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(DRAMATIC MUSIC)
WOMAN: Do you solemnly swear the testimony you're about to give
to be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth?
Yes, I do.
MAN: Hi, Dr Butenhoff.
My name is Ned McWilliams
and I'm one of the attorneys representing
the various water districts around the country
that's suing your company, 3M, among others.
SONG: ♪ Man-made chemicals are
♪ Poisoning the Earth ♪
MAN: There were companies and people
that knew the nature and extent of this threat
but did it anyway.
♪ Chemists move molecules around
♪ Like we move furniture... ♪
MAN: You can't help but ask
what kind of people do that?
♪ After we're dead and gone
♪ It will be here a million years... ♪
WOMAN: This has to be the most explosive information
that I've found.
♪ We'll all be dead and gone
♪ And cried a billion tears... ♪
MAN: It was our 'holy shit' moment.
(WOMAN LAUGHS) Yeah.
Like, people do this?!
♪ In the water... ♪
WOMAN: Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth
and nothing but the truth, so help you God?
MAN: I do.
MAN: If you wanted to contaminate the planet,
you couldn't have invented a better delivery device
than firefighting foam.
♪ Flowing deep in the water. ♪
(LIQUID BURBLES)
(SOLEMN INDIGENOUS MUSIC)
(BIRDS WARBLE)
(SOFT CRACKLING)
MAN: Our old people
have always had a... a really special intimate relationship
with this place.
And when we go to special places like this,
it's really important that we pay respect...
...to all this part here,
all this country, the water,
the trees...
...grass, everything that's here.
It's all connected
and it was all here before us
and we're obligated to take care of it.
(WAVES LAP)
WOMAN: The Wreck Bay Aboriginal fishing community
is tucked away in a little bit of paradise
on the south coast of New South Wales.
It's pristine ocean.
And when you look across to the distance, it's the mountains
and they're quite blue because of our eucalypt that we have.
It's actually a place right on the ocean
that is just us, you know,
and it's been like that for thousands of years.
MATTHEW: Wreck Bay has always been a fishing village
and everything is here.
Everything is here in abundance.
WOMAN: We'd go diving.
You know, little ones that I'd get
are little abalones or oysters.
So we wouldn't go home to have lunch.
We'd have lunch as we catch it.
So full of culture and heritage.
It was a child's playground in paradise.
(UNEASY MUSIC BUILDS)
MATTHEW: We don't exist.
If... if we don't have water, we're not here.
It's who we are.
(HELICOPTER WHIRRS)
REPORTER: But now there's trouble in paradise.
PFAS chemicals used in firefighting foam
have leached out from a navy airfield
known as the Jervis Bay Range Facility.
Head along Wreck Bay Road.
See through there?
That's the east-west runway there.
Into the right here, we've got the training centre
where they do all their fire drills.
Where the PFAS was kept and stored.
But everything from there, from their training centre,
all that water...
...every time it rains, everything runs down this hill
and it runs straight into little gutters and creeks
and... and... all of these little nooks and crannies
that all flow down into Wreck Bay
and then it runs into... into our ocean down here.
The two main, um, killers in the community
is from heart... heart attack
and cancer.
I had a... um, cancerous cyst in my pancreas.
Pancreatic cancer is very brutal and savage.
Since January, we've had six funerals.
So a lot of alarm bells was ringing.
You know, it's a chemical used for something...
...that's like a business model.
And when you look at that,
it's all to do with that,
to do with money.
If we can be taken right back to those places
where people signed that dotted line
and where that was a business transaction,
you know, those people need to be made accountable.
The whole process that it's gone through to get here
and to poison our beautiful part of country has to be unpacked.
(SIREN BLARES)
MAN: I think once people start to see this story,
um, and see how much information was known by this company
going back as far as it does,
and knowing how much
of the current PFAS contamination problem
could have been prevented,
I think there are gonna be a lot of people that are very angry.
MAN 2: How do you, in good conscience,
if you're aware that a product that you manufacture,
and are essentially the exclusive manufacturer of,
and you know that it's in the blood
of the general population
all around the world,
how is it that you could in good conscience
not tell folks?
And you let generation after generation be exposed...
- Right. - ...um, in the name of profits.
I guess that's the goal of our trial,
is to... to tell that story.
We're talking about worldwide contamination
and, what, 3M knew and when they knew it.
(UNEASY MUSIC)
ROB: I mean, if you think about the amount of effort
3M has spent over the years
to keep this under wraps,
you know, to make sure that people didn't see this evidence.
And, again, it's just remarkable to me
that we're now having to... to prepare these cases
to go to trial
to get these people to accept responsibility
for what they did.
GARY: Right.
And there's no doubt who did it.
If you wanted to deliberately contaminate the planet
with PFAS,
you couldn't have invented a better delivery device
than firefighting foam
where you're literally spraying it into the environment,
into the water, and don't do anything to clean it up
and just let it soak in,
let it leach through the... through the ground
into the aquifers, into people's drinking water
and that's exactly what they did.
(SINGS) ♪ Man-made chemicals are
♪ Poisoning the Earth
♪ Chemists move molecules around
♪ Like we move furniture... ♪
GARY: I was always drawn to being a trial lawyer,
which is, I like to say, it's sort of performative art.
The only difference is I have a much more captive audience
when I have a jury.
They have to sit and listen to me.
I started out as a struggling musician
for the first 30 years of my life.
(SINGS) ♪ Rollin' down ol' River Road... ♪
We played everywhere.
We played some of the most famous punk rock scenes
of the '70s and '80s in New York
and we had a blast.
♪ Give me hope, give me strength
♪ And the faith when I need it most... ♪
I did not go to law school till I was 30
and I realised I had... (LAUGHS) ..to make a living.
♪ Holding on. ♪
- And I also believed... - (CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)
...in pursuing just causes,
so I would look to defend the little guy.
(SOBER PIANO MUSIC)
I got recruited by a firm
that was doing tobacco litigation for plaintiffs
and we would be representing thousands of people.
And I won.
I think at that time it was the third successful case
in the United States.
And then Rob Bilott, um, reached out to me.
His cases were gonna go to trial
and he needed a trial lawyer.
I was working at a law firm
where we were helping big corporate clients,
a lot of big chemical companies.
And I got a call in my office one day
from a gentleman who identified himself as Mr Tennant
out in West Virginia
and was telling me that he had cows dying
that I needed to help him with.
He was convinced
there was something
obviously in this white foam
coming out of this landfill
owned by DuPont
that was impacting the cows.
By the time he had called me in 1998,
he had lost over a hundred of these animals.
That call led to what became
the next several decades of litigation
involving these PFAS "forever chemicals".
GARY: We represented a class of 3,000 people.
We tried three individual cases, won them all
and DuPont... (LAUGHS) ...finally caved in
and settled with all 3,000 people
in that community.
ROB: It ended up being on the cover
of the 'New York Times' magazine.
After that story came out,
one of the people
that apparently had seen the story and reached out to me
was Mark Ruffalo.
You knew.
Still you did nothing.
REPORTER: 'Dark Waters' tells the true story of Robert Bilott,
the underdog lawyer who took on the industrial giant
DuPont Chemical.
MAN: You want to take everything that you know
and turn it against an iconic American company,
like an informant!
Isn't that right? Isn't that right?!
- Isn't that right? - Yes!
- Hey. - Oh. Oh, man.
- So good to see you. - Yeah, you too.
- How are you doing? - Awesome.
- Oh, buddy, it's been too long. - Yeah!
- Good to see you. Yeah. - Good to see you.
- It's almost been two years. - Yeah.
The film, you know, that we did together,
it seems to have created a space
to start to change everything.
- Would you say that was true? - Absolutely.
