黑水

临近2020颁奖季，热门爆款影片看不停：火了大半年金棕榈得主《寄生虫》、叫好又叫座的《小丑》、马丁·斯科塞斯九年磨一剑的《爱尔兰人》、细腻温柔的黑马选手《婚姻故事》……这其中，还有一部星光熠熠的佳作不该被忽略。

《卡罗尔》导演托德·海因斯执导，马克·鲁弗洛、安妮·海瑟薇、蒂姆·罗宾斯强强联手。

《卡罗尔》(2015)曾出品《聚焦》《华盛顿邮报》《绿皮书》等佳作的公司Participant，再度触及社会题材。

由真实事件改编，这部电影，或许与你我息息相关——

黑水 (2019)8.62019 / 美国 / 剧情 / 托德·海因斯 / 马克·鲁法洛 安妮·海瑟薇主角名叫Rob Bilott，本片的故事就是讲述他一个人单枪匹马对阵美国最大的化学工业公司——杜邦集团（Dupont, 1802-2017，于2017年8月与Dow Chemical Company合并成为了DowDupont)。

没错，就是电影《狐狸猎手》里史蒂夫·卡瑞尔饰演的继承人约翰·杜邦一枪打死了自己的摔跤教练的那个杜邦集团。

《狐狸猎手》(2014)该片改编自Nathaniel Rich于2016年发布在《纽约时报》的一篇报道《成为杜邦集团噩梦的律师》。

Dark Water，中文译名为《黑水》，或是《黑暗水域》，由《卡罗尔》的导演托德·海因斯执导，马克·鲁弗洛参与制片并出演Bilott，安妮·海瑟薇饰演女主Sarah。

上映两周，该片目前在烂番茄获得92%的好评，豆瓣8.3分，IMDb 7.6分。

Rob Bilott，一位在俄亥俄州工作的环境法律师，刚刚在律所Taft升级到了小合伙人，有一天接到了来自老家外婆/祖母（英文中统称grandma因此不确定）邻居Tennant的电话，说他的牲口都死光了，他怀疑是杜邦集团在买下了土地之后，在用化学废品污染土地。

收到电话的Bilott很为难，作为一名企业事务律师，他的专长是为大型化工企业辩护，也就是Tennant的对立面，他甚至多次和杜邦集团的律师合作过。

Bilott带着Tennant的录像带回家，通知他的妻子Sarah要回一次家去侦察一下，看自己有什么可以帮忙的。

当Bilott来到Tennant的土地，面前是一片荒芜，“这个农场简直像是一片墓地”，他这样形容。

所有的牲口都死光了，死去的牲口身体器官各种病变，惨不忍睹。

回到公司，Bilott和他的老板，公司的大合伙人Terp报告说想要接下这个案件。

Terp勉强答应了，以为只是简单的提交些文件诉讼走个基本程序，毕竟Taft的生意是辩护大集团而不是把他们告上法庭。

他没想到的是，这一次点头，揭开了杜邦集团整整半个多世纪的“黑色水域”。

在杜邦集团的文件里，Bilott发现有一个字母缩写PFOA被反复提起，却没有人知道是什么。

直到他询问了以为化学专家，才知道是一种有碳元素合成的新化学物质。

在整整半个多世纪里，杜邦一直在使用这种PFOA，后被改名为C8（由3M公司发明）的物质来生产他们的名产品不粘锅Teflon。

自从1950年，3M和杜邦就开始进行有关C8的实验。

他们发现在Teflon生产线上的女工生下的7个婴儿中有2个有先天畸形，老鼠在长期接触C8后会发生肝脏病变等。

杜邦在得知实验结果之后并没有通知任何机构，甚至把这些有毒化学物质倾倒到水域，Bilott答应去看牲口的时候以为只是一个小镇，但最后水质检测却发现在West Virginia有整整6块城镇区域C8超标，影响了超过数十万人口。

最后法院决定抽取被影响区域市民的血液样本进行分析判断C8是否和病变有直接联系。

7万市民提供了血液样本，随之而来的便是漫长的等待。

一年过去了，两年过去了，每天每天，律所的老板，起诉的市民，Bilott的家庭，他生活中的每一个人都在向他施压，Bilott甚至因为精神压力过大而昏倒进了急救室……终于在第7年，Bilott接到了医学研究的结果，C8直接导致包括肾癌，甲状腺癌等疾病。

本片虽未重现鲁弗洛2016年出演的同类型传记片《聚焦》的辉煌，但依然是一部引人深省的好电影。

全片冷静却不乏细腻的情感，虽然不是导演海因斯最熟悉的故事类型，但依然注入了一丝柔软，比如里面角色的刻画都非常细致，不仅是Bilott的挣扎，也把Terp和Sarah想为正义发声但不断被或是律所或是家庭关系所捆绑的内心矛盾。

电影中很多段对话都很让人感动：在律所投票决定要不要继续接这个案子的时候，Terp斥责那些投否决票的律师，他质问何为正义感，难道帮助他人不正是身为律师应该履行的义务吗。

当Bilott请求Terp继续支付账单并许诺这个案子结案的时候一定可以收支平衡，Terp问“你以为我接这个案子是为钱吗？

”

Sarah在医院急救室告诉Terp，Rob长大的时候搬了10次家，直到他来到了Taft，Taft对他来说远远不只是一个律所，而是他安顿下来的家庭。

Sarah说：”他愿意牺牲他的工作和家庭，只为了一个陌生人。

我不知道这是什么，但这绝不是失败。

”

当然还有在得知杜邦打算一一上诉整整3535件案件的时候，Bilott的那番话。

他挂了电话之后脸上的绝望让人唏嘘不已，他说我们都以为政府机关会保护我们，以为各种机构（例如EPA, United States Envioronmental Protection Agency) 会保护我们。

但是没有人，没有任何机构，组织，政府在保护着民众。

”只有我们自己保护自己。

”

一般一年可以庭审4个案件，算下来要审整整800年。

很多大企业都用这种耗时间的方式来逼起诉人放弃，很多人没有等到他们的案子被审就去世了。

但是Bilott花了他职业生涯过去整整20年和杜邦抗衡，他决不放弃。

于是2015年底Bilott出席法庭，3535个案件，他一个个接下。

第一个案件获赔160万美金，第二个案件获赔350万，到2017年杜邦集团赔偿总额6.71亿美金，解决了3535案件。

是啊，6.71亿美金，听起来是个天价数字，但是对于杜邦集团算什么呢。

2005年的时候杜邦由于使用C8而污染毒害居民水域被EPA罚款1650万美金，是EPA历史上最大的罚单，但是Bilott计算下来这不过Teflon一个产品三天的利润，都不是收入，而是利润，那么6.71亿的法律赔偿仅仅是一个产品120天的利润。

短短四个月的利润，对于千千万万的家庭来说是3535条鲜活的生命。

电影中还有不少细节让人心酸：Tennant家庭因为去找了律师导致整个小镇最大的雇主杜邦被起诉而遭到了整个小镇的排挤，Parkersburg更是失业率暴增，劳动部门办公室门前是失业市民排起的长龙。

当小镇在采集抽血液样本的时候，居民更是直接和Bilott说一定不会有病变，“杜邦可都是好人”。

杜邦养育了整个小镇几代人，给他们买房，供他们的子女上大学，但是代价是肺癌，胰腺癌，畸形儿。

直到出生的孩子先天畸形，直到工作数年的杜邦员工们都一个个生病倒下，才揭开了这个企业的真实面目。

Bilott实为人民英雄。

他是一名极为优秀的律师，仅仅是开车经过是看到一位小姑娘的牙齿发黑就联想到污染物质是在水里。

当杜邦用整整一个储藏室的超过11万页的文件来整他的时候，丝毫不退缩，几个月的时间每天每天的坐在储藏室标记一份又一份文件。

如今99%的世界人口身体里都含有C8，通过饮用水，不粘锅涂层等途径。

还有更多超过6万种未被审核的化学物质在被各化工企业广泛使用。

Bilott的战斗依然没有停止。

他在Tennant之后再也没有接过一个企业客户，而选择贡献他整个职业生涯来真正的保护这个世界。

也要感谢主创马克·鲁弗洛对环境的热诚，用他自己的方式把这个故事传递给全世界。

Rob Bilott was a corporate defense attorney for eight years. Then he took on an environmental suit that would upend his entire career — and expose a brazen, decades-long history of chemical pollution.

Rob Bilott on land owned by the Tennants near Parkersburg, W.Va. Credit: Bryan Schutmaat for The New York TimesBy Nathaniel Rich Jan. 6, 2016Just months before Rob Bilott made partner at Taft Stettinius & Hollister, he received a call on his direct line from a cattle farmer. The farmer, Wilbur Tennant of Parkersburg, W.Va., said that his cows were dying left and right. He believed that the DuPont chemical company, which until recently operated a site in Parkersburg that is more than 35 times the size of the Pentagon, was responsible. Tennant had tried to seek help locally, he said, but DuPont just about owned the entire town. He had been spurned not only by Parkersburg’s lawyers but also by its politicians, journalists, doctors and veterinarians. The farmer was angry and spoke in a heavy Appalachian accent. Bilott struggled to make sense of everything he was saying. He might have hung up had Tennant not blurted out the name of Bilott’s grandmother, Alma Holland White.White had lived in Vienna, a northern suburb of Parkersburg, and as a child, Bilott often visited her in the summers. In 1973 she brought him to the cattle farm belonging to the Tennants’ neighbors, the Grahams, with whom White was friendly. Bilott spent the weekend riding horses, milking cows and watching Secretariat win the Triple Crown on TV. He was 7 years old. The visit to the Grahams’ farm was one of his happiest childhood memories.When the Grahams heard in 1998 that Wilbur Tennant was looking for legal help, they remembered Bilott, White’s grandson, who had grown up to become an environmental lawyer. They did not understand, however, that Bilott was not the right kind of environmental lawyer. He did not represent plaintiffs or private citizens. Like the other 200 lawyers at Taft, a firm founded in 1885 and tied historically to the family of President William Howard Taft, Bilott worked almost exclusively for large corporate clients. His specialty was defending chemical companies. Several times, Bilott had even worked on cases with DuPont lawyers. Nevertheless, as a favor to his grandmother, he agreed to meet the farmer. ‘‘It just felt like the right thing to do,’’ he says today. ‘‘I felt a connection to those folks.’’The connection was not obvious at their first meeting. About a week after his phone call, Tennant drove from Parkersburg with his wife to Taft’s headquarters in downtown Cincinnati. They hauled cardboard boxes containing videotapes, photographs and documents into the firm’s glassed-in reception area on the 18th floor, where they sat in gray midcentury-modern couches beneath an oil portrait of one of Taft’s founders. Tennant — burly and nearly six feet tall, wearing jeans, a plaid flannel shirt and a baseball cap — did not resemble a typical Taft client. ‘‘He didn’t show up at our offices looking like a bank vice president,’’ says Thomas Terp, a partner who was Bilott’s supervisor. ‘‘Let’s put it that way.’’Terp joined Bilott for the meeting. Wilbur Tennant explained that he and his four siblings had run the cattle farm since their father abandoned them as children. They had seven cows then. Over the decades they steadily acquired land and cattle, until 200 cows roamed more than 600 hilly acres. The property would have been even larger had his brother Jim and Jim’s wife, Della, not sold 66 acres in the early ’80s to DuPont. The company wanted to use the plot for a landfill for waste from its factory near Parkersburg, called Washington Works, where Jim was employed as a laborer. Jim and Della did not want to sell, but Jim had been in poor health for years, mysterious ailments that doctors couldn’t diagnose, and they needed the money.DuPont rechristened the plot Dry Run Landfill, named after the creek that ran through it. The same creek flowed down to a pasture where the Tennants grazed their cows. Not long after the sale, Wilbur told Bilott, the cattle began to act deranged. They had always been like pets to the Tennants. At the sight of a Tennant they would amble over, nuzzle and let themselves be milked. No longer. Now when they saw the farmers, they charged.Wilbur fed a videotape into the VCR. The footage, shot on a camcorder, was grainy and intercut with static. Images jumped and repeated. The sound accelerated and slowed down. It had the quality of a horror movie. In the opening shot the camera pans across the creek. It takes in the surrounding forest, the white ash trees shedding their leaves and the rippling, shallow water, before pausing on what appears to be a snowbank at an elbow in the creek. The camera zooms in, revealing a mound of soapy froth.‘‘I’ve taken two dead deer and two dead cattle off this ripple,’’ Tennant says in voice-over. ‘‘The blood run out of their noses and out their mouths. ... They’re trying to cover this stuff up. But it’s not going to be covered up, because I’m going to bring it out in the open for people to see.’’The video shows a large pipe running into the creek, discharging green water with bubbles on the surface. ‘‘This is what they expect a man’s cows to drink on his own property,’’ Wilbur says. ‘‘It’s about high time that someone in the state department of something-or-another got off their cans.’’At one point, the video cuts to a skinny red cow standing in hay. Patches of its hair are missing, and its back is humped — a result, Wilbur speculates, of a kidney malfunction. Another blast of static is followed by a close-up of a dead black calf lying in the snow, its eye a brilliant, chemical blue. ‘‘One hundred fifty-three of these animals I’ve lost on this farm,’’ Wilbur says later in the video. ‘‘Every veterinarian that I’ve called in Parkersburg, they will not return my phone calls or they don’t want to get involved. Since they don’t want to get involved, I’ll have to dissect this thing myself. ... I’m going to start at this head.’’The video cuts to a calf’s bisected head. Close-ups follow of the calf’s blackened teeth (‘‘They say that’s due to high concentrations of fluoride in the water that they drink’’), its liver, heart, stomachs, kidneys and gall bladder. Each organ is sliced open, and Wilbur points out unusual discolorations — some dark, some green — and textures. ‘‘I don’t even like the looks of them,’’ he says. ‘‘It don’t look like anything I’ve been into before.’’Bilott watched the video and looked at photographs for several hours. He saw cows with stringy tails, malformed hooves, giant lesions protruding from their hides and red, receded eyes; cows suffering constant diarrhea, slobbering white slime the consistency of toothpaste, staggering bowlegged like drunks. Tennant always zoomed in on his cows’ eyes. ‘‘This cow’s done a lot of suffering,’’ he would say, as a blinking eye filled the screen.‘‘This is bad,’’ Bilott said to himself. ‘‘There’s something really bad going on here.’’Bilott decided right away to take the Tennant case. It was, he says again, ‘‘the right thing to do.’’ Bilott might have had the practiced look of a corporate lawyer — soft-spoken, milk-complected, conservatively attired — but the job had not come naturally to him. He did not have a typical Taft résumé. He had not attended college or law school in the Ivy League. His father was a lieutenant colonel in the Air Force, and Bilott spent most of his childhood moving among air bases near Albany; Flint, Mich.; Newport Beach, Calif.; and Wiesbaden, West Germany. Bilott attended eight schools before graduating from Fairborn High, near Ohio’s Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. As a junior, he received a recruitment letter from a tiny liberal-arts school in Sarasota called the New College of Florida, which graded pass/fail and allowed students to design their own curriculums. Many of his friends there were idealistic, progressive — ideological misfits in Reagan’s America. He met with professors individually and came to value critical thinking. ‘‘I learned to question everything you read,’’ he said. ‘‘Don’t take anything at face value. Don’t care what other people say. I liked that philosophy.’’ Bilott studied political science and wrote his thesis about the rise and fall of Dayton. He hoped to become a city manager.But his father, who late in life enrolled in law school, encouraged Bilott to do the same. Surprising his professors, he chose to attend law school at Ohio State, where his favorite course was environmental law. ‘‘It seemed like it would have real-world impact,’’ he said. ‘‘It was something you could do to make a difference.’’ When, after graduation, Taft made him an offer, his mentors and friends from New College were aghast. They didn’t understand how he could join a corporate firm. Bilott didn’t see it that way. He hadn’t really thought about the ethics of it, to be honest. ‘‘My family said that a big firm was where you’d get the most opportunities,’’ he said. ‘‘I knew nobody who had ever worked at a firm, nobody who knew anything about it. I just tried to get the best job I could. I don’t think I had any clue of what that involved.’’At Taft, he asked to join Thomas Terp’s environmental team. Ten years earlier, Congress passed the legislation known as Superfund, which financed the emergency cleanup of hazardous-waste dumps. Superfund was a lucrative development for firms like Taft, creating an entire subfield within environmental law, one that required a deep understanding of the new regulations in order to guide negotiations among municipal agencies and numerous private parties. Terp’s team at Taft was a leader in the field.As an associate, Bilott was asked to determine which companies contributed which toxins and hazardous wastes in what quantities to which sites. He took depositions from plant employees, perused public records and organized huge amounts of historical data. He became an expert on the Environmental Protection Agency’s regulatory framework, the Safe Drinking Water Act, the Clean Air Act, the Toxic Substances Control Act. He mastered the chemistry of the pollutants, despite the fact that chemistry had been his worst subject in high school. ‘‘I learned how these companies work, how the laws work, how you defend these claims,’’ he said. He became the consummate insider.Bilott was proud of the work he did. The main part of his job, as he understood it, was to help clients comply with the new regulations. Many of his clients, including Thiokol and Bee Chemical, disposed of hazardous waste long before the practice became so tightly regulated. He worked long hours and knew few people in Cincinnati. A colleague on Taft’s environmental team, observing that he had little time for a social life, introduced him to a childhood friend named Sarah Barlage. She was a lawyer, too, at another downtown Cincinnati firm, where she defended corporations against worker’s-compensation claims. Bilott joined the two friends for lunch. Sarah doesn’t remember him speaking. ‘‘My first impression was that he was not like other guys,’’ she says. ‘‘I’m pretty chatty. He’s much quieter. We complemented each other.’’

