The EPA has known for years, that PFAS chemicals are hazardous to human health and the environment
yet industrial giants 3M and DuPont managed to flood our drinking waterways with that
product and that toxin. Joining me to talk about this is attorney Madeline Pendley, you
know, Madeline, what strikes me is I look at this fellow right here, probably a 3M employee
he’s in, he’s in the Tyvek suit, got gloves on. He’s got a mask on. He is set to where
if this stuff gets on him, he can save himself. Right.
You know what the ugly part of it is, this is the same stuff they’re putting in our
drinking water. Exactly. He’s decked out to protect himself.
But when it comes to the rest of us, the firefighters that use this stuff, the people who get it
in their drinking water, we’re not protected at all. And so to back up a little bit, that
term PFAS that you mentioned that actually encompasses a class of thousands of different
dangerous chemicals, as you know. So in particular, we’re going to be talking about C8 and those
chemicals also very dangerous. Interestingly, despite being so dangerous, they were using
a ton of different consumer products like Teflon. You’re familiar with that. Scotchgard
and most recently, what’s called AFFF or firefighting foam, which is what we’re going
to talk about today. Yeah. What we, what we found in the trial
that I tried up in Ohio was that they had tons of experiments to show that it would
cause cancer. It would cause birth defects. It would cause a whole issue, a whole line
of health problems that they didn’t tell the public. Now here’s what’s important.
It’s in your drinking water now. Exactly.
More than likely if you’re in a big urban area, this is in your drinking water, there
is no safe level. They say, oh, well, you know, there’s a, there is no safe level,
right? Right. So they have studies, both 3M and DuPont,
going back to the 1950s saying that this stuff, one, builds up in your blood. You know, once
it’s there, it stays there. They have studies in the 60s, classifying it as a toxin in their
internal documents. Didn’t tell anybody that. In the 70s they learned it continues
to build in your blood. In the 80s, they went so far as to remove their female employees
from the factories because they learned that PFOS exposure could harm their unborn children
and like you said, cause very serious birth defects. And even in the 90s, they learned
that their employees were more at risk for cancer development and death than the general
population. But they didn’t tell anybody. Yeah. Well now, DuPont, is the case that I
tried in Ohio and the information they had in their files was something they kept secret.
Right. You know, and, and now we’re just catching
up. If you were to talk to 10 people and you were to say, what do you know about PFOS or
PFAS? They don’t even know what you’re talking about.
Right. So the biggest delivery system right now is
through, as you point out, AFFF firefighting material, right?
Yes. And so the way that works, it’s, it’s what you think about they use to put out fires
in aircraft fires usually very large, very hot oil based fires. Spray the foam on there,
it deprives the flame of oxygen and it does work much more quickly than water would. And
so 3M to kind of launch this product had to get a little bit creative, did two main things.
One, they pitched this product to the air force at a very vulnerable time for our military
branches. We had recently had several very tragic events where we lost service members
due to flames who were not able to put out in time. In comes 3M with their miracle product.
You know, the air force picks it up and they start using it all over the country, you know,
contaminating water all over the country because they didn’t know this was dangerous. The
other thing they did was they sold it to airports, just your everyday commercial airports and
they actually helped create a regulation that required airports to purchase this type of
foam. So they created a regulation that would ensure there’s a market for their product.
Again, didn’t tell the airports how to properly clean this stuff up or what it could do to
the people who are using it and that are exposed to it.
Yeah. The ugly part about it is, and you know, we’re going to be at some point, well, look
to understand it, all you have to do is watch the movie, “The Devil We Know.”
Right. It’s on Netflix. It’ll tell you everything
you want about it. There’s really nothing secretive about this right now. All of the
facts are out there. They came out in the DuPont case that was, that we tried up in
Ohio, but nevertheless, people don’t know about it. There’s another great movie, you
know, it’s called, “Dark Waters,” but the Netflix movie, you can just go to Netflix
and it’ll, “The Devil We Know” will tell you the whole story. So my point is,
there are no secrets. I mean, everything we’re talking about is in the public domain right
now. Right.
We don’t, can’t talk about what’s not in the public domain, but there’s so much
out there that people can look at and understand, but they have to, they have to educate themselves,
don’t they, about have dangerous this is. They do, and they have to learn what products
this stuff is in. It’s not enough to know that just, you know, the term PFOS means it’s
dangerous. What all does that encompass? What all products are exposed to that. A lot of
people didn’t know that fast food packaging contains variations of PFOS. You know, the
food is soaking in it, and then it goes into your body and you absorb it. And I don’t
think people know that it’s in our drinking water due to things like firefighting foam.
You know, what’s remarkable, 3M put all this product on the market. You know what
they’re selling now, they’re selling a home filter system for $6,000 that you can
buy to get their stuff out of your drinking water so you can feel safe about your children
taking showers and drinking this stuff everyday. They’re actually making money now by selling
the solution, in about $6,000 you can add it to your home.