I think it really showed people, "Wait a minute,
"this stuff, it's not just in the water
"in a town in West Virginia."
This stuff that we were dealing with
and that you see in the film, 'Dark Waters',
it's the same chemicals now that are in the water in the UK,
in Germany, in Italy, in Australia, in Japan.
This story... (SCOFFS)
...it's... it's playing out all over the world now.
This was always the... thing
that was astonishing to me,
that people made the decision
to go forward
with putting these chemicals in...
...our environment.
They knew what they were doing.
Those were decisions that were made by people.
You can't help but ask...
...what kind of people do that?
(INTRIGUING MUSIC)
MAN: 3M were a large multinational conglomerate
chemical company.
They're based in Minnesota.
They go back to the 1800s.
And they're in the business of selling
thousands of different
commercial and industrial products.
It's a multibillion-dollar company,
and they were back in the '70s when this all got started.
ROB: PFAS is per- and polyfluoroalkylated substances.
It is a family of completely man-made chemicals.
These are chemicals that never existed on the planet
prior to World War II.
The two chemicals that we... that we've been talking about here
that we know the most about in this PFAS family
are the ones that have eight carbons - the C8s.
That's PFOA
and PFOS.
Both of these, really,
were created by 3M.
PFOA was sold primarily to DuPont
to use in things like Teflon.
(OIL SIZZLES, CORN POPS)
PFOS, on the other hand,
was one that was primarily used by 3M
in a lot of its own products,
things like Scotchgard.
And also they made this thing called Scotchban.
Think of like, uh, a... a hamburger wrapper.
That special paper where the grease doesn't leak through it?
That was what these products were primarily used for.
PFOS was very much their secret sauce,
their proprietary chemical.
No-one outside of 3M
had ever made it before,
had ever seen it before, knew anything about it.
3M also started using PFOS,
and then in later years PFOA was used as well,
in making a product called aqueous film forming foam...
...a type of firefighting foam
used to combat petroleum fires.
This was created primarily around the 1960s
and started being sold to the US military.
And over the last several decades,
this product, this... this firefighting foam
that's containing these PFAS chemicals,
has been sold to airports, fire stations,
military personnel, firefighters all over the world.
And this whole other story started to become apparent
of how much the... the Department of Defense
was using this
and how many bases
throughout the United States were poisoned
and how many firefighters...
Yeah.
...who are covered in this stuff.
And are told, "You spray it all out there,"
even though these companies understood
when they were making this stuff
it's got PFAS in it.
(LIQUID BUBBLES)
ROB: And these types of chemicals
when they get out into the environment,
they never break down.
And so the problem is not only do these chemicals
get out into our environment and stay there...
...they're incredibly toxic
and they've been found to be incredibly persistent,
bioaccumulative
and, unfortunately in some situations,
carcinogenic as well.
A lot of the information that has come out over the years
has focused on what DuPont was doing
and what DuPont knew
about these chemicals
and how DuPont had covered up
information about the health threat here.
There hasn't been as much information available
about what 3M knew about these chemicals.
This is the company that actually created these
at the beginning.
GARY: The stakes are enormous
because it's about holding to account chemical companies
that have been responsible for manufacturing a product
that has contaminated virtually everyone and everything
on the planet
from here to Australia
to Europe to China.
(UNEASY MUSIC)
WOMAN: We're just on the northern edge
of the airfield here.
We've just had bucketloads
of rain falling down
and now all this foam
seems to be coming down the waterways off the base.
You'd have to say that would have to be PFAS.
I've been reporting on PFAS contamination
for about eight years now.
It really is one of those issues
where every time you turn the stone over,
you just find something new.
This is the only road that takes you into Wreck Bay.
We're just approaching the naval college on our right.
This is where the majority of the cadets
have done their fire training
and so you'd have to think
that the majority of the PFAS contamination
has come from this area.
So any training that they've done here
is gonna have flushed down the hill,
straight towards the village of Wreck Bay.
So, really, in this national park,
you could not have a worse possible spot
to be doing your fire training with toxic PFAS chemicals.
(DOG BARKS)
CARRIE: Hi, Uncle Jack.
- JACK: Hi, Carrie. How are you? - CARRIE: Yeah.
- I'm really well, thanks. - JACK: Yeah?
- CARRIE: How are you? - Good, thank you.
JACK: I started as a ranger in 1968.
I was the first Aboriginal ranger in the Territory.
We were doing all our firefighting modules
up at the Jervis Bay Range Facility.
(UNEASY MUSIC)
If we wanted to put out an oil fire,
we'd have to use the foam and the water to put it out.
If we wanted to go into a big, uh, tank or... or like a cabin,
we'd have to crawl through in the water and everything else
while they had all the smoke and fire in there.
And what... what would happen,
we'd come out all soaking wet
from the foam and everything else
and we'd have to, uh, go near a fire and dry ourself out.
- Oh, wow! - Yeah.
So you were actually crawling through water
that had the foam in it.
- Is that right? - Yeah, it had... Yeah. Yeah.
CARRIE: And did you ever use anything to protect yourself,
gloves and things, when you're handling the foam?
- UNCLE JACK: No. No. No. - That kind of thing.
- We'd just use our bare hands. - Wild. Oh, wow.
And with a helmet on. Not even a... a face mask.
- Wow. - And our overalls.
And our boots. Mmm.
CARRIE: So, of the firefighters you worked with,
how many are still alive now?
UNCLE JACK: There'd be only about eight of us.
- CARRIE: Wow. - That I know of.
The rest of them have all passed on.
CARRIE: And so how many, roughly,
would you say have passed?
UNCLE JACK: I'd say...
...between 20 and 22...
...hmm, have passed.
(KNOCK AT DOOR)
MAN: The navy asked us if we want to do some training
up at the aerodrome.
They said, "We use foam."
I said, "That's alright."
'Cause I didn't know what was in the foam.
I've had, uh, prostate cancer,
which I've had my prostate removed.
They found that I had cirrhosis of the liver.
Every doctor I've been to, they've asked me,
"Are you a heavy drinker?"
"No, sir.
"I'm not a heavy drinker."
The cancers that you've had,
are those sort of any possibility
that they were inherited down the line
like hereditary cancers?
- No. No. - No.
There's no history of it
in... in my... you know, my family.
All these different types of
deformities and blood disorders
and... and cancers
that have come to our community
can't be just... hereditary
and it can't be just... you know, a... a fate of bad luck.
It has to have come from something else.
CARRIE: One of the biggest stories
I've ever written in my career
would have to be the story I wrote
about Tartan High School, Minnesota,
that was basically on the doorstep of 3M's headquarters.
They'd had plants over there
that were manufacturing PFAS
and that the PFAS had contaminated the drinking water.
So I started googling the name of this town
where their headquarters was, which was called Oakdale,
and I was just blown away to see these articles coming up
about these kids who were dying of cancer
at the local high school.
So I just remember this moment, it was like a lightning bolt,
of how... how could this happen, number one?
And... and number two, why was no-one talking about
why all these kids were dying of cancer
and... and the potential...
...no-one seemed to have made that connection
to the contamination of the drinking water?
Most of them had grown up drinking water
that was contaminated with PFAS
and their parents had even drinking that water
while they were in utero.
So once I got over there, I just went doorknocking.
So I managed to find, um, a few names of the kids that had died
and I went and knocked on those doors.
And then it just spread and spread.
And by the end of the two weeks,
I'd managed to find 21 cancer cases at that school
that all happened within a 15-year period.
The types of cancers ranged from Hodgkin's lymphoma,
leukaemia
to bone cancer,
and about six cases
of brain tumours.
And, tragically,
at the time of my visit,
five of the students had already passed away
at a really young age.
I met a lot of the students.
And one of the ones that really stood out to me
was Amara Strande.