The road to one of the Tennant farms. Credit: Bryan Schutmaat for The New York TimesThey married in 1996. The first of their three sons was born two years later. He felt secure enough at Taft for Barlage to quit her job and raise their children full-time. Terp, his supervisor, recalls him as ‘‘a real standout lawyer: incredibly bright, energetic, tenacious and very, very thorough.’’ He was a model Taft lawyer. Then Wilbur Tennant came along.The Tennant case put Taft in a highly unusual position. The law firm was in the business of representing chemical corporations, not suing them. The prospect of taking on DuPont ‘‘did cause us pause,’’ Terp concedes. ‘‘But it was not a terribly difficult decision for us. I’m a firm believer that our work on the plaintiff’s side makes us better defense lawyers.’’Bilott sought help with the Tennant case from a West Virginia lawyer named Larry Winter. For many years, Winter was a partner at Spilman, Thomas & Battle — one of the firms that represented DuPont in West Virginia — though he had left Spilman to start a practice specializing in personal-injury cases. He was amazed that Bilott would sue DuPont while remaining at Taft.‘‘His taking on the Tennant case,’’ Winter says, ‘‘given the type of practice Taft had, I found to be inconceivable.’’Bilott, for his part, is reluctant to discuss his motivations for taking the case. The closest he came to elaborating was after being asked whether, having set out ‘‘to make a difference’’ in the world, he had any misgivings about the path his career had taken.‘‘There was a reason why I was interested in helping out the Tennants,’’ he said after a pause. ‘‘It was a great opportunity to use my background for people who really needed it.’’Bilott filed a federal suit against DuPont in the summer of 1999 in the Southern District of West Virginia. In response, DuPont’s in-house lawyer, Bernard Reilly, informed him that DuPont and the E.P.A. would commission a study of the property, conducted by three veterinarians chosen by DuPont and three chosen by the E.P.A. Their report did not find DuPont responsible for the cattle’s health problems. The culprit, instead, was poor husbandry: ‘‘poor nutrition, inadequate veterinary care and lack of fly control.’’ In other words, the Tennants didn’t know how to raise cattle; if the cows were dying, it was their own fault.This did not sit well with the Tennants, who began to suffer the consequences of antagonizing Parkersburg’s main employer. Lifelong friends ignored the Tennants on the streets of Parkersburg and walked out of restaurants when they entered. ‘‘I’m not allowed to talk to you,’’ they said, when confronted. Four different times, the Tennants changed churches.Wilbur called the office nearly every day, but Bilott had little to tell him. He was doing for the Tennants what he would have done for any of his corporate clients — pulling permits, studying land deeds and requesting from DuPont all documentation related to Dry Run Landfill — but he could find no evidence that explained what was happening to the cattle. ‘‘We were getting frustrated,’’ Bilott said. ‘‘I couldn’t blame the Tennants for getting angry.’’FURTHER READINGFor more about DuPont's FPOA pollution, see ‘‘The Teflon Toxin’’ by Sharon Lerner (The Intercept, Aug. 17, 2015) and ‘‘Welcome to Beautiful Parkersburg, West Virginia’’ by Mariah Blake (The Huffington Post, Aug. 27, 2015).With the trial looming, Bilott stumbled upon a letter DuPont had sent to the E.P.A. that mentioned a substance at the landfill with a cryptic name: ‘‘PFOA.’’ In all his years working with chemical companies, Bilott had never heard of PFOA. It did not appear on any list of regulated materials, nor could he find it in Taft’s in-house library. The chemistry expert that he had retained for the case did, however, vaguely recall an article in a trade journal about a similar-sounding compound: PFOS, a soaplike agent used by the technology conglomerate 3M in the fabrication of Scotchgard.Bilott hunted through his files for other references to PFOA, which he learned was short for perfluorooctanoic acid. But there was nothing. He asked DuPont to share all documentation related to the substance; DuPont refused. In the fall of 2000, Bilott requested a court order to force them. Against DuPont’s protests, the order was granted. Dozens of boxes containing thousands of unorganized documents began to arrive at Taft’s headquarters: private internal correspondence, medical and health reports and confidential studies conducted by DuPont scientists. There were more than 110,000 pages in all, some half a century old. Bilott spent the next few months on the floor of his office, poring over the documents and arranging them in chronological order. He stopped answering his office phone. When people called his secretary, she explained that he was in the office but had not been able to reach the phone in time, because he was trapped on all sides by boxes.‘‘I started seeing a story,’’ Bilott said. ‘‘I may have been the first one to actually go through them all. It became apparent what was going on: They had known for a long time that this stuff was bad.’’Bilott is given to understatement. (‘‘To say that Rob Bilott is understated,’’ his colleague Edison Hill says, ‘‘is an understatement.’’) The story that Bilott began to see, cross-legged on his office floor, was astounding in its breadth, specificity and sheer brazenness. ‘‘I was shocked,’’ he said. That was another understatement. Bilott could not believe the scale of incriminating material that DuPont had sent him. The company appeared not to realize what it had handed over. ‘‘It was one of those things where you can’t believe you’re reading what you’re reading,’’ he said. ‘‘That it’s actually been put in writing. It was the kind of stuff you always heard about happening but you never thought you’d see written down.’’The story began in 1951, when DuPont started purchasing PFOA (which the company refers to as C8) from 3M for use in the manufacturing of Teflon. 3M invented PFOA just four years earlier; it was used to keep coatings like Teflon from clumping during production. Though PFOA was not classified by the government as a hazardous substance, 3M sent DuPont recommendations on how to dispose of it. It was to be incinerated or sent to chemical-waste facilities. DuPont’s own instructions specified that it was not to be flushed into surface water or sewers. But over the decades that followed, DuPont pumped hundreds of thousands of pounds of PFOA powder through the outfall pipes of the Parkersburg facility into the Ohio River. The company dumped 7,100 tons of PFOA-laced sludge into ‘‘digestion ponds’’: open, unlined pits on the Washington Works property, from which the chemical could seep straight into the ground. PFOA entered the local water table, which supplied drinking water to the communities of Parkersburg, Vienna, Little Hocking and Lubeck — more than 100,000 people in all.Bilott learned from the documents that 3M and DuPont had been conducting secret medical studies on PFOA for more than four decades. In 1961, DuPont researchers found that the chemical could increase the size of the liver in rats and rabbits. A year later, they replicated these results in studies with dogs. PFOA’s peculiar chemical structure made it uncannily resistant to degradation. It also bound to plasma proteins in the blood, circulating through each organ in the body. In the 1970s, DuPont discovered that there were high concentrations of PFOA in the blood of factory workers at Washington Works. They did not tell the E.P.A. at the time. In 1981, 3M — which continued to serve as the supplier of PFOA to DuPont and other corporations — found that ingestion of the substance caused birth defects in rats. After 3M shared this information, DuPont tested the children of pregnant employees in their Teflon division. Of seven births, two had eye defects. DuPont did not make this information public.In 1984, DuPont became aware that dust vented from factory chimneys settled well beyond the property line and, more disturbing, that PFOA was present in the local water supply. DuPont declined to disclose this finding. In 1991, DuPont scientists determined an internal safety limit for PFOA concentration in drinking water: one part per billion. The same year, DuPont found that water in one local district contained PFOA levels at three times that figure. Despite internal debate, it declined to make the information public.(In a statement, DuPont claimed that it did volunteer health information about PFOA to the E.P.A. during those decades. When asked for evidence, it forwarded two letters written to West Virginian government agencies from 1982 and 1992, both of which cited internal studies that called into question links between PFOA exposure and human health problems.)By the ’90s, Bilott discovered, DuPont understood that PFOA caused cancerous testicular, pancreatic and liver tumors in lab animals. One laboratory study suggested possible DNA damage from PFOA exposure, and a study of workers linked exposure with prostate cancer. DuPont at last hastened to develop an alternative to PFOA. An interoffice memo sent in 1993 announced that ‘‘for the first time, we have a viable candidate’’ that appeared to be less toxic and stayed in the body for a much shorter duration of time. Discussions were held at DuPont’s corporate headquarters to discuss switching to the new compound. DuPont decided against it. The risk was too great: Products manufactured with PFOA were an important part of DuPont’s business, worth $1 billion in annual profit.‘His taking on the Tennant case, given the type of practice Taft had, I found to be inconceivable.’But the crucial discovery for the Tennant case was this: By the late 1980s, as DuPont became increasingly concerned about the health effects of PFOA waste, it decided it needed to find a landfill for the toxic sludge dumped on company property. Fortunately they had recently bought 66 acres from a low-level employee at the Washington Works facility that would do perfectly.By 1990, DuPont had dumped 7,100 tons of PFOA sludge into Dry Run Landfill. DuPont’s scientists understood that the landfill drained into the Tennants’ remaining property, and they tested the water in Dry Run Creek. It contained an extraordinarily high concentration of PFOA. DuPont did not tell this to the Tennants at the time, nor did it disclose the fact in the cattle report that it commissioned for the Tennant case a decade later — the report that blamed poor husbandry for the deaths of their cows. Bilott had what he needed.In August 2000, Bilott called DuPont’s lawyer, Bernard Reilly, and explained that he knew what was going on. It was a brief conversation.The Tennants settled. The firm would receive its contingency fee. The whole business might have ended right there. But Bilott was not satisfied.‘‘I was irritated,’’ he says.DuPont was nothing like the corporations he had represented at Taft in the Superfund cases. ‘‘This was a completely different scenario. DuPont had for decades been actively trying to conceal their actions. They knew this stuff was harmful, and they put it in the water anyway. These were bad facts.’’ He had seen what the PFOA-tainted drinking water had done to cattle. What was it doing to the tens of thousands of people in the areas around Parkersburg who drank it daily from their taps? What did the insides of their heads look like? Were their internal organs green?Bilott spent the following months drafting a public brief against DuPont. It was 972 pages long, including 136 attached exhibits. His colleagues call it ‘‘Rob’s Famous Letter.’’ ‘‘We have confirmed that the chemicals and pollutants released into the environment by DuPont at its Dry Run Landfill and other nearby DuPont-owned facilities may pose an imminent and substantial threat to health or the environment,’’ Bilott wrote. He demanded immediate action to regulate PFOA and provide clean water to those living near the factory. On March 6, 2001, he sent the letter to the director of every relevant regulatory authority, including Christie Whitman, administrator of the E.P.A., and the United States attorney general, John Ashcroft.DuPont reacted quickly, requesting a gag order to block Bilott from providing the information he had discovered in the Tennant case to the government. A federal court denied it. Bilott sent his entire case file to the E.P.A.‘‘DuPont freaked out when they realized that this guy was onto them,’’ says Ned McWilliams, a young trial lawyer who later joined Bilott’s legal team. ‘‘For a corporation to seek a gag order to prevent somebody from speaking to the E.P.A. is an extraordinary remedy. You could realize how bad that looks. They must have known that there was a small chance of winning. But they were so afraid that they were willing to roll the dice.’’With the Famous Letter, Bilott crossed a line. Though nominally representing the Tennants — their settlement had yet to be concluded — Bilott spoke for the public, claiming extensive fraud and wrongdoing. He had become a threat not merely to DuPont but also to, in the words of one internal memo, ‘‘the entire fluoropolymers industry’’ — an industry responsible for the high-performance plastics used in many modern devices, including kitchen products, computer cables, implantable medical devices and bearings and seals used in cars and airplanes. PFOA was only one of more than 60,000 synthetic chemicals that companies produced and released into the world without regulatory oversight.

