Via America’s Lawyer: PFAS chemicals have seeped not only to our nation’s waterways, but also into 100% of nursing mothers’ breast milk. Mike Papantonio and Farron Cousins discuss more. Also, as if our country’s waterways weren’t already contaminated enough by PFAS, another toxin called Trichloroethylene (TCE) has seeped into sources of drinking water nationwide. Attorney Madeline Pendley joins Mike Papantonio to explain how factories are endangering the lives of their workers and surrounding areas with these cancer-causing chemicals, which are prevalent in both industrial and household cleaning agents.
Transcript:
*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.
Mike Papantonio: A new study has found alarming amounts of toxic chemicals in breast milk that could cause severe problems for an entire generation. Wow. I mean, you know, it’s just, it just never ends and we’ve, the fact is this story has been out there a long time. Corporate media is just now picking up on it. Matter of fact, we did this story earlier, before it, before corporate media even knew what was taking place. Talk about it a little bit.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. What this major study by, you know, three different universities, a research institute, took samples of breast milk, and what they found was it wasn’t seventy-five percent had traces of these chemicals. It wasn’t 90. It was 100% of the breast milk samples that they tested had these levels of PFAS chemicals that could be damaging to the infant. So we’re, we’re talking about an entire generation being poisoned right now.
Mike Papantonio: You helped do the research on the, the case that I tried, the PFAA case PFAS case that I tried up in the Ohio river valley, they made two movies about it. One was the devil we know, the other one is dark waters. And in that, in that, in that trial, what we found was that this information has been on the table for the EPA, for, for, for decades, literally for decades.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: Talking about four decades at the very least. And this is what they knew. They knew it caused cancer. All the animal studies show it, showed cancer. It caused liver disease, it caused liver cancer, caused testicular disease, caused developmental disease. This is what the EPA had and the D and, and the local regulators actually became part of furthering the efforts to get more PFAS into the Ohio river valley. It’s a remarkable story. And it’s just beginning, isn’t it?
Farron Cousins: It really is. And we’re finding out again, this poisoning goes so far beyond. I mean, we’re finding these chemicals in areas where human beings don’t even live. We’re finding it in polar bears for God’s sake. That is how widespread these chemicals are. And again, we’ve already poisoned a couple of generations and because of inaction from the federal government, because the companies continue to produce these chemicals, still going out into the waters today, we got a new generation right here getting toxic doses of these.
Mike Papantonio: You know, as you, matter of fact, you did a story on this for our mag, for national trial lawyer magazine. In, in, in that story, you talk about the fact and I, of course I tried the case. So I had the experts on the stand that said, it’s, biopersistent, means it’s in the environment for 1 million years. It’s bioaccumulative, that means each and every time that you take a drink of it, or you’re exposed to it, it adds to the burden in your body. And more importantly, it’s bioactive. And when you put all those three things together, and now you learn that the most important stage in a child’s life, they’re exposed to 10, 20, 50 times the amount, they should have no exposure.
Farron Cousins: Right.
Mike Papantonio: God didn’t make PFAS. Okay. DuPont and 3M made PFAS.
Farron Cousins: Right. And there, there may be not a whole lot we can do at this point to, to stop the poisoning of this generation, other than what we’re doing right now, and what you’ve done, trying these cases, getting the word out. But again, these are chemicals that are still being introduced today. Right. They’re still in use and, and some of the alternatives are proving to be almost equally as toxic. So we’re, we’re at the mercy of corporate America right now. We truly are. And it’s a terrifying place to be.
Mike Papantonio: Net, Netflix, check out Netflix, the devil we know. It’s going to give you the whole backstory. It’s, it’s scary, scary stuff. Farron Cousins, thank you for joining me. Okay.
Farron Cousins: Thank you.
Mike Papantonio: The EPA has known for years about the dangers of an industrial chemical known as TCE, but without regulations, tens of thousands of businesses today are still exposing their workers to this toxin, which has made it’s way from factories into our drinking water. Attorney Madeline Pendley joins me to talk about this. Maddie, tell us what TCEs are.
Madeline Pendley: So TCE is Trichloroethylene, it’s a manmade chemical. So we came up with this. And it’s actually used mostly in factories for cleaning of medical equipment and metal parts, but it’s also found in different cleaning products that we all use and are therefore exposed to in our own homes. Despite being used in so many different ways, it’s actually extremely dangerous. It’s a class one carcinogen, and it has been for a very long time.
Mike Papantonio: Kidney cancer, liver cancer, birth defects, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. It has the capacity to do that.
Madeline Pendley: Right.
Mike Papantonio: It’s in cleaning, as you point out it’s in, it’s, they use it to clean electronics. They use it in refrigeration. They use it in dry cleaning. Many, many uses of it and they, the industry, Dow chemical.
Madeline Pendley: Yes.
Mike Papantonio: And it has known for a very long time, how dangerous this is. There’s some countries they don’t, there you can’t even use it. It’s banned totally.
Madeline Pendley: Right.
Mike Papantonio: I’m wondering what kinds of health problems besides those are emerging? Where are we seeing the biggest clusters of health problems?