When I was 15, I was diagnosed with
fibrolamellar hepatocellular carcinoma,
an incredibly rare liver cancer.
The chances of being diagnosed with fibrolamellar
is 1 in 5 million.
(ECG BEEPS)
CARRIE: At the time that I saw her,
she'd only just got out of hospital
from being in a coma for 33 days
after her liver tumour was removed.
And I remember just going to her house.
She was very switched-on
and she just wanted to know
everything that I knew
about PFAS.
And after I went home,
she just kept going
and researching
and speaking to people.
And there was just something about her.
I had no idea of how significant
that meeting was gonna be in the grand scheme of things.
She didn't have any fear about going up against
people who were more powerful than her.
ROB: We got involved with 3M back in 2005.
That's when these chemicals were discovered in the water
outside of their manufacturing plant in Minnesota by the state.
You know, we were asked to come in and help the community,
who was being exposed to these chemicals
in their drinking water.
Unfortunately, when we... when we started pursuing
the litigation in Minnesota,
one of the first things 3M did
was go into the local court
and get a blanket protective order.
They essentially were able to designate every single document
as confidential.
So despite the fact that we were able to see
these internal studies and these internal documents of 3M,
we weren't able to share those for years.
And, in fact, a lot of those documents
are only just now being made available to the public.
And some additional documents are just now coming out
through this litigation
over firefighting foam.
(SIREN WAILS IN DISTANCE)
So this is the first one
that sort of shows the water treatment plant
and you can see over there in the end
it's got the four ion exchange vessels
that they've constructed so far.
Yeah, so our jurors can see an aerial shot
of what the whole treatment plant,
um, to remove PFAS...looks like.
(GRIM MUSIC)
GARY: So a few years back,
EPA empanelled a group
of some of the world's leading scientists and experts
in the area of PFAS contamination.
They concluded that PFOA and PFOS are likely to cause cancer
and other human health effects, in fact.
And they determined that "there is no dose
"below which either chemical is considered safe".
In other words, there is no safe level.
REPORTER: Now the City of Stuart is taking several manufacturers
of the foam to federal court, including corporate giant, 3M,
claiming 3M knew but didn't tell the city
about the toxic contamination risks.
Stuart was chosen to represent
hundreds of communities
across the country
who want 3M to pay
for their clean-up testing
and filtration.
You know, why should the victims here of this contamination,
the people that are drinking this in their homes every day,
be the ones stuck with those costs?
Why should the cities and the municipalities
that are now having to filter this out
have to be the ones to pay for this?
And it's just mind-blowing to me
that we're... (CHUCKLES) ...having to go to trial
to get responsibility accepted for those costs.
With respect to firefighting foam specifically,
as you know, they... they... they argue that the "end user",
the firefighters who've been training with foam,
um, are at fault.
Um, and, of course, as you know, it's mostly used for training
as opposed to actual fires.
Um, so most of the contamination is from training
where they're not actually saving lives
in any way, shape or form.
So in this litigation
which is being seen by Judge Richard Gergel
in Charleston, South Carolina, in federal court,
all of the cases across the country
have been consolidated before him
and he's decided that the water provider cases should go first.
REPORTER: The city wants to be awarded
more than $100 million
to cover what has already been spent on projects
like a multimillion-dollar treatment plant
and filtration system,
keeping the levels of the chemicals
undetectable or below the health advisory limit.
GARY: The story that we put together
really started, um, years ago.
In the course of what we call discovery,
the defendants and 3M
and the other defendant companies,
manufacturers of PFAS,
were required by court order
to start producing their internal files,
anything that had and that was related to PFAS
or aqueous film forming foam.
And over the course of the next four years,
they produced about 37 million pages of documents.
And from that we were able to pick out those documents
that really told a story
and it really starts in 1975.
If I were to give it a name in this whole longer timeline,
this early part of the timeline,
I would call 'The Shit Hits the Fan - Part 1'.
(TENSE MUSIC)
(MAN SPEAKS INDISTINCTLY)
WOMAN: A, B. A, B common mark.
This is, uh, so incredibly fucked and evil.
(READS) "In the summer of 1975,
"Dr Warren Guy,
"a toxicologist and professor at the University of Florida,
"calls 3M's corporate headquarters concerning research
"he and Dr Donald Taves, a toxicologist and professor,
"are planning to present at a symposium
"organised by the American Chemical Society.
"Dr Guy and Dr Taves have discovered the presence
"of an unidentified organic fluorine chemical compound
"in human blood..."
"..obtained from the blood banks in five US cities."
NED: Imagine these two outside researchers
found this fingerprint on a crime scene
but they didn't know who to match it to.
They could tell some things about it.
They could tell it was 8-chain,
they could tell it was fluorinated,
and based on that, they knew that there was this company
up in Minnesota, 3M, they made chemicals like that.
(TENSE MUSIC)
GARY: They contacted 3M and asked them,
"Hey, we found this funny-looking compound
"that's not known in nature."
And this is the actual telephone memo
from that... of that call
on August 20, 1975.
And it begins, "Dr Guy called again
"to see if we had any further ideas
"as to the possible sources of the fluorocarbon."
Then they literally pled ignorance.
But the internal documents have since revealed
3M did its own analysis
and was able to confirm,
yes, this was 3M's stuff
that was being found in the general population's blood.
GARY: They had known internally
that what these two scientists had stumbled on
was actually PFOS,
which is the one particular PFAS
that is essentially unique to 3M.
(GRIM MUSIC)
ROB: At that point, 3M started looking at its own workers
to try to figure out,
"Is this getting into the blood of our workers
"who are working with these chemicals?"
Sure enough, 3M had found this stuff, this organic fluoride,
was getting in its own workers.
They notified one of their main customers
for these chemicals, DuPont,
who was buying PFOA.
DuPont went out and started testing its workers in 1978.
Sure enough, DuPont found organic fluoride
getting into its workers as well.
So by this point of time, in the late 1970s,
both 3M and DuPont knew these chemicals
were getting into general population's blood
and workers who were exposed.
NED: Yeah, all hell broke loose.
They immediately started all these investigations.
For example, they started toxicology testing.
They went out and they got a bunch of mice,
rats, monkeys, guinea pigs,
and they did a whole slew of toxicology tests,
and the results were bad.
They were vomiting, there was liver necrosis,
haemorrhaging in their gastrointestinal tract,
tremors, convulsions.
"20 of the 28 rhesus monkeys in the study
"die as a result of their exposures to PFOS."
It sent shock waves within the company.
They said, "This chemical's now considered extremely toxic,
"more toxic than we ever realised."
And that, to me, is the evidence
that that's when they should have told the EPA.
But actually what they did was even worse than that.
They went out and they published a paper
in the journal 'Science',
which is the most prolific
and well-respected scientific journal in existence.
They published a paper saying that what Guy and Taves found
was not a man-made chemical at all,
that it was this naturally occurring compound,
which, of course, they knew was a lie.
"3M concludes that both PFOA and PFOS have,
"quote, 'the potential for widespread distribution
"'in the environment,' end quote,
"because they, quote, 'persist in the environment',
"thus 'forever chemicals',
"and that they are highly mobile in soils,
"and that therefore waterways
"would be their ultimate environmental sink."
MAN: This was the main beach that was one of the main places
where the community caught fish and sent it to the market.
That's the creek.
CARRIE: Right.
Oh, wow.
So, my understanding was
Mary's runs pretty much from the... the airfield
all the way down to the beach
carrying the contamination, is that right?
MAN: Yes.
How often would you come down growing up?
I was here practically every day.
- Yeah. - Yeah.
We not only learnt to fish and surf here, and swim,
we did a lot of beachcombing here as well
when we was kids.