Jim Tennant and his wife, Della, sold DuPont a 66-acre tract of land that became part of the Dry Run Landfill.‘‘Rob’s letter lifted the curtain on a whole new theater,’’ says Harry Deitzler, a plaintiff’s lawyer in West Virginia who works with Bilott. ‘‘Before that letter, corporations could rely upon the public misperception that if a chemical was dangerous, it was regulated.’’ Under the 1976 Toxic Substances Control Act, the E.P.A. can test chemicals only when it has been provided evidence of harm. This arrangement, which largely allows chemical companies to regulate themselves, is the reason that the E.P.A. has restricted only five chemicals, out of tens of thousands on the market, in the last 40 years.It was especially damning to see these allegations against DuPont under the letterhead of one of the nation’s most prestigious corporate defense firms. ‘‘You can imagine what some of the other companies that Taft was representing — a Dow Chemical — might have thought of a Taft lawyer taking on DuPont,’’ Larry Winter says. ‘‘There was a threat that the firm would suffer financially.’’ When I asked Thomas Terp about Taft’s reaction to the Famous Letter, he replied, not quite convincingly, that he didn’t recall one. ‘‘Our partners,’’ he said, ‘‘are proud of the work that he has done.’’Bilott, however, worried that corporations doing business with Taft might see things differently. ‘‘I’m not stupid, and the people around me aren’t stupid,’’ he said. ‘‘You can’t ignore the economic realities of the ways that business is run and the way clients think. I perceived that there were some ‘What the hell are you doing?’ responses.’’The letter led, four years later, in 2005, to DuPont’s reaching a $16.5 million settlement with the E.P.A., which had accused the company of concealing its knowledge of PFOA’s toxicity and presence in the environment in violation of the Toxic Substances Control Act. (DuPont was not required to admit liability.) At the time, it was the largest civil administrative penalty the E.P.A. had obtained in its history, a statement that sounds more impressive than it is. The fine represented less than 2 percent of the profits earned by DuPont on PFOA that year.Bilott never represented a corporate client again.The obvious next step was to file a class-action lawsuit against DuPont on behalf of everyone whose water was tainted by PFOA. In all ways but one, Bilott himself was in the ideal position to file such a suit. He understood PFOA’s history as well as anyone inside DuPont did. He had the technical and regulatory expertise, as he had proved in the Tennant case. The only part that didn’t make sense was his firm: No Taft lawyer, to anyone’s recollection, had ever filed a class-action lawsuit.It was one thing to pursue a sentimental case on behalf of a few West Virginia cattle farmers and even write a public letter to the E.P.A. But an industry-threatening class-action suit against one of the world’s largest chemical corporations was different. It might establish a precedent for suing corporations over unregulated substances and imperil Taft’s bottom line. This point was made to Terp by Bernard Reilly, DuPont’s in-house lawyer, according to accounts from Bilott’s plaintiff’s-lawyer colleagues; they say Reilly called to demand that Bilott back off the case. (Terp confirms that Reilly called him but will not disclose the content of the call; Bilott and Reilly decline to speak about it, citing continuing litigation.) Given what Bilott had documented in his Famous Letter, Taft stood by its partner.A lead plaintiff soon presented himself. Joseph Kiger, a night-school teacher in Parkersburg, called Bilott to ask for help. About nine months earlier, he received a peculiar note from the Lubeck water district. It arrived on Halloween day, enclosed in the monthly water bill. The note explained that an unregulated chemical named PFOA had been detected in the drinking water in ‘‘low concentrations,’’ but that it was not a health risk. Kiger had underlined statements that he found particularly baffling, like: ‘‘DuPont reports that it has toxicological and epidemiological data to support confidence that exposure guidelines established by DuPont are protective of human health.’’ The term ‘‘support confidence’’ seemed bizarre, as did ‘‘protective of human health,’’ not to mention the claim that DuPont’s own data supported its confidence in its own guidelines.Still, Kiger might have forgotten about it had his wife, Darlene, not already spent much of her adulthood thinking about PFOA. Darlene’s first husband had been a chemist in DuPont’s PFOA lab. (Darlene asked that he not be named so that he wouldn’t be involved in the local politics around the case.) ‘‘When you worked at DuPont in this town,’’ Darlene says today, ‘‘you could have everything you wanted.’’ DuPont paid for his education, it secured him a mortgage and it paid him a generous salary. DuPont even gave him a free supply of PFOA, which, Darlene says, she used as soap in the family’s dishwasher and to clean the car. Sometimes her husband came home from work sick — fever, nausea, diarrhea, vomiting — after working in one of the PFOA storage tanks. It was a common occurrence at Washington Works. Darlene says the men at the plant called it ‘‘Teflon flu.’’In 1976, after Darlene gave birth to their second child, her husband told her that he was not allowed to bring his work clothes home anymore. DuPont, he said, had found out that PFOA was causing health problems for women and birth defects in children. Darlene would remember this six years later when, at 36, she had to have an emergency hysterectomy and again eight years later, when she had a second surgery. When the strange letter from the water district arrived, Darlene says, ‘‘I kept thinking back to his clothing, to my hysterectomy. I asked myself, what does DuPont have to do with our drinking water?’’

Joe called the West Virginia Department of Natural Resources (‘‘They treated me like I had the plague’’), the Parkersburg office of the state’s Department of Environmental Protection (‘‘nothing to worry about’’), the water division (‘‘I got shut down’’), the local health department (‘‘just plain rude’’), even DuPont (‘‘I was fed the biggest line of [expletive] anybody could have been fed’’), before a scientist in the regional E.P.A. office finally took his call.‘‘Good God, Joe,’’ the scientist said. ‘‘What the hell is that stuff doing in your water?’’ He sent Kiger information about the Tennant lawsuit. On the court papers Kiger kept seeing the same name: Robert Bilott, of Taft Stettinius & Hollister, in Cincinnati.Bilott had anticipated suing on behalf of the one or two water districts closest to Washington Works. But tests revealed that six districts, as well as dozens of private wells, were tainted with levels of PFOA higher than DuPont’s own internal safety standard. In Little Hocking, the water tested positive for PFOA at seven times the limit. All told, 70,000 people were drinking poisoned water. Some had been doing so for decades.But Bilott faced a vexing legal problem. PFOA was not a regulated substance. It appeared on no federal or state list of contaminants. How could Bilott claim that 70,000 people had been poisoned if the government didn’t recognize PFOA as a toxin — if PFOA, legally speaking, was no different than water itself? In 2001, it could not even be proved that exposure to PFOA in public drinking water caused health problems. There was scant information available about its impact on large populations. How could the class prove it had been harmed by PFOA when the health effects were largely unknown?The best metric Bilott had to judge a safe exposure level was DuPont’s own internal limit of one part per billion. But when DuPont learned that Bilott was preparing a new lawsuit, it announced that it would re-evaluate that figure. As in the Tennant case, DuPont formed a team composed of its own scientists and scientists from the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection. It announced a new threshold: 150 parts per billion.Bilott found the figure ‘‘mind-blowing.’’ The toxicologists he hired had settled upon a safety limit of 0.2 parts per billion. But West Virginia endorsed the new standard. Within two years, three lawyers regularly used by DuPont were hired by the state D.E.P. in leadership positions. One of them was placed in charge of the entire agency. ‘‘The way that transpired was just amazing to me,’’ Bilott says. ‘‘I suppose it wasn’t so amazing to my fellow counsel in West Virginia who know the system there. But it was to me.’’ The same DuPont lawyers tasked with writing the safety limit, Bilott said, had become the government regulators responsible for enforcing that limit.Bilott devised a new legal strategy. A year earlier, West Virginia had become one of the first states to recognize what is called, in tort law, a medical-monitoring claim. A plaintiff needs to prove only that he or she has been exposed to a toxin. If the plaintiff wins, the defendant is required to fund regular medical tests. In these cases, should a plaintiff later become ill, he or she can sue retroactively for damages. For this reason, Bilott filed the class-action suit in August 2001 in state court, even though four of the six affected water districts lay across the Ohio border.Meanwhile the E.P.A., drawing from Bilott’s research, began its own investigation into the toxicity of PFOA. In 2002, the agency released its initial findings: PFOA might pose human health risks not only to those drinking tainted water, but also to the general public — anyone, for instance, who cooked with Teflon pans. The E.P.A. was particularly alarmed to learn that PFOA had been detected in American blood banks, something 3M and DuPont had known as early as 1976. By 2003 the average concentration of PFOA in the blood of an adult American was four to five parts per billion. In 2000, 3M ceased production of PFOA. DuPont, rather than use an alternative compound, built a new factory in Fayetteville, N.C., to manufacture the substance for its own use.Bilott’s strategy appeared to have worked. In September 2004, DuPont decided to settle the class-action suit. It agreed to install filtration plants in the six affected water districts if they wanted them and pay a cash award of $70 million. It would fund a scientific study to determine whether there was a ‘‘probable link’’ — a term that delicately avoided any declaration of causation — between PFOA and any diseases. If such links existed, DuPont would pay for medical monitoring of the affected group in perpetuity. Until the scientific study came back with its results, class members were forbidden from filing personal-injury suits against DuPont.

The chemical site near Parkersburg, W.Va., source of the waste at the center of the DuPont class-action lawsuit.A reasonable expectation, at this point, was that the lawyers would move on. ‘‘In any other class action you’ve ever read about,’’ Deitzler says, ‘‘you get your 10 bucks in the mail, the lawyers get paid and the lawsuit goes away. That’s what we were supposed to do.’’ For three years, Bilott had worked for nothing, costing his firm a fortune. But now Taft received a windfall: Bilott and his team of West Virginian plaintiff lawyers received $21.7 million in fees from the settlement. ‘‘I think they were thinking, This guy did O.K.,’’ Deitzler says. ‘‘I wouldn’t be surprised if he got a raise.’’Not only had Taft recouped its losses, but DuPont was providing clean water to the communities named in the suit. Bilott had every reason to walk away.He didn’t.‘‘There was a gap in the data,’’ Bilott says. The company’s internal health studies, as damning as they were, were limited to factory employees. DuPont could argue — and had argued — that even if PFOA caused medical problems, it was only because factory workers had been exposed at exponentially higher levels than neighbors who drank tainted water. The gap allowed DuPont to claim that it had done nothing wrong.Bilott represented 70,000 people who had been drinking PFOA-laced drinking water for decades. What if the settlement money could be used to test them? ‘‘Class members were concerned about three things,’’ Winter says. ‘‘One: Do I have C8 in my blood? Two: If I do, is it harmful? Three: If it’s harmful, what are the effects?’’ Bilott and his colleagues realized they could answer all three questions, if only they could test their clients. Now, they realized, there was a way to do so. After the settlement, the legal team pushed to make receipt of the cash award contingent on a full medical examination. The class voted in favor of this approach, and within months, nearly 70,000 West Virginians were trading their blood for a $400 check.The team of epidemiologists was flooded with medical data, and there was nothing DuPont could do to stop it. In fact, it was another term of the settlement that DuPont would fund the research without limitation. The scientists, freed from the restraints of academic budgets and grants, had hit the epidemiological jackpot: an entire population’s personal data and infinite resources available to study them. The scientists designed 12 studies, including one that, using sophisticated environmental modeling technology, determined exactly how much PFOA each individual class member had ingested.It was assured that the panel would return convincing results. But Bilott could not predict what those results would be. If no correlation was found between PFOA and illness, Bilott’s clients would be barred under the terms of the agreement from filing any personal-injury cases. Because of the sheer quantity of data provided by the community health study and the unlimited budget — it ultimately cost DuPont $33 million — the panel took longer than expected to perform its analysis. Two years passed without any findings. Bilott waited. A third year passed. Then a fourth, a fifth, a sixth. Still the panel was quiet. Bilott waited.It was not a peaceful wait. The pressure on Bilott at Taft had built since he initiated the class-action suit in 2001. The legal fees had granted him a reprieve, but as the years passed without resolution, and Bilott continued to spend the firm’s money and was unable to attract new clients, he found himself in an awkward position.‘‘This case,’’ Winter says, ‘‘regardless of how hugely successful it ends up, will never in the Taft firm’s mind replace what they’ve lost in the way of legal business over the years.’’The longer it took for the science panel to conduct its research, the more expensive the case became. Taft continued to pay consultants to interpret the new findings and relay them to the epidemiologists. Bilott counseled class members in West Virginia and Ohio and traveled frequently to Washington to attend meetings at the E.P.A., which was deciding whether to issue advisories about PFOA. ‘‘We were incurring a lot of expenses,’’ Bilott says. ‘‘If the scientific panel found no link with diseases, we’d have to eat it all.’’

