The federal government is trying to escape liability for contaminating entire neighborhoods with dangerous chemicals for decades. Mike Papantonio & Farron Cousins discuss more.
Transcript:
*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.
Mike Papantonio: The federal government is trying to escape liability for contaminating entire neighborhoods with dangerous chemicals for decades. You know, as I’ve said this, again, I tried the first cases in America on PFAS. I tried ’em up in Ohio, and that was what, 5, 6 years ago. And out of there came, okay, after we got the results, we shamed the EPA, we embarrassed the hell out of the EPA in that federal court up in Ohio. And we sent that, I say we, I was the trial lawyer on that case, one of the trial lawyers. But the point is this, the government is saying, we want total immunity. We have destroyed entire aquifers. You can’t even use the water anymore. And now we’re having to pay to have the water, you can’t clean it up. It’s there for a million years. All you can do is hopefully you can process it to the point to where it’s a little cleaner, but it’s never 100%. But the EPA, this is another situation where the EPA absolutely dropped the ball. They were owned and operated by DuPont and 3M. 3M and DuPont captured the EPA. That’s what happened here.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. And with these PFAS chemicals, they’re using ’em in the firefighting foam on military bases where they go through these training exercises where they just dump gallons and gallons of this at a time, throughout all of these training exercises. And as soon as it hits that soil, it’s going down and it’s gonna reach that aquifer. And we are seeing in these towns and communities where these military bases are located. I mean, we’re surrounded by three of them where we are now. Uh-oh. That’s weird. Everybody on this street has testicular cancer. Everybody over here is having coronary issues. They’ve got kidney cancer. They’ve got liver problems. Uh-oh. And it’s a ring around the military base that you can see for the contamination.
Mike Papantonio: Just so you know, there’s never been a chemical in American history that has had as much attention from an epidemiological study that went on for almost more than a decade. Epidemiology and all the scientists looked at it. They said, okay, we’ve looked at everything. Here’s what we know. We don’t have any doubts about this. Testicular cancer, kidney cancer, gastrointestinal problems, whole host of issues that they said, yeah, this is what’s causing it. The real problem, Farron, that I see with this is the government just said, ah, we didn’t do anything wrong. We were just using it to practice. And what they would do, they’d practice situations where there’d be a fire on a runway or on a ship. They didn’t need to use this stuff. They could have practiced with anything else, you understand. 3M and DuPont convinced them, oh no, you have to practice with this, or it won’t be accurate. It was nonsense. Total nonsense. They could have practiced with any other thing that would not have been toxic.
Farron Cousins: Right. And right now, the government, as you mentioned, they’re telling the courts, hey, we shouldn’t be a part of these lawsuits. We’re your government. We’re trying to clean it up right now. You can’t hold us responsible when we’re doing the right thing. That is one of the things they’re trying to argue is, hey, we’re trying to make it right by cleaning it. We’re real sorry that you’re gonna die from cancer next year. That’s a bummer for you. But hey, we’re over here digging up the soil and bringing in new dirt. So you should be fine.
Mike Papantonio: $400 billion worth of damage. That’s what took place just on these sites. $400 billion worth of damage. And we’re gonna look the other way. I don’t know how it’s gonna come out. But the point is this, it’s something that you have to understand. You know, if you, today, if you line up 10 people and ask ’em, are you still using your Teflon pan? Oh yeah. What’s the problem? They don’t know anything. They have no idea what PFAS even is. They have no idea what the relationship is between Teflon and PFAS. And so I don’t know. I guess it takes a while. It was kinda like asbestos. It took a while for the American public to understand just how serious it was.
Farron Cousins: Which, the EPA only just came out in the last week or so, banning asbestos finally.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah, I know. I know. And they haven’t even called this a hazardous chemical. Can you imagine? EPA is owned and operated, if you think the EPA or the FDA is on your side, you are absolutely out in the stratosphere. No way. They’re not on your side. They work for corporate America.