So that was one of the activities
you do when you're living on the coast.
(PENSIVE MUSIC)
(CHILDREN'S VOICES ECHO)
WOMAN: We, obviously, grew up right in Wreck Bay,
and the water was our favourite place to go.
We love the ocean.
Especially at, um, Summercloud,
swimming there,
we'd swim in the creek.
(CHILDREN'S VOICES ECHO)
There was foam in the creek
and we would play with it.
We didn't know what it was.
SKYE: So I'd just finished school before I turned 18.
And then I started getting, like, really bad headaches,
and it kind of just was constant.
And then I started to lose my balance a little bit.
My eyesight s...
Yeah, that started to get a bit blurry.
I think the third time in one week
I went to the doctor's again.
And then she said, "I'm just gonna book you in for a scan
"on your head."
And that's when I met my surgeons.
And they came in and he said,
"You've got a tumour on your brain stem
"and we need to remove it."
So they said, "It's a slow-growing tumour
"and there is a chance of recurrence,
"but it's also benign."
JADE: We didn't know anyone that had brain tumours,
so we'd never experienced, like, even knowing someone
having brain surgery or anything.
But I think it hit us harder the second time
when she had surgery,
when we got told, "Oh, the tumour's come back."
SKYE: It was daunting,
but I think I...always said
I would rather it happen to me than anyone else,
'cause I knew that I could do it.
And I'm like, "OK, just have to push through."
And then...
...we found out about Jade,
which, that, I think, broke my heart the most.
Yeah.
JADE: Well, I was having migraines,
like, probably during the period
that she had her first tumour,
but then the symptoms got worse.
And then so me and Mum went in
and they were like,
"Oh, you have a massive brain tumour."
Then they called Mum and Dad up for a meeting,
and they were like, "So, we found...
"..like, we seen the first tumour,
"but she actually has another one on the other side as well."
They were trying to connect it to Mum and Dad
to see if anything came up in their genes
that would connect to both of us,
but they found nothing.
Even when we've seen, like, different doctors and stuff
that I've seen, they're like, "Oh, where do you live?"
And I'm like, "Jervis Bay."
And they'll look at me again and be like,
"Oh, do you know about PFAS?"
(GRIM MUSIC)
WOMAN: I was 26 years old
when I was formally diagnosed with cervical cancer.
I caught it late,
so I was inoperable,
it had already went to my lymph nodes.
They said, "You might not be around by Christmas."
I started my treatment in 2015,
and by 2016, in February,
I was in remission.
So here I am, and...
Yeah, thank goodness you're still here, darling.
ASHLEE: Dad's had a triple bypass.
- You know... - We've all had triple bypasses.
- ASHLEE: All the... Yeah. - My brothers.
All the brothers, all heart problems.
Every one of youse have had a bypass...
Yeah.
...that have lived in Wreck Bay.
So that's, like, 10. 10 of them.
My brother Rob, he's lived down here,
grown up down here -
heart problems.
My brother Baldy, he died of a heart attack.
And then my other brother, who's the same age as Rob,
lives in La Perouse -
no heart problems.
No health problems.
No health problems at all.
It can't be a coincidence.
CARRIE: So how old were you
when you first started getting sick?
I had this lump here for years.
- Mm. - And I never took notice of it.
Yeah.
And I found out that I was sick with breast cancer.
CARRIE: There have been studied overseas
in places like Taiwan and Greenland
that have linked PFAS exposure
to elevated rates of breast cancer.
And what experts have told me
is that in a community the size of Wreck Bay
you'd expect to be seeing about one breast cancer case
every five years,
or three in 15 years.
So it's been surprising
to have been given the names of 10 women in that village
with breast cancer.
(PENSIVE MUSIC)
WOMAN: Peggy, she was my granddaughter.
She was a strong woman.
She was gonna be the next matriarch of the family.
They used to think she was Naomi Campbell
when she'd walk around the streets
and people would turn their heads every time.
Peg was beautiful too. Beautiful spirit.
I've never, ever heard her complain.
'Cause she always wanted to be strong for everyone, you know?
(WISTFUL MUSIC)
Oh.
(TEARFULLY) Oh, Peg.
I have my moments.
She calls out to me at times,
and I'm here by myself
and I'll hear this, "Nan!" if I'm a bit weepy, you know?
She snaps me out of it. (LAUGHS)
Lets me know she's alright.
(WAVES CRASH)
We know we'll meet up again one day.
(SOMBRE MUSIC)
Did she wonder, sort of, her illnesses,
about the PFAS and...
Yeah, well, PFAS could have played a part in...
...in Peggy's life.
Peggy, since she was a kid, loved oysters,
so she'd been eating oysters from this area
for a long time.
So every little spot around here,
Peggy knew where oysters were.
And oysters are a... what you call a filter feeder,
so they feed out of all the food nutrients
in the water.
And she loved the fish.
(WISTFUL MUSIC)
we do know, for sure,
human studies, not just animal studies,
that PFOS is renowned for raising cholesterol.
If it's not picked up, we can expect more arterial disease,
more kidney disease, strokes, heart attacks.
The other thing that PFOS is famous for
is its ability to immunosuppress,
to reduce people's immunity.
So immunosuppression in the '70s, '80s and '90s
could easily be causing cancers
in the 2000s and the teens and the '20s.
So there's theoretical reasons why there would be a link
between this contamination and...
...and what I believe to be a cancer cluster.
NED: There isn't an ailment that they haven't tied to this.
I mean, childhood development,
immune system response,
cancers,
thyroid disease.
And this was all similar
to what they saw back in the '70s
with those animal studies.
They saw these same effects in animals in the '70s
this was, um... that we're seeing now in people.
(UNSETTLING MUSIC)
"The shocking news that a proprietary chemical
"made exclusively by 3M is toxic and present
"in the blood of the general population
"attracts the attention of 3M's highest-ranking executives,
"including CEO and chairman of the board
"Mr Lewis Lehr.
"A May 26, 1978 memo confirms
"arrangements for a meeting at 9:30am, July 12
"in Mr Lehr's conference room.
"The subject - fluorochemicals in blood."
Well, of course he wants to know,
because his product is poisoning the general public
and the monkeys had died,
so I'm sure he wants to do the right thing.
NED: So they knew they had an obligation to report.
So then the next question is, "Are we required to report?
"Does this rise to the level that we're supposed to report?"
"3M consulted two outside scientists,
"Dr Jerry R. Mitchell and Dr Harold C. Hodge."
GARY: They referred to him internally,
in one of their internal documents as, quote,
"Dr Harold C. Hodge,
"a world-renowned expert
"in fluorine and fluoride metabolism."
So he's not a nobody.
GARY: Good morning, Mr Gerber. How are you?
Good morning. I'm well, thank you.
Um, have you ever had your deposition taken before?
No, I have not.
OK.
Probably what's most important
about Mr Gerber's deposition
is that he wasn't there as Mr Gerber.
He was there as what's called a corporate representative.
So, in law, you can say,
"Hey, dear company X,
"I want to know what the company knows
"about X, Y and Z."
And the company is then obligated
to get someone prepared and knowledgeable on a topic
and then let you interview them.
And that's who they put up. They put up Mr Gerber.
(GARY READS) "It should be determined
"if FC-807 or its metabolites
"are present in man."
Does that indicate to you that, at this point in time,
3M did not disclose to Dr Hodge
that they in fact had information
indicating that PFOS was "present in man"?
I...I guess I can't speak to the full scope
of what 3M disclosed to Dr Hodge.
Um...
But, yeah, I...I think that that's a reasonable reading
of that sentence.
GARY: And let's read this last sentence.
Dr Hodge wanted the people who attended this meeting
to know that, "If the levels are high and widespread
"and the half-life is long,
"we could have a serious problem."