Land where Tennant cattle once grazed. Credit: Bryan Schutmaat for The New York TimesClients called Bilott to say that they had received diagnoses of cancer or that a family member had died. They wanted to know why it was taking so long. When would they get relief? Among those who called was Jim Tennant. Wilbur, who had cancer, had died of a heart attack. Two years later, Wilbur’s wife died of cancer. Bilott was tormented by ‘‘the thought that we still hadn’t been able to hold this company responsible for what they did in time for those people to see it.’’Taft did not waver in its support of the case, but the strain began to show. ‘‘It was stressful,’’ Sarah Barlage, Bilott’s wife, says. ‘‘He was exasperated that it was lasting a long time. But his heels were so dug in. He’s extremely stubborn. Every day that went by with no movement gave him more drive to see it through. But in the back of our minds, we knew that there are cases that go on forever.’’His colleagues on the case detected a change in Bilott. ‘‘I had the impression that it was extremely tough on him,’’ Winter says. ‘‘Rob had a young family, kids growing up, and he was under pressure from his firm. Rob is a private person. He didn’t complain. But he showed signs of being under enormous stress.’’In 2010, Bilott began suffering strange attacks: His vision would blur, he couldn’t put on his socks, his arms felt numb. His doctors didn’t know what was happening. The attacks recurred periodically, bringing blurry vision, slurred speech and difficulty moving one side of his body. They struck suddenly, without warning, and their effects lasted days. The doctors asked whether he was under heightened stress at work. ‘‘Nothing different than normal,’’ Bilott told them. ‘‘Nothing it hadn’t been for years.’’The doctors ultimately hit upon an effective medication. The episodes ceased and their symptoms, apart from an occasional tic, are under control, but he still doesn’t have a diagnosis.‘‘It was stressful,’’ Bilott says, ‘‘not to know what the heck was going on.’’In December 2011, after seven years, the scientists began to release their findings: there was a ‘‘probable link’’ between PFOA and kidney cancer, testicular cancer, thyroid disease, high cholesterol, pre-eclampsia and ulcerative colitis.‘‘There was relief,’’ Bilott says, understated nearly to the point of self-effacement. ‘‘We were able to deliver what we had promised to these folks seven years earlier. Especially since, for all those years, DuPont had been saying that we were lying, trying to scare and mislead people. Now we had a scientific answer.’’As of October, 3,535 plaintiffs have filed personal-injury lawsuits against DuPont. The first member of this group to go to trial was a kidney-cancer survivor named Carla Bartlett. In October, Bartlett was awarded $1.6 million. DuPont plans to appeal. This may have ramifications well beyond Bartlett’s case: Hers is one of five ‘‘bellwether’’ cases that will be tried over the course of this year. After that, DuPont may choose to settle with every afflicted class member, using the outcome of the bellwether cases to determine settlement awards. Or DuPont can fight each suit individually, a tactic that tobacco companies have used to fight personal-injury lawsuits. At the rate of four trials a year, DuPont would continue to fight PFOA cases until the year 2890.DuPont’s continuing refusal to accept responsibility is maddening to Bilott. ‘‘To think that you’ve negotiated in good faith a deal that everybody has abided by and worked on for seven years, you reach a point where certain things were to be resolved but then remain contested,’’ he says. ‘‘I think about the clients who have been waiting for this, many of whom are sick or have died while waiting. It’s infuriating.’’In total, 70,000 people were drinking poisoned water. Some had been doing so for decades.As part of its agreement with the E.P.A., DuPont ceased production and use of PFOA in 2013. The five other companies in the world that produce PFOA are also phasing out production. DuPont, which is currently negotiating a merger with Dow Chemical, last year severed its chemical businesses: They have been spun off into a new corporation called Chemours. The new company has replaced PFOA with similar fluorine-based compounds designed to biodegrade more quickly — the alternative considered and then discarded by DuPont more than 20 years ago. Like PFOA, these new substances have not come under any regulation from the E.P.A. When asked about the safety of the new chemicals, Chemours replied in a statement: ‘‘A significant body of data demonstrates that these alternative chemistries can be used safely.’’Last May, 200 scientists from a variety of disciplines signed the Madrid Statement, which expresses concern about the production of all fluorochemicals, or PFASs, including those that have replaced PFOA. PFOA and its replacements are suspected to belong to a large class of artificial compounds called endocrine-disrupting chemicals; these compounds, which include chemicals used in the production of pesticides, plastics and gasoline, interfere with human reproduction and metabolism and cause cancer, thyroid problems and nervous-system disorders. In the last five years, however, a new wave of endocrinology research has found that even extremely low doses of such chemicals can create significant health problems. Among the Madrid scientists’ recommendations: ‘‘Enact legislation to require only essential uses of PFASs’’ and ‘‘Whenever possible, avoid products containing, or manufactured using, PFASs. These include many products that are stain-resistant, waterproof or nonstick.’’When asked about the Madrid Statement, Dan Turner, DuPont’s head of global media relations, wrote in an email: ‘‘DuPont does not believe the Madrid Statement reflects a true consideration of the available data on alternatives to long-chain perfluorochemicals, such as PFOA. DuPont worked for more than a decade, with oversight from regulators, to introduce its alternatives. Extensive data has been developed, demonstrating that these alternatives are much more rapidly eliminated from the body than PFOA, and have improved health safety profiles. We are confident that these alternative chemistries can be used safely — they are well characterized, and the data has been used to register them with environmental agencies around the world.’’Every year Rob Bilott writes a letter to the E.P.A. and the West Virginia D.E.P., urging the regulation of PFOA in drinking water. In 2009, the E.P.A. set a ‘‘provisional’’ limit of 0.4 parts per billion for short-term exposure, but has never finalized that figure. This means that local water districts are under no obligation to tell customers whether PFOA is in their water. In response to Bilott’s most recent letter, the E.P.A. claimed that it would announce a ‘‘lifetime health advisory level for PFOA’’ by ‘‘early 2016.’’This advisory level, if indeed announced, might be a source of comfort to future generations. But if you are a sentient being reading this article in 2016, you already have PFOA in your blood. It is in your parents’ blood, your children’s blood, your lover’s blood. How did it get there? Through the air, through your diet, through your use of nonstick cookware, through your umbilical cord. Or you might have drunk tainted water. The Environmental Working Group has found manufactured fluorochemicals present in 94 water districts across 27 states (see sidebar beginning on Page 38). Residents of Issaquah, Wash.; Wilmington, Del.; Colorado Springs; and Nassau County on Long Island are among those whose water has a higher concentration of fluorochemicals than that in some of the districts included in Rob Bilott’s class-action suit. The drinking water in Parkersburg itself, whose water district was not included in the original class-action suit and has failed to compel DuPont to pay for a filtration system, is currently tainted with high levels of PFOA. Most residents appear not to know this.Where scientists have tested for the presence of PFOA in the world, they have found it. PFOA is in the blood or vital organs of Atlantic salmon, swordfish, striped mullet, gray seals, common cormorants, Alaskan polar bears, brown pelicans, sea turtles, sea eagles, Midwestern bald eagles, California sea lions and Laysan albatrosses on Sand Island, a wildlife refuge on Midway Atoll, in the middle of the North Pacific Ocean, about halfway between North America and Asia.‘‘We see a situation,’’ Joe Kiger says, ‘‘that has gone from Washington Works, to statewide, to the United States, and now it’s everywhere, it’s global. We’ve taken the cap off something here. But it’s just not DuPont. Good God. There are 60,000 unregulated chemicals out there right now. We have no idea what we’re taking.’’Bilott doesn’t regret fighting DuPont for the last 16 years, nor for letting PFOA consume his career. But he is still angry. ‘‘The thought that DuPont could get away with this for this long,’’ Bilott says, his tone landing halfway between wonder and rage, ‘‘that they could keep making a profit off it, then get the agreement of the governmental agencies to slowly phase it out, only to replace it with an alternative with unknown human effects — we told the agencies about this in 2001, and they’ve essentially done nothing. That’s 14 years of this stuff continuing to be used, continuing to be in the drinking water all over the country. DuPont just quietly switches over to the next substance. And in the meantime, they fight everyone who has been injured by it.’’Bilott is currently prosecuting Wolf v. DuPont, the second of the personal-injury cases filed by the members of his class. The plaintiff, John M. Wolf of Parkersburg, claims that PFOA in his drinking water caused him to develop ulcerative colitis. That trial begins in March. When it concludes, there will be 3,533 cases left to try.A correction was made on Jan. 24, 2016:An article on Jan 10. about legal action against DuPont for chemical pollution referred incorrectly to DuPont’s response in the 1970s when the company discovered high concentrations of PFOA in the blood of workers at Washington Works, a DuPont factory. DuPont withheld the information from the E.P.A., not from its workers. The article also misstated the year DuPont agreed to a $16.5 million settlement with the E.P.A. It was 2005, not 2006. In addition, the article misidentified the water district where a resident received a letter from the district noting that PFOA had been detected in the drinking water. It was Lubeck, W.Va. — not Little Hocking, Ohio. The article also misidentified the district where water tested positive for PFOA at seven times the limit. It was Little Hocking, not Lubeck. And the article misidentified the city in Washington State that has fluorochemicals in its drink-ing water. It is Issaquah, not Seattle._________Nathaniel Rich is a contributing writer for the magazine and the author of ‘‘Odds Against Tomorrow.’’ He lives in New Orleans and is a frequent contributor to The New York Review of Books and The Atlantic.

大家好，我是戴着眼镜拿着话筒的阿拉斯加，片片。

转眼就到了2020年的第二个月，再过几天就是奥斯卡的颁奖典礼了。

这次入围最佳影片的共有9部电影，其中《小丑》、《好莱坞往事》等好几部电影，我都跟大家聊过了。

大家应该看得出来，这一次的竞争还是相当激烈的。

不过随着颁奖时间越来越近，突然流行开了这么一种说法：有一部电影是这届奥斯卡的遗珠，它被埋没是本届奥斯卡最大的遗憾。

说的就是电影《黑水》。

看着这部豆瓣评分8.3，IMDb评分仅有7.6的电影，我下意识就觉得有人在吹牛。

不过我还是耐耐心心看完了这部电影，并且得出了一个结论：埋没它不是奥斯卡的损失，而是整个美国的损失。

《黑水》不止是一部电影而已，其中隐藏的真相，有必要让每个人都知晓。

那不妨从头跟大家聊聊这部《黑水》。

说起来《黑水》的确很有拿奖的潜质，首先阵容就尤其豪华。

担纲男女主的分别是“绿巨人”马克·鲁弗洛和安妮·海瑟薇，导演是执导过《卡罗尔》的托德·海因斯。

其次出品这部电影的Participant公司也是大有来头。

去年奥斯卡最佳影片《绿皮书》，和2016年的奥斯卡最佳影片《聚焦》，都出自这家公司的手笔。

这家公司特别偏爱将真实社会事件改编成电影，每部电影都有很强的冲奥实力。

《黑水》也同样是由真实事件改编而来，保持了很高的水准，在提名时落选相当可惜。

《黑水》的原型事件是美国历史上最臭名昭著的环境污染案：美国最大的化学品公司杜邦集团，在半个世纪里，直接毒害了超过3500个家庭，最终将污染扩散到了全世界。

而揭开这一可怖真相的，只是一个名不见经传的小律师罗伯特。

罗伯特是一个专攻环境法的律师，主要工作就是替化工企业解决环境争端，说白了就是当大公司的狗腿摆平小老百姓。

经过多年的努力工作，罗伯特终于升任为律所的合伙人，家中有着美丽的妻子和可爱的孩子，生活过得异常美满。

但罗伯特没想到的是，成为合伙人后接到的第一个案子，会成为他此后十几年里接到的唯一一个案子。

罗伯特外婆的邻居、一个名叫特侬的牧场主找上了罗伯特，声称自己牧场的牲畜已经出现了大面积死亡。

他怀疑是附近杜邦集团的废料填埋场导致的污染，希望罗伯特代为诉讼。

说实话罗伯特完全没有必要接手这个案子。

收入低不说，杜邦集团还是律所想要争取的大客户，实在没有必要和律所唱反调。

但特侬和外婆的邻居关系让罗伯特动了恻隐之心，他来到特侬的牧场实地探访，发现上百头牲口几乎死绝了，整座牧场如同一片坟墓。

罗伯特这才意识到，杜邦集团真的造成了可怕的污染，而他也决定接下这个案件。

作为代理律师，罗伯特要求杜邦集团提供废料填埋场的相关文件，但奇怪的是，文件里没有违规排放的迹象。

他敏锐地注意到，文件里频繁地出现了一个PFOA的词，于是他大胆猜测，PFOA是一种环保局都不知晓的有毒污染物质。

为了展开进一步的调查，罗伯特把整个杜邦集团告上法庭，按照规定，杜邦集团必须无条件地出示罗伯特需要的资料。

而杜邦集团的回击也足够强烈，他们给罗伯特寄去了足足好上百箱的资料，把真正有用的信息混杂其中，想让罗伯特知难而退。

不过杜邦集团显然低估了罗伯特的耐心和决心。

罗伯特一头扑进了文件调查当中，同时还不忘了拜访化学家，终于抽丝剥茧地揭开了可怕的真相：所谓的PFOA一开始是作为防水涂料在战场上被发明出来的，最初发明它的是3M公司，最近大家使用的3M口罩，也是它的产品。