Madeline Pendley: Really all over the country. So geographically, there’s, there’s a little bit in every state it seems like. They’re mostly central, centralized around these factories or these manufacturing facilities. So either the air around those facilities is polluted and it actually seeps down into the water table. So TCE will leach down in and so the communities around these factories are drinking the water and they’re being exposed to it as well. So really all over the country, just demographically affecting factory workers.
Mike Papantonio: Well, there’s no way to even warn about it. I mean, if you’re working around a factory where we’re really seeing this as on military bases, right? I mean.
Madeline Pendley: We are seeing it on military bases, as well, yes.
Mike Papantonio: And what, why are we seeing it so much on military bases? We actually see military bases being shut down as super fund sites because the government can’t clean up the disaster. Talk about that.
Madeline Pendley: Right. So this stuff gets into the environment, whether it’s through on a military base or the factories or wherever, mostly through dumping, spilling or leaks. So you can have leaks in the pipelines that seeps out into the environment, or just negligent, you know, care when they’re transporting this stuff. It dumps and contaminates the entire community.
Mike Papantonio: Well, you know, what, is anything being done on the federal level? It seems like the EPA, as usual, has just kicked the can down the, down the road.
Madeline Pendley: Absolutely.
Mike Papantonio: And let industry tell them what industry wanted to do. EPA leadership and the white house leadership has been, almost, has been totally non-existent on this.
Madeline Pendley: Right.
Mike Papantonio: Wasn’t just the Obama administration that knew about this. It goes all the way back to George Bush. I mean, Bush knew what the potential problems are and they just let the, they just let the FDA just slide on this. Just do whatever you want to do.
Madeline Pendley: Right. We’ve known how dangerous TCE is for a very long time. And as you mentioned, some flags were raised during the Obama administration. Some bans were suggested, you know, they wanted to start enforcing protections to try and reduce the levels of TCE exposure, try to stop these facilities and these factories from using it. But unfortunately the EPA confusingly kind of blocked some of those measures. They actually, especially during the Trump administration, actually works to protect TCE so that these businesses did not have to stop using it.
Mike Papantonio: So, okay. We’ve seen, the, the problem is that it’s, it’s not, as, as we said, you talked about the factory and we talked about the fact that it’s used on military bases, a lot for de-greasing all types of industrial size equipment. But the problem is it’s then moving from the base, it’s seeping down into the aquifer to where we have 34% of the drinking water supply in this country right now has TCE in it.
Madeline Pendley: Exactly.
Mike Papantonio: And people have no idea what that means to them, right?
Madeline Pendley: Right, right. And so the problem is this could have been prevented, had, as you mentioned, these companies and these military bases done the right thing from the jump. But now the problem is the contamination is so much further spread than those factories and military bases. So one thing you can do is if you think your water supply has been contaminated, you can order tests for it. There are blood tests and breath tests that you can get yourself to see how much TCE has accumulated in your body. But otherwise, the only thing to really do at this point is to avoid those areas if possible, and get your drinking water tested.
Mike Papantonio: Well, it’s not going to go away. I mean, it’s like, it’s, it’s not as bad as PHOS. PFOS is in the environment for a million years.
Madeline Pendley: Right.
Mike Papantonio: This simply just, the environment just recharges this as it moves through the aquifer, it doesn’t really just go away. It moves into your drinking water. Utah, really interesting story there in Utah, where you had the military base was hugely affected. And then they started having cancer clusters outside the military base, all around the military base, kidney cancer, liver cancer. They had some birth defects. Talk about that. What are the places that we know are kind of hotspots for this?
Madeline Pendley: So there are actually pretty significant pockets in almost every state. Some of the biggest offenders are, you know, Utah, Arizona, California has several. New York, New Jersey, North Carolina specifically at Camp Lejeune another military base, as well as Florida. Specifically West Virginia and Oregon. So if you know somebody who potentially has TCE contamination in West Virginia and Oregon, and has experienced some of those side effects, we talked about Parkinson’s, cancer, kidney and liver failure, you can give us at Levin Papantonio Rafferty a call and we’ll look into it.
Mike Papantonio: You know, what’s interesting, Jan Schlichtmann used to be, he was a law, he was a partner of mine. Law, law partner, he was of counsel with this law firm and has been a friend a long time. He’s the lawyer that tried, that there’s a book it’s called A Civil Action. They made a movie out of, out of it, it’s called A Civil Action. He actually tried the first TCE case decades ago.
Madeline Pendley: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: He gave all the information to the government, to the EPA. Jan Schlichtmann had worked the case up from ground on and all he got from them was, we’re not interested. We don’t think this is a problem.
Madeline Pendley: Right.
Mike Papantonio: This killed people all up and down this area where he tried the case. The case was unsuccessful. But what he did is he took all of that information. It’s worth seeing. It’s called A Civil Action. It’s, it’s a great movie. But the book is suburb. And this, this is where it all started, really.
Madeline Pendley: Right. And like you mentioned, the problem is that the EPA has enough information to do something about this. You know, and they should. I mean, if no one, if they’re not going to who else is? But they’re not interested and they’re actually taking steps to protect TCE and these facilities.
Mike Papantonio: I hope you’ll go after them.
Madeline Pendley: We will.
Mike Papantonio: Thanks a lot, Maddie.
Madeline Pendley: Thanks.