If we could just, um, put the draft meeting minutes
next to the final meeting minutes.
So Dr Hodge wanted the company to know
and wanted the official meeting minutes to reflect
that if this chemical's in everyone's blood,
and if the half-life is long,
you have a "serious problem".
And that was removed from the official meeting minutes,
wasn't it, sir?
I...I don't see that final statement
in... in the second copy of the meeting minutes.
(INTENSE MUSIC)
Nobody would be that unscrupulous
to literally delete something.
It's like... it's like Richard Nixon
and the, uh... you know, the missing minutes
from the tape.
"The day after the meeting with Dr Hodge,
"the same nine 3M employees travel on a 3M company plane
"to Houston, Texas,
"to meet with another external expert,
"this time, Dr Jerry R. Mitchell."
GARY: One of the explicit things that must always be reported
is cancer, fair?
Yeah, there's... there's a... a strong bias
towards reporting in those cases.
Got it.
Do me a favour - turn to page three.
The third comment he provides to these individuals at 3M.
(JON READS) "Some of the symptoms in animals
"from these 90-day studies
"are similar to those observed with carcinogens."
GARY: Now look at the final, and I want you to tell me
if that has been removed from the final meeting minutes.
JON: I do see at the bottom of page two
and that top of page three
there are numbers 1 and 2,
there's not a number 3.
"The statement by Dr Mitchell
"is removed from the final draft of the meeting minutes."
This world-renowned expert,
his conclusion
was completely deleted from the final draft.
It's really like, "Holy shit!" kind of.
It was our "Holy shit!" moment.
- (LAUGHS) Yeah. - Like, "People do this?!"
Arguably the most important sentence of the entire thing.
The CEO knew. You know, that's good enough for me.
This wasn't some obscure nerd in a corner.
This was the head of the company
was aware of this information.
Total and complete criminal...
...behaviour.
(GRIM MUSIC)
GARY: Good morning, Mr Bacon. How are you this morning?
Not bad, and you?
I'm pretty good.
I'm here to take your deposition.
My name's Gary Douglas
from the law firm Douglas and London.
So, and if I understand correctly,
you worked for 3M from 1968 to 2008,
is that correct?
Yes.
Dr Griffith shared with you
that Taves and Guy had found PFOS...
...had been found in the blood
of non-occupationally exposed persons in the community.
He shared that with you
at this coffee meeting around the water cooler.
That's how you first heard about it, right?
That's the way I remember it, right.
We're sort of learning this in real time
as we're taking his deposition
because we had no internal documents
reflecting these water cooler talks,
and I was thinking to myself,
"Should I ask him when?"
Do you remember when you had this discussion "over coffee"?
Let's put it that way.
I was literally thinking,
"Well, it had to have been much later on."
And he leans forward into the camera and says...
Frank Griffith died in about 1980-something.
I would assume it was before then.
It was kind of shocking
in that how he was so candid about it,
and his guard was down, you know?
And I'm sure the lawyers who were not on camera
were probably going like,
"Oh, my God, what did he just say?"
'Cause the company line has always been
they did not know until 1998.
I think I put my microphone...
- ...on mute. - Mute.
And I looked at Rebecca. I said, "Did I just hear that?"
Like, "Are you kidding?"
They were talking about this so casually
around the water cooler, over coffee, for decades.
And I think part of the reason it was so shocking
is that deposition, I think, came after
a number of other depositions
where we had heard them basically saying that
that information, they learned that right in 1998,
maybe late 1997.
So we were totally expecting him to take the company line,
indicate the same time line, and so when he said that,
I think it really was kind of like,
"Did I hear that right?"
GARY: True or false?
By 1980, 3M was in possession of information
that PFOS was a bioaccumulative compound
that was widespread
in the blood of the general population,
and that it killed rhesus monkeys
that were exposed to it.
3M had all that information, decided not to disclose it
at that time in 1980, correct?
Yes, I...I've reviewed documents
that, uh, you know, after those studies were conducted,
uh, that information was reviewed
against EPA's reporting criteria,
and, uh, the company made the determination
that the information was not substantial risk information
under TSCA 8(e).
NED: 3M knew that PFOS was persistent,
bioaccumulative and toxic.
3M knew that it was coming from their products.
They knew that they were the only company
that made these chemicals.
They knew they had an obligation under federal law
to report such information,
and yet they told nobody anything.
They violated federal law.
(UNEASY MUSIC)
While this is taking place,
they are increasing production of PFOS,
or POSF, which is the compound
that converts to PFOS in the environment
and in human blood.
ROB: In the total grand history of 3M's production of PFOS,
something like 90% of it
was produced after they learned it was in everyone's blood,
after they learned it was toxic,
after they learned it was... it killed these monkeys.
There were companies and people
that knew this was happening,
that knew the nature and extent of this threat,
but did it anyway,
profited enormously for decades.
And in the meantime,
the entire world has been exposed.
- (KOOKABURRAS LAUGH) - (WAVES CRASH)
Just to the right here, you'll see
this is the signs that the Department of Defence put up.
(READS) "Mary Creek is currently being tested for PFAS.
"As a precaution, Mary Creek is closed to human use."
Well, this is one of our sacred sites.
This is of great importance.
As a kid, oh, we used to come up here
nearly every weekend,
swimming in the... under the falls
and bathing in the ponds.
It's devastating.
It's heart-wrenching.
(WOMAN SINGS SORROWFULLY IN INDIGENOUS LANGUAGE)
MAN: Tsss!
(WOMAN CONTINUES SINGING)
WOMAN: We sing that song
'cause that keeps us culturally connected
to the land and to the water,
to the animals, to the sounds.
And that's how we call out to our old people,
to our ancestors.
(GULLS CRY)
MAN: Our fish have been poisoned.
Our land's been poisoned and sick.
WOMAN: If she's sick, we're sick.
If she's sad, we're sad.
If she's hurting, we're hurting.
(BIRDSONG)
(WATER TRICKLES GENTLY)
This one here,
this is a native sarsaparilla.
And for us here in this area,
this is probably the most important medicine
that we have here.
All the stuff that's coming through the ground here...
...is directly connected to all these special plants for us.
(DARK MUSIC)
This medicine, the knowledge,
this is the sort of stuff that's irreplaceable.
What do we do?
When I first found out that it was contaminated,
like, I felt betrayed.
Especially when I found out where it came from, you know?
It had come from the Defence Force,
who are here to serve and protect our people.
MAN: Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen.
I'm the Deputy Secretary in the Department of Defence.
We've had doctors
travel from Darwin,
Alice Springs and that,
who work for
the Aboriginal health.
They've come here to Wreck Bay.
They've never seen so much sickness
in one little tiny little place.
Youse haven't been consistent
from the start.
And youse expect our community
to believe your stories that you come...
You come here with your PowerPoint presentations
every time you come and talk to us.
To be honest with you, I'm done with this... this seminar
'cause we keep getting crap.
- Come on, I'm going. - Just wait.
I'm out of here. I've got better things to do than listen to you.
WOMAN: Do you know what a sacred site is?
Deadset.
You're trained to fill our heads with shit.
Each time the Department of Defence come down,
they just kept going over the same old thing,
same old thing all the time.
Just seemed like they were trying to
brush something under the carpet.
I just had a sense of feeling that they were up to something.
And I just got sick of it.
FEMALE REPORTER: There are now thousands of families
in communities around the country
affected by an unfolding scandal
over chemical contamination from Defence Force bases.
MALE REPORTER: Nationwide, 28 Defence sites
are caught up in the crisis.
The Australian Government, the Federal Government,
they knew they had a big problem
by 2000-2002,
no question about it.