很快杜邦集团也掌握了这项技术，还把PFOA改名为C8，将C8作为活性剂，生产出了自家的拳头产品特氟龙。

特氟龙最广泛的用途就是作为不粘锅的涂层。

由于省事耐用，不粘锅曾经远销全球。

特氟龙涂层在260度以下的温度使用，不会对人体产生毒害。

但制造特氟龙需要的C8却是高毒性的致癌物，而杜邦集团居然一开始就知道。

当时在生产工程中，不少工人伴随着呕吐和发烧病倒了。

丧尽天良的杜邦集团为了搞清楚工人们病倒的真相，把C8添加进香烟里让工人抽，结果几乎所有人都进了医院。

随后杜邦还做了不少实验，发现了C8的巨大危害。

但巨额利益当前，他们不顾3M公司的警告，继续大规模生产特氟龙，隐瞒C8的毒性，并且肆意排放含有C8的废料。

他们唯一采取的措施，就是将女工从生产线上撤下来，但为时已晚，有几个怀孕的女工还是生下了畸形的胎儿。

但遭殃的又岂止是无辜的婴儿，很多杜邦生产线的工人先后患上癌症与世长辞，废料填埋场所在地的居民也难逃患上癌症的命运。

不过最令人发指的，是杜邦自己的一项实验结果。

他们为了研究C8对人体的影响，想做一个被C8污染过的血液和正常人的血液的对比。

但没想到的是，杜邦遍寻世界，没有找到任何血液里不含C8的人。

杜邦向水中肆意排放C8，最终使得污染扩散到了全世界。

换句话说，我们每个人都受到了杜邦的毒害。

C8极其顽固，会在人的血液中伴人一生，终身无法降解。

微量的C8会造成什么影响，目前还不明确。

但足量的C8，会导致肾癌、睾丸癌、甲状腺疾病等多种疾病。

仔细想来，怎么能不后怕？

说回电影，罗伯特将自己的发现公之于众，舆论一片哗然，但杜邦只是轻描淡写地给拿出一百万的赔偿想要和解。

如果罗伯特就此收手，被杜邦毒害的千千万万人又能到哪里去伸冤呢？

好在他毅然决然地选择了继续诉讼，并且把代理对象从特侬，扩展到了被毒害的3500多个受害人。

此举招来的，是杜邦的疯狂报复：杜邦不惜聘请专家做伪证，对罗伯特和证人们进行人身威胁，甚至还采取了拖延战术。

因为有三千多起案件，杜邦一年应诉几起，好几百年才能审完。

但杜邦的如意算盘并没有打响，随着舆情不断发酵，环保署不得不出面对杜邦进行罚款。

杜邦也摆低姿态做了赔偿，出资安装了净水装置，并且向当地居民赔付了7000万美元。

而这不过是特氟龙生产线三天的利益。

不过罗伯特还必须证明当地居民的疾病和C8有直接关联，这样才能为已经患病的居民争取更多的赔偿。

罗伯特游说当地的七万居民提供体检报告，用来研究C8和当地人得病的关系。

从那以后过了七年，罗伯特才终于拿到了医生们的研究成果：C8会直接导致肾癌、睾丸癌等多种疾病。

杜邦集团最终在2015年向3500余名受害者赔偿了6.7亿美元。

从罗伯特在1998接手这个案子算起，已经过去了整整十七年。

在最后的庭审上，法官认出了罗伯特，他动容地问道，还是你啊？

而罗伯特平静地回答道，还是我。

就这样平凡的一幕，却构成了全片最震撼的瞬间。

将近20年的诉讼，并没有给罗伯特带来任何名和利，罗伯特在接手这个案子以后，没有大公司愿意雇他打官司。

原本支持罗伯特伸张正义的律所，也逐渐失去了耐心，并且将罗伯特的薪酬压缩为原来的四分之一。

随着孩子逐渐长大，抚养的压力也越来越大，善解人意的妻子也和罗伯特闹得不可开交。

即便如此，罗伯特维护的这些居民当中，还有人因为赔偿迟迟不到来责怪罗伯特。

在巨大的压力下，罗伯特不堪重压住进了医院，差点死在了黎明前最黑暗的时刻。

万幸的是，正义最终得到了伸张，虽然它和过往每一场正义一样，都迟到了。

此案曝光以后，美国、欧洲、加拿大等多个国家，都全面禁用了C8相关的产品，起码上亿人避免了被继续毒害。

罗伯特完全说得上是功德无量。

说实话我们很难说明白，罗伯特为什么为不相干的陌生人冒尽一切风险。

你当然可以说是出于正义的感召，但望着坐在法庭上老态毕显的罗伯特，你或许就会意识到：和一家跨国大公司针锋相对了十七年的，不是布鲁斯·班纳，不是绿巨人，不是超级英雄。

只是一个普通人而已。

但我们或许也没必要打破砂锅地追问缘由，我们应该记住的，是在有人顶住压力说出真相的时候，选择支持他。

为众人抱薪者，不可使其冻毙于风雪，为自由开路者，不可令其困厄于荆棘。

不过，这部电影的意义还远不止于此，它背后折射出的，还有深刻的环保主题：人类落到如此地步，与其自大不无关系。

最后我也不多说了，就和大家分享一句话，这句话被印在《寂静的春天》的扉页上，而就是这本书，拉开了环境保护运动的序幕：我对人类感到悲观，因为它对于自己的利益太过精明。

我们对待自然的办法是打击并使之屈服。

如果我们不是这样的多疑和专横，如果我们能调整好与这颗行星的关系，并深怀感激之心对待它，我们本可有更好的存活机会。

像《黑水》这样有意义的电影，不该丢掉姓名。

那今天就说到这里，拜了个拜。

杜邦公司在被起诉的近二十年的时间里，支付了1650万美元的赔偿费，支付给诉讼群体7000万美元（仅仅是特氟龙生产线上3天的利润），后续支付了2.35亿美元作为受害群体的健康监护，多年后当初的血液检测统计结果出来，经历了层层阻挠，杜邦公司又支付了6.707亿美元了结了全部3535起案件。

前后一共不到十亿美元的开销，可是早在1999年，杜邦公司一年关于PFOA生产的利润就高达10亿美元。

看完电影之后，我又去查了一下杜邦公司。

直到如今，杜邦公司依旧活跃在国际市场，似乎什么都没有发生，关于电影所描述的化工污染事件的信息更是少之又少。

此前对于环境污染问题一直是站在一个旁观者的角度，看着新闻里列出的各项数据和庞大的数字，顶多感叹几句唏嘘几句便离开。

当看到Wilbur Tennant拿出自己曾经饲养的牛发黑的牙齿、内翻的蹄子、小母牛身上割下的肿瘤，看到死去的牛凹陷的眼睛和农场旁如乱葬岗一样的牲畜的坟墓，Tennant看到牛望向自己时便习惯性的掏出了枪了结其性命，随后又跪在地上哭泣，熟练地让人心痛。

Tennant只是一个小学学历的农场主，没有钱没有身份没有地位，自己的牛死了只能埋起来或者堆起来烧掉，他连看环保署对于自己农场环境调查报告的权力都没有，多次去杜邦公司反应人家甚至都不知道他的名字，自己去找律师，回来后自己的家还被闯入销毁证据，抱着枪睡在屋外只为杜邦公司的直升机再来时能够反抗……就是一个这样的不起眼的小人物，他连最终的结果都没有等到。

从一开始他就对Robert Bilott（以下简称Rob）说，国家、政府乃至这个体制，都不可信，能够保护我们的只有我们自己。

如电影里所说，一个农民掀起不了多大的风浪他要么身无分文的死去，要么让杜邦公司继续掠夺他的家园。

自从二十多年前Tennant走进律师事务所的大门，Rob花费了近二十年，只为让杜邦公司付出应有的代价。

他在档案库里埋头寻找，为自己的病落下了病根；他在审讯室里盘问杜邦公司董事长七个钟头，却在临走时为自己的车打火时担惊受怕，他怕自己被伤害；他埋头于此二十年，疏离了自己的家庭，他不知道妻子的弟弟进了戒毒所，不知道自己的儿子在学校模仿母亲的签字；他收集了69000份血液样本，却因为进程缓慢受了七年的辱骂；工作上没人愿意找他以至于薪酬一降再降至原来的三分之一，他依旧坚持到底。

整部电影大多数时间都是偏冷的蓝色调，Rob的家中仅有的两次阳光和温馨的感觉也异常短暂。

第一次是刚刚开始查找档案，第一次发现了PFOA,事情出现了转机，但是随后在化学晚宴上北公然辱骂和嘲讽。

第二次是等来了迟到了七年的电话，可是这又在之后得知杜邦反悔政府倒戈变得凄清阴冷。

为了这次起诉，Rob花费了二十年的光阴，搭进去了自己的健康，缺席了自己的家庭，疏离了妻子、孩子、母亲，曾经的人们责骂他起诉杜邦公司，后来人们开始责怪他自己没有等到任何结果，即使当初为了血液样本每个人都获得了400美元。

整个体制都被操控了，任何人不可信，国家不可信，政府不可信，体制不可信。

科学小组对于污染物安全标准信口雌黄，自己为了研究人民血液样本只能通过金钱“交易”；政府不断索取各种费用想让自己知难而退，杜邦公司明目张胆撕毁协议却无人指责。

其实最后的赢家依旧是杜邦公司，它从头到尾的赔偿甚至都不及自己一年的利润，如今它依旧活跃在国际市场，曾经的化工污染也逐渐被多数人淡忘；

但是对于那些普通人呢？

Tennant与妻子双双患癌，临终前数年身上就已经长满烂疮，至死也没有得到任何实质性赔偿；Bucky Bailey作为环境污染的受害者，从出生就带有的缺陷已经跟随了他一生；Rob穷尽半生也只争取到了当初少数受害者的利益，现在可能依旧为此奔波，但是能够起到的作用已经微乎其微……可是这对于杜邦公司来说无关痛痒，甚至可以权当没有发生过，我们最应该怪罪的，其实是这个唯金钱与权力是从的体制。

现实改编，律师对抗大企业、政府，甚至科学家，有多难？

无法想象的难。

故事是按时间顺序讲的，但有些主题是贯穿整部戏的。

1. 质疑 农民：他们说什么，你就全都相信了？

杜邦说没问题，你就信了？

事实上，每个知道这些事情的科学家，都在为这些企业工作。

还以为政府、制度能帮普通人对抗大企业，结果政府机构不管，法庭也让大企业逃脱责任。

2. 流程 起诉杜邦：即使和对方法务私人关系很好，也是公事公办，先财产索赔起诉。

为了确认化学品与疾病相关，只能耐心等独立的科学家做研究，7年。

3. 坚持！！！

杜邦寄来了一卡车的资料（想让主角知难而退），主角就抱怨了2句，坐下来就开始整理资料了。

抱怨是无法解决问题；哪有人会在这时候帮忙呢？

大家都是锦上添花，看到成功的机会才会来的。

而他居然真的把所有的资料整理好了。

降薪、没人找他打官司了，妻子没收入，家里3个娃要读书，压力大到差点中风，受害者的质疑，抗了十几年，难以想象怎么坚持下来。

杜邦不接受集体诉讼，要受害者一个一个来索赔，就想把受害者拖垮、把律师拖垮，不战而胜；连法官都说，这么多案件，得搞到2890年了。

原告律师呢？

我。

你还在？

是的，我还在。

背景音乐响起：I won't back down。

那个驼背缩头的律师，顿时高大了～整部电源的高光时刻啊4. 责任 律师事务所老板：公司就像人，而这个公司明显过线了。

我们有责任让美国商业做得更好。

其实律师事务所老板也很不容易，他是真金白银的支持主角去帮助这些人的，不过剧情需要，他的形象并不高大。

5. 自我认知 你对你角色的认知会影响你的行为。

重点说一下主角老婆，从一开始的不理解、质疑，到后来的容忍，甚至支持她老公，很了不起。

质疑：你不是律师吗？

你把律师的事做好就好了，你现在在做什么？

忍耐：丈夫把所有的精力都投在案子里了，无暇顾及家里的任何事情，默默把所有东西都扛下来了 支持：丈夫进了医院，她对着他的老板说，不要让他感觉是个失败者，他是为了所有的受害者赌上他的所有，他的事业、他的家庭，不要让这样一个勇敢的人、不要让他觉得自己是失败者。

这类真实改编的电影真是不错，情节丰富，多角度的利益冲突，从不同人的立场来看待问题：主角、主角老婆、老板、受害者、大企业。

谁对谁错？

不一定重要，重要的是how to make things right.

