‘‘There was relief,’’ Bilott says, understated nearly to the point of self-effacement. ‘‘We were able to deliver what we had promised to these folks seven years earlier. Especially since, for all those years, DuPont had been saying that we were lying, trying to scare and mislead people. Now we had a scientific answer.’’As of October, 3,535 plaintiffs have filed personal-injury lawsuits against DuPont. The first member of this group to go to trial was a kidney-cancer survivor named Carla Bartlett. In October, Bartlett was awarded $1.6 million. DuPont plans to appeal. This may have ramifications well beyond Bartlett’s case: Hers is one of five ‘‘bellwether’’ cases that will be tried over the course of this year. After that, DuPont may choose to settle with every afflicted class member, using the outcome of the bellwether cases to determine settlement awards. Or DuPont can fight each suit individually, a tactic that tobacco companies have used to fight personal-injury lawsuits. At the rate of four trials a year, DuPont would continue to fight PFOA cases until the year 2890.DuPont’s continuing refusal to accept responsibility is maddening to Bilott. ‘‘To think that you’ve negotiated in good faith a deal that everybody has abided by and worked on for seven years, you reach a point where certain things were to be resolved but then remain contested,’’ he says. ‘‘I think about the clients who have been waiting for this, many of whom are sick or have died while waiting. It’s infuriating.’’In total, 70,000 people were drinking poisoned water. Some had been doing so for decades.As part of its agreement with the E.P.A., DuPont ceased production and use of PFOA in 2013. The five other companies in the world that produce PFOA are also phasing out production. DuPont, which is currently negotiating a merger with Dow Chemical, last year severed its chemical businesses: They have been spun off into a new corporation called Chemours. The new company has replaced PFOA with similar fluorine-based compounds designed to biodegrade more quickly — the alternative considered and then discarded by DuPont more than 20 years ago. Like PFOA, these new substances have not come under any regulation from the E.P.A. When asked about the safety of the new chemicals, Chemours replied in a statement: ‘‘A significant body of data demonstrates that these alternative chemistries can be used safely.’’Last May, 200 scientists from a variety of disciplines signed the Madrid Statement, which expresses concern about the production of all fluorochemicals, or PFASs, including those that have replaced PFOA. PFOA and its replacements are suspected to belong to a large class of artificial compounds called endocrine-disrupting chemicals; these compounds, which include chemicals used in the production of pesticides, plastics and gasoline, interfere with human reproduction and metabolism and cause cancer, thyroid problems and nervous-system disorders. In the last five years, however, a new wave of endocrinology research has found that even extremely low doses of such chemicals can create significant health problems. Among the Madrid scientists’ recommendations: ‘‘Enact legislation to require only essential uses of PFASs’’ and ‘‘Whenever possible, avoid products containing, or manufactured using, PFASs. These include many products that are stain-resistant, waterproof or nonstick.’’When asked about the Madrid Statement, Dan Turner, DuPont’s head of global media relations, wrote in an email: ‘‘DuPont does not believe the Madrid Statement reflects a true consideration of the available data on alternatives to long-chain perfluorochemicals, such as PFOA. DuPont worked for more than a decade, with oversight from regulators, to introduce its alternatives. Extensive data has been developed, demonstrating that these alternatives are much more rapidly eliminated from the body than PFOA, and have improved health safety profiles. We are confident that these alternative chemistries can be used safely — they are well characterized, and the data has been used to register them with environmental agencies around the world.’’Every year Rob Bilott writes a letter to the E.P.A. and the West Virginia D.E.P., urging the regulation of PFOA in drinking water. In 2009, the E.P.A. set a ‘‘provisional’’ limit of 0.4 parts per billion for short-term exposure, but has never finalized that figure. This means that local water districts are under no obligation to tell customers whether PFOA is in their water. In response to Bilott’s most recent letter, the E.P.A. claimed that it would announce a ‘‘lifetime health advisory level for PFOA’’ by ‘‘early 2016.’’This advisory level, if indeed announced, might be a source of comfort to future generations. But if you are a sentient being reading this article in 2016, you already have PFOA in your blood. It is in your parents’ blood, your children’s blood, your lover’s blood. How did it get there? Through the air, through your diet, through your use of nonstick cookware, through your umbilical cord. Or you might have drunk tainted water. The Environmental Working Group has found manufactured fluorochemicals present in 94 water districts across 27 states (see sidebar beginning on Page 38). Residents of Issaquah, Wash.; Wilmington, Del.; Colorado Springs; and Nassau County on Long Island are among those whose water has a higher concentration of fluorochemicals than that in some of the districts included in Rob Bilott’s class-action suit. The drinking water in Parkersburg itself, whose water district was not included in the original class-action suit and has failed to compel DuPont to pay for a filtration system, is currently tainted with high levels of PFOA. Most residents appear not to know this.Where scientists have tested for the presence of PFOA in the world, they have found it. PFOA is in the blood or vital organs of Atlantic salmon, swordfish, striped mullet, gray seals, common cormorants, Alaskan polar bears, brown pelicans, sea turtles, sea eagles, Midwestern bald eagles, California sea lions and Laysan albatrosses on Sand Island, a wildlife refuge on Midway Atoll, in the middle of the North Pacific Ocean, about halfway between North America and Asia.‘‘We see a situation,’’ Joe Kiger says, ‘‘that has gone from Washington Works, to statewide, to the United States, and now it’s everywhere, it’s global. We’ve taken the cap off something here. But it’s just not DuPont. Good God. There are 60,000 unregulated chemicals out there right now. We have no idea what we’re taking.’’Bilott doesn’t regret fighting DuPont for the last 16 years, nor for letting PFOA consume his career. But he is still angry. ‘‘The thought that DuPont could get away with this for this long,’’ Bilott says, his tone landing halfway between wonder and rage, ‘‘that they could keep making a profit off it, then get the agreement of the governmental agencies to slowly phase it out, only to replace it with an alternative with unknown human effects — we told the agencies about this in 2001, and they’ve essentially done nothing. That’s 14 years of this stuff continuing to be used, continuing to be in the drinking water all over the country. DuPont just quietly switches over to the next substance. And in the meantime, they fight everyone who has been injured by it.’’Bilott is currently prosecuting Wolf v. DuPont, the second of the personal-injury cases filed by the members of his class. The plaintiff, John M. Wolf of Parkersburg, claims that PFOA in his drinking water caused him to develop ulcerative colitis. That trial begins in March. When it concludes, there will be 3,533 cases left to try.A correction was made on Jan. 24, 2016:An article on Jan 10. about legal action against DuPont for chemical pollution referred incorrectly to DuPont’s response in the 1970s when the company discovered high concentrations of PFOA in the blood of workers at Washington Works, a DuPont factory. DuPont withheld the information from the E.P.A., not from its workers. The article also misstated the year DuPont agreed to a $16.5 million settlement with the E.P.A. It was 2005, not 2006. In addition, the article misidentified the water district where a resident received a letter from the district noting that PFOA had been detected in the drinking water. It was Lubeck, W.Va. — not Little Hocking, Ohio. The article also misidentified the district where water tested positive for PFOA at seven times the limit. It was Little Hocking, not Lubeck. And the article misidentified the city in Washington State that has fluorochemicals in its drink-ing water. It is Issaquah, not Seattle._________Nathaniel Rich is a contributing writer for the magazine and the author of ‘‘Odds Against Tomorrow.’’ He lives in New Orleans and is a frequent contributor to The New York Review of Books and The Atlantic.

为什么大多数有钱人都会变得素质低下，为什么大多数有钱人都会漠视生命。

毕竟钱能买命，而钱能买到的东西本身就不值钱了。

有钱人随随便便就能只手遮天，这让好人做好事更难，更显得滑稽。

原本，拯救一个人还是拯救所有人，这对于一个心怀正义的律师来说是没有区别的，可惜人心的复杂，现实的黑暗，往往是从击破个人为起点，紧接着逐个击破。

人们感谢你，是因为你有价值，人们憎恨你，是因为你的价值不够。

幸运的是我家从来没有用过不粘锅，因为从我记事开始，不粘锅就成为了“毒”的代名词。

历史告诉我们使用任何便利的事物，总得考虑代价是什么。

人为因素导致的疾病，至今还在不断发生，可是死亡究竟教给人类什么？

是如何规避责任，还是如何写一份漂亮的检测报告，又或者告诉我们，怎样死才最好看？？？

尽管这个世界乌漆麻黑，无数人在黑暗之中跌倒受伤，但幸运的是依旧有人坚持摸爬滚打，依旧有人坚持战斗。

我们应该嘲笑的是那些玩弄生命的渣滓，而不是坚持正义的“普通人”。