Our government knows
that our children are being exposed to chemicals
and ongoing poisoning and they're doing nothing.
MARIANN: There was this huge period of time
when people could have made decisions
that protected them and their children,
but that didn't happen
because government left them ignorant.
MALE REPORTER: In 2015, Williamtown residents
were told that PFAS chemicals from firefighting foam
had leached into groundwater and onto their properties,
raising health fears
and rendering their homes worthless.
We've had to sue our own government
to get that justice that we deserve.
FEMALE REPORTER: The Defence Department
has already settled claims by residents
from Williamtown in NSW,
Oakey in Queensland
and Katherine
in the Northern Territory,
paying millions in compensation.
JAMES: I hear all this other stuff
about these class actions going on around Australia.
Why aren't we forming our class action?
What's going on with our class action, then?
WOMAN: We were up until late looking up on the internet,
and then that's when we found Shine Lawyers.
(UNEASY MUSIC)
(PHONE RINGS)
Hello.
Hey, Josh, pretty good.
Yep.
That's great news. That's what we want.
Got a lot of people down this way
that are wanting some justice.
FEMALE REPORTER: In a David and Goliath battle,
the Wreck Bay community has teamed up with Shine Lawyers
to take class action against the Commonwealth of Australia.
FEMALE REPORTER 2: The traditional owners
have just lodged a class action
for loss of culture due to the contamination of their land.
JOSH: In our current Western justice system,
we're trying to figure out the loss of culture.
What is that worth?
Um, and that is something which is just unprecedented
in our current court system
to try to figure out a way to do that.
The Commonwealth are gonna make us prove that
there is culture there, that they actually have culture.
Which seems ridiculous that we have to show that, but we do.
Then we have to show how that culture's actually been lost,
how they can't pass it down for future generations,
because that's our case.
Legally, it is a very challenging case.
There's no two ways about it.
It's very difficult. It's unprecedented in so many ways.
(DOG BARKS)
- JAMES: Hey, buddy. How are ya? - James. Good.
- Good to see you, mate. - Yeah, likewise.
Come inside. I'll introduce you to Mum and Dad.
JOSH: Excellent.
Do you, um... did you grow up eating bush foods and...
Yes.
...and going to the bush for bush medicine?
- Yes, we did. - Yeah.
Like, if we had boils and that,
we used the ribgrass for the boils
and inkweed for our skin
and bathed in the inkweed.
How does it make you feel when part of your culture now,
it can't be passed on in some ways?
(TEARFULLY) Yeah.
In many ways, it can't.
(AUNTY NORMA SNIFFLES)
We've lost a lot.
- (SOLEMN MUSIC) - (BIRDS WARBLE)
WOMAN: The effect of the contamination on them,
it's been, um, really sad to hear story after story
of people that have lived in this area for generations.
They're heartbroken.
JOSH: Quite often in First Nations matters,
and Wreck Bay is no exception,
you have these preservation of evidence hearings
before trial
because trial could be two, three years away.
And, you know, sad to say,
but there'll be many people in Wreck Bay
that won't make two to three years.
(GENTLE MUSIC)
(BIRDS SING)
JOSH: Vida's an elder in the community
and her family have been there forever,
and Vida is very unwell.
She's desperate to tell her story to the Commonwealth.
- Hello. - VIDA: Hello.
This is William.
- Pleasure to meet you, William. - JOSH: The barrister.
WILLIAM: Lovely to meet you.
I'm the senior barrister on the case,
so I'm gonna be the one that's sitting in the court tomorrow.
Tell me what this area is.
VIDA: That's the creek at Summercloud just down here.
We used to swim there from daylight till dark.
All that foam that used to come down,
we didn't understand what it was all about, did we?
We used to think it was wonderful, you know,
jumping up and down splashing the water and...
- UNCLE PAUL: Making foam. - ...all this foam.
It's gonna be like a proper court hearing
as they have it in our system.
The judge will be wearing robes.
- He's insisted upon that. - Yeah.
- So I'll be wearing robes too. - UNCLE PAUL: Yeah, yeah.
WILLIAM: As will my junior, um...
- And I have to wear robes too? - (ALL LAUGH)
You'd probably look better in them than I do.
(ALL LAUGH)
(THUNDER RUMBLES)
I didn't know it was gonna turn out like this, you know,
for me to be chosen to get up and speak in a courtroom
in front of the High Court judge.
I don't want to give that impression of being a radical.
I just want to be me, you know?
Get up!
(LAUGHS)
Being the clown.
Oh, thank you.
It's what I need - a bit of a kick.
This ochre I'm putting on me, the men's ochre, is red ochre.
And what it does...
...it gives me permission
to act on behalf
of all our clan,
my clan that come from this country here.
I'm gonna put some ochre on Mum.
This ochre comes from country.
It connects us to our old people.
(GENTLE MUSIC)
WOMAN: I am proud of Mum.
Mum had said yesterday that she's tired,
but she's happy that she's getting to share
her side of the story
and, you know, a lot of people have not made it this far.
MAN: I want to make sure I've got your whole story.
This is your opportunity to tell your story about everything
related to what you say
you suffered through this contamination.
(TENSE MUSIC)
REBECCA: We're still two months out for the trial to begin
and it's gonna be a long trial.
And right now, I think we're still far enough out
that I think we're just all sort of trying to remain calm
and not, you know, get too... too overly stressed too soon
'cause it's a long road ahead, right?
GARY: There's always a lot of pressure,
but, you know, that's the job.
They didn't enlist me. I volunteered.
So, yeah, there's definitely pressure.
- (TENSE MUSIC) - (BOTH SPEAK INDISTINCTLY)
GARY: I can't think of an environmental case
that is as pervasive as this one
and as urgent for our own health and safety.
And this is where we can level the playing field
between the average Joe and giant corporations.
Like, in this case, we're talking about 3M.
They have tremendous resources.
And this is a place, a courtroom,
where we can level the playing field.
They pled their ignorance. They didn't reveal it.
But within the confines in the... of private offices,
they spoke about it casually.
And I guess that was the mentality back then,
that if you can get away with it, you get away with it,
until, um, the 1990s.
(INTRIGUING MUSIC)
The person at 3M
who was in charge of monitoring worker blood -
because they were worried about their workers
who would work with it,
those folks had higher levels of it in their blood
because they were working with it -
and he was sort of overwhelmed with his job.
Um...
His name is Dale Bacon
and he'd been with the company for about 40 years.
This is where it gets Keystone Kop-ish.
He went and hired a company, um,
that was known not for measuring contaminants
or compounds in human blood,
but for measuring, um,
compounds in racehorses.
(HORSE WHICKERS)
NED: We always colloquially
called him 'Horse Track Jack'.
He's famous for catching doping horses,
you know, like, horses that are being fed
medicines they're not supposed to
to make them run faster in horse races.
It would be funny if it wasn't so serious.
(HORSE SNORTS)
NED: So Dr Henion was helping 3M
in its program of testing its workers for PFOS in their blood.
GARY: What he didn't contemplate
was that Dr Henion would do good work.
And what you do when you are gonna test
the levels of PFOS in the worker blood
is look for what we call blanks
to compare it to.
You got to find blood from people
who are not likely to have been exposed, non-workers.
And he, of course, is startled to find
that there's PFOS in every one of the samples that he took.
He didn't just sit right on his report.
He picked up the phone.
And Dr Bacon talked about this in his deposition -
he received the phone call from Dr Henion
because it was urgent.
"Hey, buddy, I'm finding
"your company's chemical in everybody's blood."
GARY: He calls with startling news
because he was finding quantifiable levels of PFOS
not just in the worker blood that you sent for analysis,
but in blood of non-3M-workers
he obtained on his own from Red Cross-pooled blood,
the blood bank at the Red Cross, correct?