《黑水》一位农民，一个集团，一位律师，开启了一段维权的故事，如果说纯粹是维权也不合适，不如说是维护家园的故事。

很多事实摆在眼前，可还有很多人视而不见，那些人不是良心坏了，是因为钱比良心重要，否则他们的良心比谁都好。

提出环保的是他们，破坏环境的也是他们，不知道是资本控制了权利还是权利的终极目标是资本。

试想一下，一个区域，资本和政权狼狈为奸，又设立了一个让大家信服的司法机构，这个机构还是由政权建立的，资本来给他们发工资，试问这个司法机构是独立的吗？

那么这个区域是不是比黑水所描述的更肮脏，更黑暗。

就像罗翔老师说的一句话“没有监管的权利就是最大的恶”。

故事到最后很扎心，一位农民这么说“这个世界没有人会帮我们，包括科学家，法律，政府，能帮我们都只有我们自己”，我们这个社会需要像罗这样的人，也需要那些能站出来敢于发声的人，他们维护的才是真正的和平和正义，一个社会的稳定不正需要这些吗？

我们唯一能做的就是支持。

4⭐↑

文/蠡湖野人（野评人）这部影片叫《黑水》。

标题为什么说你家锅有毒？

因为里面有一种材料叫特氟龙。

一、什么是特氟龙首先我们来了解一下本片的大佬——特氟龙，是个啥东西。

特氟龙是一个商标，英文叫Teflon®，是美国杜邦公司注册的。

它的化学名叫聚四氟乙烯（Polytetrafluoroethylene），英文缩写为PTFE，俗称“塑料王，哈拉”。

用它做成的材料，300℃才能分解，400℃才能水解，抗酸抗碱抗各种溶剂，连王水都溶解不了，再加上耐高温、摩擦系数低，广泛应用于原子能、国防、航天、电子、电气、化工、机械、仪器、仪表、建筑等领域。

民用领域也和我们的生活朝夕相伴，最常见的如不粘锅、雨衣雨具和衣服等。

二、特氟龙和杜邦公司杜邦是一家1802年诞生于美国的化学制品和销售公司，经营内容涉及食品、保健、家具、交通、服装等领域。

2018年总收入279.4亿美元，员工52000人，在世界五百强中排名171。

我在网上查证了资料，有和影片对得上的也有对不上的，对不上的部分我以影片为准。

接下来我以杜邦公司为主角，撸一下它与特氟龙的前世今生。

三、我对影片的看法首先，影片的话题意义超过艺术价值，这是毋庸置疑的。

电影对社会和法制的推动，韩国的《熔炉》是杰出代表，它直接推动政府出台了未成年人保护法，美国电影人也喜欢把一起起事件搬上银幕，让观众了解事件的始末，这无疑会加强民众对政府和公司的警惕性和监控，而且美国是个案例法的国家，作用就更大了。

《黑水》同个班底拍摄制作的另一部同类题材影片《聚焦》，获得了2016年奥斯卡最佳电影，推荐一看。

反过来看我们这里，现实题材的影片就少了点，我十分期待有人把华为251事件搬上银幕。

《我不是药神》开了个好头，但到目前为止还没有后续的作品接上。

值得一提的是，《我不是药神》》是现实题材改编，而且改得非常多。

真正好的现实题材电影是需要制作者从骨子里坚持现实主义的，我们这里可能有现实题材，但目前来看还缺乏现实主义。

其次，如上所述，影片的表现手法比较普通，一般观众容易觉得无聊，即使对于喜欢这类题材的观众，最后半小时也很差强人意，因为没有做到情绪上的连贯性。

如果说前面一个半小时通过一系列细节让人的情绪保持在一条水平线上（和《聚焦》相比确实很平），那最后半小时就往下滑了，直到最后也没有拉一个高潮起来。

导演和编剧也知道这一点，所以安排了比洛特夫妻吵架、晕倒送医的戏份，但故事进展到这样的环节，观众已经无法被主线之外的情节吸引。

第三，部分情节缺乏说服力，如一开始比洛特律师接下养殖场的案子，影片交代的动机是乡情，并且使用《乡村小路带我回家》来渲染情绪，固然感人，但理智上缺乏说服力。

又比如最后半部分，角色们全部处于等待状态，而等待的结果是杜邦公司反悔，作为一名资深律师，难道一开始没想到这一点？

影片中比洛特把责任都推给了政府和杜邦公司，这都是情绪上的宣泄。

如果影片在前面作出一些技术性的交代如杜邦公司的律师找出了法律漏洞留作后路，那杜邦公司的突然反悔就有说服力很多。

当然，影片还是非常值得一看的，尤其是对于关注社会新闻的朋友更是不可错过。

对于我来说，看完这部片子之后，多认识了一种叫特氟龙的人工合成材料，而且它就在我们身边（欧美国家已经禁止使用，我国国家质检总局2019年才开始开始论证特氟龙是否危害人体健康，目前仅靠厂商自觉）。

以后买锅碗瓢盆塑料制品这些东西查看组成材料的时候，就会特别注意聚四氟乙烯、PFOA、PFOS、C-8这些字眼了。

添加微信号paokaishubenxbb加入全国影迷群经作者授权发布，转载请注明作者和出处

你也许没有听说过Participant Media——参与者传媒，但你一定听说过去年大火的奥斯卡最佳影片《绿皮书》。

当然，如果你关注奥斯卡的时间再长久一些，你肯定还会了解2016年的奥斯卡最佳影片《聚焦》、18年的提名作品《华盛顿邮报》、以及刚在年底新鲜出炉的冲奥力作《黑水》。

而它们的背后都有一个共同的名字，那就是出品方——Participant Media(参与者传媒，以下简称“Participant”)。

关注每年年底的欧美颁奖季已经是我雷打不动的观影习惯之一。

每年这个时候，总有很多优秀电影通过在电影节上映，提名颁奖季等方式走进我们的视线。

颁奖季在商业片占据了影视行业的聚光灯几近一年后，人们终于将视线重新转回艺术片，得以让那些在视听上不那么绚丽夺目，却在人文表达上格外动人的艺术片在大浪淘沙的影视市场中脱颖而出，有机会在千万人眼中绽放它们的光芒。

而在这几年的颁奖季上，Participant绝对是其中的大赢家和佼佼者，提名无数，获奖众多，各种“小金人”拿到手软。

别的不说，手握的两座奥斯卡最佳影片奖就足以让它骄傲上一阵子了。

2016年，participant出品电影获奖现场但今天我们要讨论的，不是Participant的功绩或者工业化水准，而是它出品的一类重要作品——聚焦民主权益的长篇电影，以及它背后传递出的深刻的价值观。

在2016年的颁奖季中，我第一次关注到Participant的相关作品——也就是当年的奥斯卡最佳影片——《聚焦》。

那时候我还不了解Participant，甚至对这个名字闻所未闻，观看《聚焦》也纯粹是因为它有奥斯卡最佳影片这顶桂冠。

然而，当时我才16岁，浅薄的思想和学历并不能理解影片中表现出的精神内核。

尽管如此，但我看完这部电影，仍会意识到这是一部伟大而深刻的作品。

但它伟大的地方在哪儿？

它深刻的地方在哪儿？

我不知道。

但我知道，时间会给我答案。

时间也的确给了我一个答案。

当2017年底，在偶然的情况下，我重看了《聚焦》这部电影。

这一次，我完全地陷入了这个真实事件改编的故事里。

也是在那次观影后，出于对电影的兴趣，我开始了解影片的幕后故事。

也是在那是，我第一次认识了Participant，了解到这个有深刻价值观的出品公司。

《聚焦》讲述了一个并不复杂的故事:由“绿巨人”马克·鲁弗洛和瑞秋·麦克亚当斯为代表的“聚焦”栏目独立调查小组，毅然决然对抗美国宗教界，克服重重困难，最后将宗教人士性侵孩童的惊人真相公之于众。

但这样一个简单的故事，却传递出十分动人的精神内核，那就是记者群体对于真相的追求、系统的拷问和新闻自由的不懈追求。

美国是一个以基督教为国教的国家，宗教界具有极强的势力，因此才能数十年包庇性侵孩童的宗教人士，使“聚焦”小组的调查之旅步履维艰。

他们在法律界碰壁，在宗教界碰壁，在新闻业上级碰壁，甚至要承载受害者们“为时已晚”的指责。

但对于正义和真相的坚守，让他们赢得了最终的胜利。

可喜的是，影片没有把所有的成果都归功于“聚焦”这个调查小组，将其打造成一个英雄主义式的故事，而是从一个更宏观的角度，去抽丝剥茧地审视在这个现代版“螳臂当车”的社会故事里的每一个角色，每一道光影，试图阐述更高层次的概念。

这样的处理方式，在Participant之后出品的另外两部电影——17年的《华盛顿邮报》和19年的《黑水》——中，完美地承袭了下来。

从宏观的角度看，Participant的这三部作品有其异曲同工之妙。

这三部电影都是由真实事件改编，讲述小人物与大制度、大系统、大财阀对抗，寻求正义、公平和真相的故事。

《聚焦》讲述的是调查记者与宗教势力的对抗。

《华盛顿邮报》讲述的是媒体行业与政府的对抗;《黑水》讲述的是律师群体与垄断集团的对抗。

而这三部影片，也大多围绕新闻行业和法律行业来展开，目的昭然若揭:新闻和法律，是民众捍卫自身权益的重要武器。

只有活着的新闻行业，才能逼迫当权者吐露真相;只有活着的法律行业，才能逼迫当权者认错赔偿。

而在Participant出品的这三部电影中，我们看到的新闻业和法律行业，是活着的:调查记者们愿意相信受害者的“片面之词”，毅然开始对宗教系统的调查;报社主编愿意冒毕生事业毁于一旦的风险，不畏强权，将政府的丑闻公之于众;良心律师愿意为一群“不知好歹”的无辜百姓，对抗垄断大公司20年，只为讨回公道。

在他们眼中:

在影片中，主角们在捍卫弱势群体的权益，但在我们看来，他们更是在捍卫自己，捍卫这个国家的民主权益，他们在捍卫言论自由，捍卫新闻和出版自由，捍卫法律意识。

相信着言论自由和法律良知的信念推动着他们去对抗世界，而这个世界也用最后的成果回报他们，在我看来，这是一个美好如童话的良性循环。

但正如影片所表达的那样，建立一个公平公正公开的社会环境，不仅需要这些满怀赤子之心的工作者们，更需要一个对各方权力有所制衡和牵制的制度。

假如国家机器或者大财阀可以轻而易举地扼杀言论，甚至伤害这些追求正义与真相的有志之士，使“天下之人，不敢言而敢怒”，社会噤若寒蝉，那影片中美好结局也就无从谈起了。

而从影片内容回归现实世界:当你打开这三部电影的豆瓣主页，你会发现观众对这三部影片的评价都非常相似:“非常工整，四平八稳”“题材不新颖，情节没有水花”“太过主旋律，追求政治正确”。

也许在部分人看来，Participant出品的这几部影片像是一张张完成度极高，却不带感情色彩的“好莱坞答卷”，但我的看法却有所不同。

在我看来，这样的表现形式正是Participant有意而为。

在漂亮地完成剧本和表演之余，Participant展现出一种难能可贵的克制。

无论是《聚焦》也好，《华盛顿邮报》、《黑水》也好，影片都没有利用激昂的配乐和情节的冲突去刺激观众的情绪，而是让观众在一种冷静而克制的状态下，设身处地，一步步了解事情的真相，直至最后触碰到它内核时，情绪依然是平和的。

但当你回过头去品味，影片中展现的那种对民主、对自由、对平等的追求和向往，却在平静中显得更加深刻，动人，深入人心。

Participant的官方网页上，有一段“关于Participant”的介绍:Participant Media——参与者影业，是一家前沿的传媒公司，致力于激发和推动社会变革的娱乐活动。

也许Participant的电影，体现的也正是它自身的核心价值观:使电影不仅仅是娱乐，更是激发和推动社会变革的工具。

以铁肩扛道义，以妙笔著文章。

进入Participant的网站的每个人，都会首先看到这样的一行字:You are not a viewer. These are your stories. You are a Participant.Just act.你不是观众。

这些是你的故事。

你是参与者。

行动吧。

Participant，翻译过来便是“参与者”，也许这个小小的传媒公司，从名字就在向我们传达着一个讯息:我们每个人都是故事的参与者、戏中人，没有人能永远冷眼旁观，隔岸观火。

德国著名神学家兼信义宗牧师马丁·尼莫拉写过一首举世闻名的小诗，诗名叫《我没有说话》。

诗中是这样写的:起初纳粹杀共产党时，我没有出声——因为我不是共产党员；接着他们迫害犹太人，我没有出声——因为我不是犹太人；然后他们杀工会成员，我没有出声——因为我不是工会成员；后来他们迫害天主教徒，我没有出声——因为我是新教徒；最后当他们开始对付我的时候，已经没有人能站出来为我发声了。