Right. They want you to pay for it though.
For they problem that they caused, exactly. Right. So I got, I guess where this lands
right now is there’s, there’s litigation pending.
Right. As litigation, as litigation progresses, when
it’s over, the whole story will be told. It’s a startling story. It’s a, it’s
a remarkable story, but at least “The Devil We Know” on Netflix begins to tell the story
a little bit. It does.
Thank you for joining me. Okay. Thank you.
Johnson and Johnson has reserved almost $4 billion to settle tens of thousands of lawsuits
over cancer causing baby powder. Attorney Steve Luongo joins me to talk about this.
Steve, your reaction is the same as mine, $4 billion is not enough. People are dropping
like flies from ovarian cancer that this company knew about. They've been punished so many
times in lawsuits. It's almost like they're running into the wall, bashing their head
up against the wall, thinking something's going to change. Nothing's going to change.
These facts don't change. This is a company that screwed up major and they know it.
Exactly. And talking about the facts, they've known since the seventies, internal documents
have shown that the presence of asbestos was in their talcum powder. They didn't warn the
FDA. They didn't warn their consumers. And here we are, several decades later, women
are developing mesothelioma, but primarily that ovarian cancer, which these lawsuits
are coming down on and coming down on Johnson and Johnson hard with major verdicts.
Okay. The significance of mesothelioma is that asbestos is the cause of, of, of mesothelioma.
It's a, what they call a scar based cancer. I've tried a lot of these cases. This is the
same analysis here. This is a scar based injury that is effecting, effecting women, the ovaries
of women. It's, it's causing scarring in there and resulting in cancer. Now, they've known
they had asbestos in their talc for a long time, true?
Absolutely. Yes, sir. So they've known, like I said, the internal documents have shown
since the seventies that the, the specialists was present in their documents or in their
products rather. As well as studies that have been going on since the seventies, I think
the first study came out in 1971 that showed a possible link between talcum powder and
ovarian cancer. That study was well known, well published. Documents throughout the eighties
and nineties, as well as surveys and studies throughout that time period, showed that they
were well aware of the risk of ovarian cancer, as well as the presence of asbestos.
You did a checklist for me saying the number of times, hit for $100 million, okay. Hit
for $30 million. Hit for $4.6 billion. Hit for $25 million. Hit for $37 million. Hit
for $417 million. Hit for $110 million. The company, here's what's happening, I promise
you. The CEO does not want to give it up because it's going to happen on his or her watch.
This is how it happened. You don't want to make it, you don't want to pay out the big
money on your watch. You want to wait till the next CEO comes along and pay it off. There's
a real ugly story to this side, you know what it is? It is that Wall Street is controlling
lawyers who take money from Wall Street. They get loans from organizations like Fortress
and you know, the big, the big hedge funds. They're taking money from those people to
where they can't settle the cases. So it's both sides, it's Johnson and Johnson and some
of these lawyers who are, who are moneyed up from Wall Street, which should never happen
with a plaintiff's lawyer. What's your take on that?
Well, the dam is going to break. We know that last year Johnson and Johnson made some significant
moves. We talked about the a hundred million that they set aside, the deal with women and
a thousand lawsuits approximately, where asbestos was found there. They've also set aside through
their financial documents, the four billion that you talked about earlier, and they removed
the baby powder with talc entirely from the market back in May of 2022.
But what happens when Wall Street tells a claimant's lawyer, okay, you've got a thousand
cases, you have to hold out for more money, even though it's a good settlement. That means
Wall Street, here's what I'd recommend. People need to ask their lawyer. Are you taking money
from Wall Street? And you as a plant, a claimant's lawyer, are you taking money from Wall Street?
Because if you are it's Wall Street, making the decisions about whether you should settle
the cases or not. These cases should be settled. The trials, one trial after another, they've
been hammered. The CEO needs to give it up right now and say, look, I'm the guy that
maybe has to pay out all the money, but I'll live with it. Got about 30 seconds. What's
your take? Well right now with the litigation and there
is the MDL up in New Jersey that has approximately 25,000 cases.
We are full disclosure, we're helping to run that MDL.
We are, we are, and we're not taking Wall Street money and we're fighting for them.
We're trying to get the settlements. Obviously we're looking at that 4.6 million or billion
dollar settlement and verdict that came in St. Louis. The final appeal of that hasn't
been determined yet, but that's definitely a governing factor. Right now, the judge in
the MDL, MDL has issued us as well as the opposing side, to go and select the bellwether
cases. I think that's really going to start getting some traction with this case.
That means, choose the case that you want to go to trial with. When that happens, things
start moving. Absolutely.
This company can't take many more hits. The CEO in charge right now needs to make a very
important decision. Do I want this company to stay alive or do I want to be the CEO who
puts an end to Johnson and Johnson? Because I'm worried about my exit package. That's
what's, that's what's at stake here. Thank you for joining me, Steve.
Thank you, sir.