That's, uh... I believe so. Yes.
NED: Some of the lawyers within 3M,
they go to their head toxicologist,
this guy Dr John Butenhoff,
and they say, "OK, well, how much is in everyone's blood?"
And he pulled up the data
and he said, "There's about 30 parts per billion.
"That's the average amount in Americans' blood."
And they go, "OK, what's the safe amount?"
He goes, "Well, hang on. Let me do some calculations,"
And he used data that they had from the '70s,
those monkey studies,
and calculated that a safe level, in his expert opinion,
was about 1 part per billion,
meaning the average American
had 30 times - 3,000% - more PFOS in their blood
than what their head toxicologist said was safe.
GARY: There was another document that we found,
which was a draft manuscript, 1998.
There was a note, a curious note, that we found on it.
It's obviously a Post-it that says,
"John, now that the - quote - lid is off,
"Kris would like to get this paper out.
"Any problem?"
We never understood that.
"The lid is off? The lid is off what?"
And I remember I was riding in my car
and I got a call from Rob Bilott
and he said, "Gary...
"..don't forget to use the document
"about 'the lid is off',"
and I said, "Rob, what are you talking about?"
And he said, "You know, the one with the Post-it
"that says 'Now that the lid is off, it's OK to publish',"
and that... it hit me.
"I get it now!
"That's what... that's where that piece of the puzzle fits."
It's just a consciousness of what they were doing.
Mm-hm, yeah.
It wasn't, "Oh, my God!
"I can't believe that our product is in everyone's blood!
"What should we do?"
"Now that the lid is off," suggests, you know, a cover-up.
"Gee, the lid is off.
"I guess we gotta come clean now."
And that's when they decided to finally tell the EPA
what they've known for 23 years -
that it was in everyone's blood.
It was in May of 1998 they told the EPA,
and promptly after that,
the EPA said, "OK, well, you're out of the business.
"You can't make this anymore."
It took them four years to do it
and during that four years, they increased production,
during that four years, they sent letters to the customers
encouraging them to buy more before they quit selling it.
It was like a going-out-of-business sale.
It wasn't like, "Oh, no, this is so bad."
WOMAN: Do you solemnly swear the testimony you're about to give
to be the truth, the full truth and nothing but the truth?
Yes, I do.
NED: That deposition
was the very first deposition we took in the case
and we were so startled
by how well that deposition went
and how honest he was and how forthright he was
and I think it was because it was over Zoom.
It was because he didn't have his lawyers
there with him, you know, at the conference table.
He was in his home.
I think he was in his kitchen, at his home,
and was just being frank and honest with us and it was a...
You know... you know, the results speak for themselves.
NED: And in each and every one of these media
all around the world,
in Dr Butenhoff's opinion,
the source of PFOS
is more likely than not 3M, correct?
Thank you for the logo.
Uh, yes, I mean, I...
Other than the fact that there might be some manufacturing,
I think that more likely than not the source is 3M, yes.
He basically acknowledged
that if you find a molecule of PFOS anywhere on planet Earth,
3M made it.
Now, we've known that. We know we can prove it.
But just to have a head scientist within the company
just admit it in black-and-white
and even use the legal buzzwords "more likely than not",
that's the standard of proof we have here in the States.
CARRIE: So, Wreck Bay,
it's an Aboriginal community of about 400 people
and it's sort of nestled
within this national park at Jervis Bay.
There's sort of as I see it...
And, you know, you guys might think differently,
but there's sort of three main arcs to the story.
So there's this issue of cultural loss
and then health seems to be a really big issue down there
and then there's sort of these issues
of how much did Defence know,
should things have been done differently?
It's the incidence of health impacts you're talking about
above the standard norms you'd be expecting to see
in a community of this size of those diseases?
I managed to find one data source
that looks at rates of premature death.
Looking at Wreck Bay comparatively,
it had one of the highest rates
of years of life lost prematurely
in the whole of Australia
and in some years, it had the highest rate.
Who is trying to stop you telling this story?
I can't imagine that the Department of Defence
will want me to tell this story.
I've heard sort of anecdotally they weren't very happy
that I was moving on to start looking at Wreck Bay.
- Too bad. - CARRIE: Mmm.
(PENSIVE MUSIC)
Thank you.
We've come to the offices
of the National Archives of Australia
and it basically is this giant repository
of every government document that was created prior to 2002.
The Australian Government got the letter from 3M in 2000
to say that, "We're going to stop making this product,"
but that doesn't mean that was the first they ever knew
about the firefighting foam
being hazardous or being dangerous.
There's thousands of pages
that are all irrelevant to what we're doing,
so it's quite difficult,
but I just know that if you check everything,
you can potentially find that bit of gold
or that smoking gun that you've been looking for
that can change the whole game.
(PENSIVE MUSIC CONTINUES)
(CLOCK TICKS)
So I'm in the last bundle of documents.
I've spent three days here
and, sure enough, in the last page of the last bundle
is an extraordinary document.
So this document is from November 1981.
(READS) "Currently, liquid waste containing AFFF
"from the firefighting training exercises
"are allowed to discharge
"over the surface of the adjacent land.
"The wastes have penetrated a considerable distance
"and have almost reached
"the Aboriginal settlement at Mary Bay.
"For environmental reasons,
"this situation is unacceptable and should be discontinued."
So they knew in 1981...
...that the foam was in the water, escaping off the base
and they knew it was environmentally unacceptable.
This has to be the most explosive information
that I've found in terms of the PFAS issue in Australia.
And you think of the extent of the environmental devastation
that's been caused over the whole country
that could have been avoided.
JAMES: They knew when they hosed all that PFAS chemical
off down into the bush
that was gonna go straight down into our...
...if not our village, through all our sacred sites
and into the ocean where we hunted and gathered every day
and that was gonna destroy our community.
They knew that.
CARRIE: When I got these documents, I went back over
and looked at what Defence officials had actually said
when they were questioned about these kind of issues.
And so the former deputy secretary
of the Department of Defence
said in the early 2000s,
"There was no evidence that this product
"was particularly dangerous
"either to the environment or to human health.
"I don't think we appreciated in 2004
"that this contaminant was leaving Defence properties."
Those documents directly contradict that.
You can only assume he's been misinformed.
It would appear from what you're telling me
that there has been some level of concern
within the Australian Government since the early 1980s
about the danger of this stuff getting into a water supply
and nothing's been done about it.
CARRIE: Yep.
MAN: The traditional owners of Wreck Bay land
have reached a $22 million settlement
of their PFAS contamination class action
against the Commonwealth of Australia.
While this is a victory for this First Nations group,
the Wreck Bay community has to grapple with the impacts
of PFAS contamination for years to come.
The monetary compensation
that comes out of the Western legal system
isn't going to be enough to compensate
for that breaking of the connection to the land
and the cultural loss,
but we had to grapple with those issues as best as we could.
I'm a bit concerned that, to a lot of people,
that's not gonna feel like enough
to compensate for the destruction
that PFAS has caused to their culture.
There will be an opportunity for people to object,
so it will be very interesting to see how that will play out
and what sort of reaction
the judge will have to those objections.
(PENSIVE MUSIC)
JAMES: We're a united community
so we're gonna keep on fighting this.
We're gonna come together
and we're gonna show this Department of Defence,
this entity that's so powerful,
that we're powerful too.
(PENSIVE MUSIC CONTINUES)
(MUSIC RISES)
(BOTH SPEAK INAUDIBLY)
(MUSIC CONTINUES)
LEE: I have read the objections,
but if anyone does wish to speak,
then they're of course free to do so.
AUNTY JEAN: We are determined to expose
and put a stop to the callous government's
past and present use of poison
sprayed in the form of the grim reaper PFAS.