迫害就像海上蔓延的雾，你永远不能期待它会在你面前停下来。

所以，也许保护自己最后的方式，不是独善其身，而且从一开始，就把自己当做一个参与者，把自己当成最初的那个共产党人，那个犹太人，那个工会成员，那个天主教徒，最后，当你把自己当成自己时，也会有千千万万的人站出来，把自己，当成你。

第一、什么是特氟龙首先我们来了解一下本片的大佬——特氟龙，是个啥东西。

特氟龙是一个商标，英文叫Teflon®，是美国杜邦公司注册的。

它的化学名叫聚四氟乙烯（Polytetrafluoroethylene），英文缩写为PTFE，俗称“塑料王，哈拉”，用它做成的材料，300℃才能分解，400℃才能水解，抗酸抗碱抗各种溶剂，连王水都溶解不了，再加上耐高温、摩擦系数低，广泛应用于原子能、国防、航天、电子、电气、化工、机械、仪器、仪表、建筑等领域。

民用领域也和我们的生活朝夕相伴，最常见的如不粘锅、雨衣雨具和衣服等。

第二、特氟龙和杜邦公司杜邦是一家1802年诞生于美国的化学制品和销售公司，经营内容涉及食品、保健、家具、交通、服装等领域。

2018年总收入279.4亿美元，员工52000人，在世界五百强中排名171。

我在网上查证了资料，有和影片对得上的也有对不上的，对不上的部分我以影片为准。

接下来我以杜邦公司为主角，撸一下它与特氟龙的前世今生。

1938年，化学家罗伊·普朗克特（Roy J. Plunkett）博士在杜邦公司的一个实验室中意外发现四氟乙烯。

1941年，杜邦公司取得四氟乙烯的专利。

1942年，四氟乙烯被用于美国曼哈顿计划（制造坦克外部材料），杜邦公司是主要参与者。

1944年，杜邦公司以"Teflon"的名称注册商标。

1954年，法国工程师马克·格雷瓜尔(Marc Gregoire)的妻子柯莱特(Colette)觉得特氟龙既然能防止钓鱼线打结，用在煎锅上效果一定不错。

同年，杜邦公司开始生产特氟龙，并迅速成为该公司最赚钱的流水线（3天7000万美金）。

1954年，供应商3M公司向杜邦公司递交关于聚四氟乙烯的毒性报告，报告显示其在白鼠实验中表现出导致胚胎畸形（主要是眼部）的危害性。

1954—1975年，杜邦自己做人体实验，将材料注入烟丝，派发香烟给工人抽。

特氟龙生产线出现多名工人生病早逝现象，死亡岁数30岁到50岁不等。

并有多名女性产下畸形婴儿，其中一名叫巴基贝利，在片中真人出现，只有一只眼睛一个鼻孔，且没长在正确位置，慎看。

1975年，位于西弗吉尼亚州（没错，就是《乡村小路带我回家》里深情歌唱的那个地方）杜邦公司堆料场旁边的一个养殖场出现200多头牛奇怪死亡的现象，没死的也表现出强烈的攻击性。

养殖场主厄尔田纳特（Erl Tenant）解剖了死牛，保存被感染的器官作为证据，并将解剖过程录成录像。

1980年代，杜邦公司检测特氟龙的毒性，作为对比，需要寻找血液中没有C-8（组成四氟乙烯的碳分子链）的血液样本，包括动物，结果找遍了全世界都没找到，最后在一名参加过朝鲜战争的美军士兵的血液样本中找到。

也就是说，50年代以后，几乎所有生物体中都有四氟乙烯的成分。

1998年，田纳特通过同乡关系找到律师罗伯特比洛特（Robert Bilott），也就是本片的主角，他是一位辩护律师，在影片开始，他刚刚成为所从事的律师事务所的合伙人，杜邦公司是这家律师事务所的最大客户。

比洛特接下案件，同年，他和杜邦公司总裁菲尔首次谈及此事，对方表示愿意配合。

1999年，比洛特和菲尔再次见面谈及此事，菲尔当众发怒。

出于法律程序，杜邦公司将1941年以后的所有材料都寄给比洛特，堆满了整个档案室。

比洛特推掉所有案件，以一己之力，花费一年时间将材料全部看完并逐一编号，并发现一种叫PFOA的化学物质，询问杜邦公司未果，转而咨询专家学者，并搞清楚了是其中一种叫C-8的碳分子链破坏了人体健康。

2000年，田纳特一家被同乡排挤，不久后夫妇俩检查出癌症。

杜邦公司派直升机全天候监视养殖场，田纳特手持猎枪，睡在皮卡上守护。

同年在比洛特的坚持下，杜邦公司同意民事调解，给予田纳特补偿（具体数字没有说）。

田纳特一开始不接受，在比洛特的劝说下同意。

一家人离开世代经营的养殖场，迁居镇上。

2001年，比洛特受到同事排挤，老板力排众议，继续支持他。

2002年，地方法院首次开庭审理杜邦案件，关于C-8含量的标准问题产生分歧，即究竟多少含量可被判定有害。

美国环保署1976年才开始检测化学物质，当时未建立标准，全靠企业自查。

同年，标准制定小组诞生。

2003年，为比洛特提供证据的其他受害人家庭受到攻击和排挤，其中包括在杜邦公司工作的当地居民。

2004年，比洛特质询当年对接3M公司毒性报告的杜邦公司化学工程师，证实了杜邦公司一开始就知道C-8的危害性但毫无作为。

杜邦公司同意支付1650万美元的罚款给环保署，支付7000万美元的费用给诉讼群体，其中包含了比洛特的律师事务所。

比洛特推动更多当地居民索取赔偿，但须执行医药监护，也就是将杜邦生产特氟龙所排放的废水废气和居民健康问题建立医学概念上的对等关系，该关系一旦确立，杜邦公司将支付2.35亿美元的赔偿。

由无利益关联的科学家组成的监护小组成立，其运作经费由律师事务所支付。

比洛特承担巨大压力。

2005年，截止到圣诞节前夕，有6.9万居民接受血液采样，每人获得400美元的报酬，由杜邦公司支付。

居民拖家带口来抽血，言词间流露出对杜邦公司的感激。

2006年，环保署起诉杜邦公司。

杜邦公司以之前没有标准为由，表示须等检测结果出来后再支付。

没有拿到赔偿的居民迁怒于比洛特和举证者。

比洛特被三次降薪，出现右手抖动症状。

2010年，比洛特因将过多精力投入到案件上忽略了家庭，夫妻矛盾爆发。

2011年，比洛特被第四次降薪，降到原来的三分之一，晕倒住院，查出为间歇性脑供血不足，近似于中风，压力太大导致。

2012年，检测小组调查结果公布，对等关系成立。

杜邦公司反悔，不愿支付赔偿。

比洛特懊恼之下转向群体诉讼策略。

2015年，群体诉讼案件开庭，共有3535起案件起诉杜邦公司，杜邦公司为此支付了6.707亿美元的赔偿。

同年，美国环保署禁止在民用商品中使用特氟龙。

2017年，聚四氟乙烯中的主要成分，PFOA和PFOS被列为2B类致癌物。

比洛特律师至今仍在为受到侵害的美国家庭办理诉讼。

第三、我对影片的看法 首先，影片的话题意义超过艺术价值，这是毋庸置疑的。

电影对社会和法制的推动，韩国的《熔炉》是杰出代表，它直接推动政府出台了未成年人保护法，美国电影人也喜欢把一起起事件搬上银幕，让观众了解事件的始末，这无疑会加强民众对政府和公司的警惕性和监控，而且美国是个案例法的国家，作用就更大了。

值得一提的是，《黑水》通个班底拍摄制作的另一部同类题材影片《聚焦》，获得了2016年奥斯卡最佳电影，推荐一看。

反过来看我们这里，现实题材的影片就少了点，我十分期待有人把华为251事件搬上银幕。

《我不是药神》开了个好头，但到目前为止还没有后续的作品接上。

值得一提的是，《我不是药神》》是现实题材改编，而且改得非常多。

真正好的现实题材电影是需要制作者从骨子里坚持现实主义的，我们这里可能有现实题材，但目前来看还缺乏现实主义。

其次，如上所述，影片的表现手法比较普通，一般观众容易觉得无聊，即使对于喜欢这类题材的观众，最后半小时也很差强人意，因为没有做到情绪上的连贯性。

如果说前面一个半小时通过一系列细节让人的情绪保持在一条水平线上（和《聚焦》相比确实很平），那最后半小时就往下滑了，直到最后也没有拉一个高潮起来。

导演和编剧也知道这一点，所以安排了比洛特夫妻吵架、晕倒送医的戏份，但故事进展到这样的环节，观众已经无法被主线之外的情节吸引。

第三，部分情节缺乏说服力，如一开始比洛特律师接下养殖场的案子，影片交代的动机是乡情，并且使用《乡村小路带我回家》来渲染情绪，固然感人，但理智上缺乏说服力。

又比如最后半部分，角色们全部处于等待状态，而等待的结果是杜邦公司反悔，作为一名资深律师，难道一开始没想到这一点？

影片中比洛特把责任都推给了政府和杜邦公司，这都是情绪上的宣泄，如果影片在前面作出一些技术性的交代如杜邦公司的律师找出了法律漏洞留作后路，那杜邦公司的突然反悔就有说服力很多。

当然，影片还是非常值得一看的，尤其是对于关注社会新闻的朋友更是不可错过。

对于我来说，看完这部片子之后，多认识了一种叫特氟龙的人工合成材料，而且它就在我们身边（欧美国家已经禁止使用，我国国家质检总局2019年才开始开始论证特氟龙是否危害人体健康，目前仅靠厂商自觉）。

以后买锅碗瓢盆塑料制品这些东西查看组成材料的时候，就会特别注意聚四氟乙烯、PFOA、PFOS、C-8这些字眼了。

Part 1 基本定義全氟化合物 (perfluorinated compounds, PFCs) 是一類碳鏈上氫原子全部被氟原子取代的有機化合物。

由於其良好的疏水、疏油特性，常被用作表面活性劑應用於紡織、造紙、金屬電鍍、油漆塗料、食品包裝等工業和民用領域，與人類生產生活密切相關。

由於PFCs穩定性極強，目前已在包括水、土壤、大氣等環境介質及生物體中大量檢出。

一如電影《黑水》中提及的PFOA與腎癌、睪丸癌、潰瘍性結腸炎、甲狀腺疾病、高膽固醇血癥和妊娠高血壓六種重疾相關，毒理學研究表明，PFCs具有致癌性、肝毒性、神經毒性、生殖毒性等。

全氟化合物可分為離子型類 (Ionic PFCs) 和非離子型化合物 (Non-ionic PFCs). 離子型全氟化合物又可分為全氟磺酸類化合物 (perfluoroalkyl sulfonic acids, PFSAs) 和全氟羧酸類化合物 (perfluoroalkyl carboxylic acids, PFCAs) 兩類。

非離子型化合物以全氟酰胺類化合物(perfluorooctane sulfonamides, FOSAMs) 和氟調聚醇類化合物 (Fluorotelomer acids, FTAs) 兩種應用最廣。

大部分全氟化合物產品含 4-14個碳原子，其中全氟辛烷 (C8) 產品占80%以上。

全氟辛烷磺酸及其鹽類 (perfluorooctane sulphonate, PFOS) 和全氟辛酸羧酸及其鹽類 (perfluorooctanoic acid, PFOA) 是PFCs的典型代表化合物。

此外，PFOS是在PFOSF酶催水解後形成的，也是全氟辛烷類表面活性劑產品的最終降解產物。

PFOA是生產氟化乙醇 (perfluorinated alcohol) 的副產品，在防水防污及水成膜泡沫 (AFFF)的產生過程中也會形成PFOA. 食品包裝袋中的氟化調聚物 (Fluorotelomer)降解時也會出現PFOA. 電影中杜邦公司生產特氟龍所使用的工業表面活性劑也含PFOA.近年來，PFOA和PFOS，作為全氟和多氟烷基物质 (PFAS) 或全氟化合物 (PFC) 的一組化學品的一部分，已被列入持久性有機汙染物(persistent organic pollutants,POPs) 的斯德哥爾摩公約附錄B和歐洲化學品管理局的第9批高度關註物質(substances of very high concern,SVHC)中。

持久性有機汙染物具備四種特性：高毒性、持久性、生物積累性、遠距離遷移性，顯然這意味著全氟化合物 (PFCs) 以其獨特的表面活性及化學穩定性，而被廣泛應用於生活、工業及科研等領域的產品中，其性質穩定可長距離遷移，具有生物富集性和生物毒性，是一種持久性有機污染物。

另外，電影《黑水》屢次提及的另一種人造化學物質－聚四氟乙烯 (Polytetrafluoroethylene, PTFE)，可在-180～260ºC长期使用。

Teflon是該聚合物的商標名稱。

目前，除PTFE外，杜邦公司也將商標用於FEP、PFA、ETFE、AF、NXT、FFR等樹脂上，但整個氟塑料產量的70%以上都是PTFE。

目前，聚四氟乙烯被世界衛生組織國際癌症研究機構作為3類致癌物列入致癌物清單，對人的致癌性尚無法分類，即對人致癌可疑。

Part 2 我們喝的水2016年，美國國家環境保護局 (the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency) 已將PFOS和PFOA總量的建議限值設定為70 ng/L (ppt)，部分州則採用更嚴格的標準，比如，佛蒙特州在2019年將標準提到20 ng/L，加州則提出了5.1 ng/L的標準。

