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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.

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.

♪ Man-made chemicals are

♪ Poisoning the Earth ♪

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... ♪

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... ♪

This has to be the most explosive information

that I've found.

♪ We'll all be dead and gone

♪ And cried a billion tears... ♪

It was our 'holy shit' moment.

Yeah.

Like, people do this?!

♪ In the water... ♪

Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth

and nothing but the truth, so help you God?

I do.

If you wanted to contaminate the planet,

you couldn't have invented a better delivery device

than firefighting foam.

♪ Flowing deep in the water. ♪

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.

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.

Wreck Bay has always been a fishing village

and everything is here.

Everything is here in abundance.

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.

We don't exist.

If... if we don't have water, we're not here.

It's who we are.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

♪ Man-made chemicals are

♪ Poisoning the Earth

♪ Chemists move molecules around

♪ Like we move furniture... ♪

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.

♪ 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... ..to make a living.

♪ Holding on. ♪

- And I also believed...

...in pursuing just causes,

so I would look to defend the little guy.

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".

We represented a class of 3,000 people.

We tried three individual cases, won them all

and DuPont... ...finally caved in

and settled with all 3,000 people

in that community.

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.

'Dark Waters' tells the true story of Robert Bilott,

the underdog lawyer who took on the industrial giant

DuPont Chemical.

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...

...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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Hi, Uncle Jack.

-Hi, Carrie. How are you? -Yeah.

- I'm really well, thanks. -Yeah?

-How are you? - Good, thank you.

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.

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.

And did you ever use anything to protect yourself,

gloves and things, when you're handling the foam?

-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.

So, of the firefighters you worked with,

how many are still alive now?

There'd be only about eight of us.

-Wow. - That I know of.

The rest of them have all passed on.

And so how many, roughly,

would you say have passed?

I'd say...

...between 20 and 22...

...hmm, have passed.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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... ...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.

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.

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'.

A, B. A, B common mark.

This is, uh, so incredibly fucked and evil.

"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."

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.

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.

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.

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.

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."

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.

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?

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.

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.

There was foam in the creek

and we would play with it.

We didn't know what it was.

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."

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."

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.

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?"

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.

Dad's had a triple bypass.

- You know... - We've all had triple bypasses.

-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.

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.

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.

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?

Oh.

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.

Lets me know she's alright.

We know we'll meet up again one day.

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.

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.

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.

"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.

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."

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.

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.

"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.

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.

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."

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.

"Some of the symptoms in animals

"from these 90-day studies

"are similar to those observed with carcinogens."

Now look at the final, and I want you to tell me

if that has been removed from the final meeting minutes.

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.

- 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.

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?"

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).

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.

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.

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.

Just to the right here, you'll see

this is the signs that the Department of Defence put up.

"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.

Tsss!

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.

Our fish have been poisoned.

Our land's been poisoned and sick.

If she's sick, we're sick.

If she's sad, we're sad.

If she's hurting, we're hurting.

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.

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.

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.

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.

There are now thousands of families

in communities around the country

affected by an unfolding scandal

over chemical contamination from Defence Force bases.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

We were up until late looking up on the internet,

and then that's when we found Shine Lawyers.

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.

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.

The traditional owners

have just lodged a class action

for loss of culture due to the contamination of their land.

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.

-Hey, buddy. How are ya? - James. Good.

- Good to see you, mate. - Yeah, likewise.

Come inside. I'll introduce you to Mum and Dad.

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?

Yeah.

In many ways, it can't.

We've lost a lot.

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.

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.

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. -Hello.

This is William.

- Pleasure to meet you, William. -The barrister.

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.

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...

-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. -Yeah, yeah.

As will my junior, um...

- And I have to wear robes too?

You'd probably look better in them than I do.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

So Dr Henion was helping 3M

in its program of testing its workers for PFOS in their blood.

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."

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.

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.

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."

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.

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.

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.

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. -Mmm.

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.

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.

"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.

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.

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.

Yep.

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.

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.

I have read the objections,

but if anyone does wish to speak,

then they're of course free to do so.

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.

We can't take our children

and our grandchildren and our great-grandchildren

to parts of the land that have been affected.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

Our anticipation is that we will be

picking a jury starting this morning

and be here for at least five weeks.

We have been in the final laps of a very long marathon.

OK, great. Here we go.

And we were literally at the proverbial courthouse steps

when we were told that there was something in the works.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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...

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.

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.

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.

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.

♪ 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

♪ 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... ♪