UNCLE PAUL: We can't take our children
and our grandchildren and our great-grandchildren
to parts of the land that have been affected.
ASHLEE: We have lost an integral part of our identity,
our sense of belonging, our connection to our country,
the waterways, the lands, the skies
and the people who walked this land before us.
MAN: A thousand years from now,
our children's children's children
are gonna know on 19 June, 2023,
that a small contingency of our community
have stood tall against the Department of Defence
to try and ensure their futures.
LEE: This is a very
catastrophic thing that's happened
and the question here for me
is are you going to get more money
running this case to a conclusion
or is a better outcome
taking the money that's on offer now
which has been negotiated
and which the lawyers think is fair and reasonable?
(CAMERAS CLICK)
(PEOPLE SPEAK INDISTINCTLY)
So, unfortunately, the judge
agreed with the settlement offer today of 22 million
and siding with the Commonwealth,
that that's a fair and just settlement.
- So he says. - So he says.
(SOLEMN MUSIC)
A settlement could be reached this month
in a court case involving a corporate giant
in the City of Stuart.
A lawsuit claims that, for decades,
a toxic forever chemical
tied to health issues, including cancer,
was pouring into the city's groundwater and drinking water.
And now the city is the face of a national fight
to have the manufacturer pay for the clean-up
that hundreds of communities have to tackle.
GARY: And if we can prove the City of Stuart
is entitled to be compensated, then what does that say
about what New York City is entitled to
or cities like Miami
who happens to be very heavily contaminated?
So that's what this first case is about.
For me, it's sort of, I guess, the pinnacle of my career.
(LAUGHS) I'm getting a little too old for this,
but I can't see anything that's more important
than seeing this through and seeing that justice is done
and the parties responsible for contaminating our planet
are held responsible.
(BIRDSONG)
REBECCA: Our anticipation is that we will be
picking a jury starting this morning
and be here for at least five weeks.
GARY: We have been in the final laps of a very long marathon.
(PEOPLE CHATTER INDISTINCTLY)
MAN: OK, great. Here we go.
GARY: And we were literally at the proverbial courthouse steps
when we were told that there was something in the works.
(TENSE MUSIC)
(LOW MOMENTOUS MUSIC)
GARY: I guess we all thought
we'd be in the middle of jury selection right now
and I know everybody has that bittersweet feeling.
We've all been working so hard and, uh, we were ready.
You know, this is what this case is all about
and, you know, this was one of the demonstratives
who we were gonna use.
I was gonna say to our jurors
that they are looking at... an image,
a model of a molecule,
a speck of matter
that neither God nor nature brought into this world
and this molecule was man-made
and man-made by one company and one company alone,
the 3M company.
And I know it's frustrating for everybody
that we're unable to tell that story.
I know that you're all conscientious lawyers,
environmental lawyers
and I know that each and every one of you here today
worked hard to bring that story
and I want to thank you all for your hard work.
The reason that we're all in this room here today
and the reason that 3M ran from the court is because of us.
They weren't afraid of the EPA.
They weren't afraid of lying to regulators around the world
or lying to the military.
They were willing to do anything to protect their pocketbook
and the fact is is that
this is what made them worried about that.
It was a team effort
and I couldn't be prouder to be part of it, so thank you all.
(PEOPLE CHATTER QUIETLY)
REBECCA: There's a bit of a shock value going on right now.
We've been obviously working for years to put it together,
so it was sort of the moment of getting that opportunity.
It was gonna be the big... sort of the big day.
Even though someone can be given monetary value
to help address whatever problem they're claiming or alleging,
it doesn't totally make you feel
like justice was done all the time
if you don't get the actual...
...get to put the actual conduct on trial.
(SOFT SOMBRE MUSIC)
GARY: They got away with it.
We didn't get to tell the story.
I almost feel, like, dirty. It's like hush money.
But I have an obligation to our clients.
I think their decision to settle
it has a lot to do with the fact
that they really were afraid of even an opening statement
and their dirty laundry was about to be aired in a big way.
We know 3M will, to their last breath,
take the position that PFAS is harmless
at the levels found in blood and in the environment.
But even still,
people have a right to know it's in them.
ROB: Right now we're dealing with,
really, global contamination problems.
These PFAS chemicals have been used
in such an incredible array of products
over the last 70 to 80 years.
Stain-resistant waterproof clothing,
carpeting, fast-food wrappers and packaging, cosmetics,
things that are waterproof, things that are greaseproof,
things that are non-stick.
These chemicals have been used in so many different products,
you're really dealing with global contamination
on an unprecedented scale.
MARK: It's in the water. It's in the air.
It's in the food.
It's everywhere.
There's nothing you can do
without coming into contact with it.
It's... it's intense, man. It's huge.
(SOLEMN VOCAL MUSIC)
My name is Amara Strande
I'm 20 years old.
And at the age of 15, I was diagnosed
with stage IV fibrolamellar hepatocellular carcinoma.
Growing up, I lived in the 3M plume
and attended Tartan Senior High School
where I met many classmates
that were also directly affected by cancer
as a result of what we now understand
these chemicals to be - PFAS.
CARRIE: I never realised that meeting with her
would have this ripple effect.
She went to the lawmakers in Minnesota
and she tried to convince them to ban PFAS
and it worked.
Corporations must stop the production of these toxins
and be held accountable
and pay for the damage they've done.
We need stricter regulations on the use of PFAS chemicals
and more research to be done
on the long-term effects of exposure.
We also need more education for the public...
- (SPEECH FADES) - (MUSIC CONTINUES)
MAN: This spring, she was asked to speak truth to power
by testifying before legislative committees
about her experience of having cancer
to give reasons why the use of forever chemicals
should be banned or greatly reduced in products.
We have been told that her testimonies
were key in getting the legislation passed.
CARRIE: It's called Amara's Law,
and Minnesota has become the first place in the world
to enact laws to ban PFAS.
And that's not just banning, like, one or two kinds of PFAS.
They're trying to eliminate PFAS altogether there.
(SORROWFUL MUSIC)
It's really a harrowing thing to write these stories
and I don't think it ever leaves you when you see people
and you're sitting and talking to them one day
and you see the fear and you see the questions that they have
and then they're gone.
I hope people that read the Wreck Bay stories,
that they can connect to the love
that the Wreck Bay people have
for their land and for their culture...
...because unless you can feel that and understand,
you can't really understand what they've lost
and you can't understand the devastation
that these chemicals have caused.
I hope it lands with the impact
that we feel like the story deserves.
(SORROWFUL MUSIC CONTINUES)
JAMES: When our physical bodies die
and we go back into the mother,
all that water that's inside of us
goes back to the mother as well
and we drink that water
and our ancestors live inside of us.
But now that PFAS has poisoned that water...
...they don't just poison us.
They poison our ancestors...
...and everything that's connected to Ngadjung,
or to our water.
('DEEP IN THE WATER' BY THE GARY DOUGLAS BAND)
♪ Man-made chemicals are
♪ Poisoning the Earth
♪ Chemists move molecules around
♪ Like we move furniture
♪ After we're dead and gone
♪ It will be here a million years
♪ We'll all be dead and gone
♪ We cried a billion tears
♪ Those tears are flowing
♪ Deep in the water
♪ Flowing deep in the water
♪ A devil with your suit and tie
♪ I know your wicked little game
♪ And we're rising up from
♪ Deep in the water
♪ Rising deep in the water
♪ Sing it now, brothers and sisters
♪ Sons and daughters
♪ The truth is lying
♪ Deep in the water
♪ The truth is rising up
♪ The truth is rising up from
♪ Deep in the water, deep in the water
♪ The truth is rising up
♪ The truth is rising up from
♪ Deep in the water... ♪