If you’ve seen the movie “Dark Waters,” you may remember the story of Virginia farmer Wilbur Tennant, whose cows mysteriously lost weight, developed tumors and died.
His farm was just downstream from a landfill where Teflon manufacturer DuPont illegally dumped thousands of tons of toxic sludge containing PFOA chemicals, poisoning the cows that were drinking from the local stream. That real farmer was one of the first whistleblowers whose persistence in the 1990s lifted the veil on the dangers of PFOA and other PFAS known as “forever chemicals.”
Now, watchdog group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, or PEER, and five Texas farmers have filed a petition to take the Environmental Protection Agency to court for allegedly failing to protect the public from the risk of sewage sludge contaminated with PFAS.