中國目前尚未設定官方標準，但學界對此一直有推動研究。

1）中國居民飲用水清華大學針對18種PFASs調研了來自66個中國城市的526份水樣，並將其研究成果發佈在《歐洲環境科學》上。

其中，受PFASs污染最嚴重的是四川自貢 (502.9 ng/L)，江蘇連雲港 (332.6 ng/L)，江蘇常熟 (122.4 ng/L)，四川成都(119.4 ng/L)，江蘇無錫(93.6 ng/L)，浙江杭州(74.1 ng/L)，其次是廣西南寧(64.1 ng/L)，江蘇蘇州(61.3 ng/L)，雲南昆明(60.4 ng/L)和安徽巢湖 (59.9 ng/L) 。

研究者們也提供了與全氟化合物相關的工廠附近水樣的數據：

中昊晨光化工研究院有限公司位於四川自貢的一生產PTFE(特氟龍)的工廠的水樣測出高達3165 ng/L的PFOA數值。

該公司是中國化工集團公司下屬全資企業，主營產品之一就是電影裡提到的特氟龍。

這是不是中國版的杜邦事件我們不得而知，但我們更擔心的是中國或許沒有一個能夠戰勝杜邦的羅伯特·比洛特。

而且以中國的人口基數和長江流域人口密集程度，電影裡美國的數萬人將會是我們的數千萬中國人。

另一間被點名的江西 Liwen Industrial PFOA也被測出268的驚人數值，另外還有浙江巨化這家證券代碼 600160的上市公司，PFOA測出115.4ng/L. 相比之下，《黑水》提及的杜邦公司在廣東的工廠則被測出53.4的PFOA數值。

在居民飲用水問題上，如果用佛蒙特州2019年的標準來判斷，那麼66個中國城市中有39個城市RQ（判斷飲水健康風險）小於0.1，屬於風險小到可忽略類別，24個城市屬於中風險範圍，另外四川自貢、江蘇連雲港、江西九江是高風險地區。

中國西南部居民飲用水受到PFASs的污染最為嚴重，中國東部地區為第二嚴重區，其次是中國南部城市。

除局部環渤海帶城市外，中國北方城市受污染程度普遍較低。

在中國居民飲水所含的PFASs化合物的組成上，以PFBA，PFOA和PFOS為主。

2020年，歐洲針對FOA, PFOS, PFHxS和PFNA之集合給出的TWI標準（週允許攝入量）是4.4ng/kg body weight. 這一數值從2008年歐標的每日允許攝入量1500 ng/kg 降至如今的每週允許攝入量4.4 ng/kg，該標準並不是在說你攝入4.4就沒事，而是在說能不攝入就千萬不要攝入了。

66個城市中，有20％的城市屬於居民飲用水攝入PFASs超標的城市範圍。

在自貢、九江、連雲港、佛山、蘇州、無錫、海寧、常熟、石家莊、淄博、上海的全年齡組人口每日攝入PFOA量都超過 3 ng/kg/day （2018年美國標準）。

在連雲港、東莞、深圳、石家莊、無錫、香港、台北、佛山、廣州、濟南、巢湖、常熟的全年齡組每日攝入PFOS量在1.27 到 61.44 ng/kg/day之間，但對於9個月到1歲的嬰兒，每日攝入PFOS量是在 3.54 to 171.28 ng/kg/day 遠遠超過 2 ng/kg/day （2018年美國標準）。

特別要指出的是自貢市的每日攝入量是822.9 至 2975.1ng/kg/day. 超出美國美國毒物和疾病登記署 (ATSDR) 標準近千倍，如果這不是黑水，你告訴我，這是什麼？

清華研究團隊通過水樣城市計算得出在中國有9850萬屬於飲用水攝入PFASs超標人群。

然而，除清華大學該研究所涉及的66個城市外，還有其他研究團隊也針對其他城市做過研究，比如國家地質實驗測試中心曾在長江流域-江西段的水樣中共檢出了11種PFASs，其中PFOA檢出率是100%. 地表水中PFASs的濃度範圍為7.8-586.2 ng/L。

總體上，汙染水平呈中遊高於下遊、幹流高於支流、南昌市高於鄱陽湖的趨勢；長江幹流和支流以PFOA為主，而南昌市和鄱陽湖以短鏈的PFBS為主，表明不同地區的汙染物主要來源存在差異。

南昌市地表水中PFASs的濃度最高，為146.2- 586.2 ng/L，高於以往報道的其他高汙染地區。

如此看來，中國有超過一億人口屬於飲用水攝入PFASs超標人群。

2）地下水、土壤和沉積物。

根據兰州交通大学刘庆先生的論文，珠三角地區依然存在高濃度水平的PFCs。

在廣州和深圳兩處垃圾填埋場滲濾液中PFCs有高濃度檢出。

廣深垃圾填埋場滲濾液總濃度分別為735.4ng/L和338.2ng/L，以PFOA、PFOS及全氟壬酸（PFNA）為主要目標污染物。

於珠三角地區採集的6個污水處理廠, 污水中13種PFCs的總濃度介於2.7594.58ng/L，主要的PFCs污染物為全氟辛烷羧酸（PFOA）和全氟辛烷磺酸（PFOS），活性污泥中PFCs總濃度介於6.5626.68ng/g之間， PFOS是主要目標物質。

廣州、中山、深圳、東莞及清遠5個珠三角城市地下水採樣點中100%檢出PFCs污染，地下水檢出總PFCs濃度介於0.05654.07ng/L，其中東莞受污染最大。

地下水中檢出目標物質以短中碳鏈的全氟羧酸及磺酸類物質為主，長碳鏈檢出率較低。

珠三角地區所有地下水採樣點中檢出PFCs濃度之間存在顯著相關（P0.05），說明這些污染物可能存在相似污染源。

因此，珠三角地區PFCs污染源是垃圾填埋場滲濾液、污水處理廠及城市排污河等典型污染源。

2019年11月，發改委根據《關於持久性有機污染物的斯德哥爾摩公約》將全氟辛烷磺酸（PFOS）和全氟辛烷磺酰氟（可接受用途為限制類）列為落後產品。

3）怎么做 What to Do If There Is a PFOA/PFOS Water Advisory1944年，NSF(National Sanitation Foundation，即美國國家衛生基金會)成立於密歇根大學公共衛生學院，並開始將公共衛生和食品安全要求標準化。

透明的、以共識為基礎的標準開發過程促成了NSF International開發出其第一個關於蘇打水冷飲機和便餐設備的標準，這也形成了NSF International開發其他公共衛生和安全標準的流程。

至今，NSF已經開發了超過80個公共衛生和安全方面的美國國家標準。

1990年NSF正式更名為NSF International，並持續為食品、水、環境和消費品領域提供服務。

NSF International的官網專門指出，如果你發現你的居民用水含過量全氟化合物，千萬不要煮沸水來飲用。

這和中國人的習慣息息相關，因此格外需要注意。

含有全氟辛烷磺酸/全氟辛烷磺酸的沸水实际上会浓缩污染物。

如有可能，也需要在咨詢當地水务局关于饮用水、烹饪水、洗澡水、洗碗水、宠物饮用水或过滤水的建议。

NSF International的官網提供 NSFP473认证（滤除PFOA全氟辛酸及PFOS全氟辛烷磺酸）的相關企業認證。

如有購買淨水器需求的朋友，可以上該官網驗證對方的資質。

Part 3 愛美的世界數十年間，已有超過 4800 種已知 PFAS 被用於商業用途，一場健康危機正在醞釀之中。

全球各地的法規指南和限製要求各不相同。

隨著在環境中發現新的 PFAS，並獲得更多的毒理學信息，勢必會出臺更嚴格的法規。

中國生態環境部公告2019年第10號《關於禁止生產、流通、使用和進出口丹林等持久性有機汙染物的公告》中規定 在物質和產品中不得使用PFOS及其鹽類。

在食品安全國家標準（GB 31604.35-2016）中， 對食品接觸材料及製品PFOS和PFOA的測定做出了具體規定， 檢出限為1.0 ng/g，定量限為2.0 ng/g。

全氟和多氟烷基物質（PFAS）持久性强且潜在有毒，添加到化妝品之後可以提高耐用性和耐水性。

但是，我國《已使用化妝品原料目錄》和《化妝品禁用原料目錄》目前針對全氟化合物的指導是空白的。

美國食品藥物監督管理局 (Food and Drug Administration, FDA) 提供一個名為自願化妝品注册計畫（VCRP）的報告系統，供在美國進行商業分銷的化妝品製造商、包裝商和分銷商使用。

根據該VCRP系統信息顯示，在2019-2020年的9個月期間，約有21種PFAS被反覆用作化妝品成分。

以零售管道出售給消費者的化妝品的標籤按照占主導地位的降序排列。

用作化妝品成分的一些常見PFAS包括PTFE（聚四氟乙烯）、全氟辛基三乙氧基矽烷、全氟壬基二甲基醚、全氟十二烷和全氟己烷。

PFAS 被廣泛用於化妝品中，包括乳液、清潔劑、指甲油、剃須膏、粉底、口紅、眼線、眼影和睫毛膏。

這些PFAS用於化妝品中，以調節和平滑皮膚，使其看起來有光澤，或影響產品的一致性和質地。

同時，因為注册和產品上市是自願的，這些數據不能用於就注册化妝品中PFAS的類型和數量得出明確結論，也不能用於確定哪些化妝品可能含有PFAS卻沒有在VCRP中注册。

然而，2021年6月15日《環境科學與技術快報》上由美國和加拿大學者提供的重磅調研結果，將大眾和監管者的目光再次投向PFAS. 該研究使用粒子感應伽馬射線發射光譜法對美國和加拿大購買的231種化妝品進行了全氟篩選。

結果顯示美國和加拿大超過半數的在售化妝品含氟。

在測試的八個類別中，粉底霜、睫毛膏和唇部產品（口紅、唇膏等）的總氟含量最高≥0.384μgf/cm2。

大多數被測試產品的成分清單並沒有披露PFAS的存在，這暴露了美國和加拿大標籤法的漏洞。

無獨有偶，實際上早在2018年EWG數據庫就已經檢出了15個化妝品品牌中66個產品含PFAS的問題，其中包括倩碧等耳熟能詳的大牌。

事實上，化妝品中的PFAS檢測和定量極具挑戰性。

並非所有可能在化妝品中發現的PFA都可以輕易量測，因為可能無法獲得化合物的特定“指紋”或分析標準，畢竟某些化妝品中PFAS作為雜質或成分的濃度範圍從十億分之一到百萬分之一百。

顯然，針對PFAS需要進行更多的研究來確定：1）化妝品中全氟辛烷磺酸的毒理學特徵；2）化妝品中各種PFA可通過皮膚吸收的程度；3）對人類健康的潛在風險。

除化妝品外，在珠寶首飾和鐘錶行業，PFAS用於珠寶首飾水洗後的乾燥環節。

PFPE用作鐘錶行業的潤滑劑，比如Rolex劳力士。

雖然，在上述內容上，PFAS研究還需要進一步明確。

但無可辯駁的是，含有PFAS的化妝品的製造、使用和處置都是健康和生態系統損害的潜在機會。

我們潔面後的化妝品液體會進入我們的飲水體系，我們廢棄的化妝品會成為毒害土壤的填埋品。

PFAS由於它的穩定性，因此極難降解。

在全球，PFAS氾濫的今天，8月歐盟最近再次更新它對PFAS的政策，這一次範圍更廣也更加嚴格。

相信很多人看了《黑水》都會重新檢視自己的生活和消費是否也和PFAS掛勾，下面列出一些已公開PFAS-free 政策的公司：化妝品（全線去除PFAS）：H&M (自制產品PFASfree)、歐萊雅 L’Oréal、 Lumene、the Body Shop、Isadora、Kicks 衣服（全線去除PFAS）：華倫天奴、Burberry、Benetton、Comptoir des Cotonniers、 Esprit、H&M、Zara、Levi’s、UNIQLO、Fast Retailing、Inditex、Lidl、NIKE、李寧、Puma、M&S、mango、Theory、G-Star、Limitedbrands、Tschibo、Tesco、Coop、C&A、Aldi、rewe、Helmut Lang、J Brand、Elvine、Kaufland、Miroglio、Primark快餐：Taco Bell 2025年之前全面去除。

麥當勞包裝紙不含，但包裝袋和包裝盒含。

家具（全線去除PFAS）：IKEA鞋品：AllBirds (Mizzle products)、Adidas (99% of products PFASfree)、Keen (95% PFASfree; remaining 5% mostly workboots)、Reebok (99% of products PFASfree)查看PFAS Free可使用的NGO網站：https://www.pfasfree.org.uk/current-initiatives/pfas-free-products#cosmetics查看你的化妝品安全性一定要使用的網站：https://www.ewg.org/skindeep/資料來源 Retrieve from:https://www.rsc.org/suppdata/d0/em/d0em00291g/d0em00291g1.pdfhttps://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdf/10.1021/acs.estlett.1c00240https://www.researchgate.net/publication/348417317_Per-_and_polyfluoroalkyl_substances_PFASs_in_Chinese_drinking_water_risk_assessment_and_geographical_distribution