now this is a movie that has nothing to do it doesn't it's not political this is about the environment where which is not a political animal the environment doesn't care whether you're left right or center the environment affects everybody so mark when you first heard about this story what hit you and you said oh no got to do this I guess the enormity of it and how long it's actually been going on it's probably one of the greatest cover-ups in American history and it affects everyone in the world now yes and no nobody knows about
it yeah when you say do now no more when you say it affects everyone what do you mean well PFOA it's pretty much everywhere they first found it in the Eagle eggs and and that's that's what kind of raised the alarm in the first place but they found River it's in polar bears it's a 99% of all living creatures on the planet it's in all of us here it's a chemical it's a captive chemical it's persistent it lasts forever and it bioaccumulates in US and there's no way to get rid of it once it's in
US and it's linked to definitively linked to six major diseases okay and you read about it in a New York Times article I read about it in this annual Rich's New York Times article and the title of it was the the lawyers that became DuPont's worst nightmare and that's robbed a lot and you just decided to give him a call no it was much more complicated but by the time I I started to get into it there was several people in Hollywood already trying to get the rights to it Wow well I I saw Bob
when the clip came on you almost looked pain stricken but you've been fighting for the past 20 years on behalf of 70,000 people in West Virginia who believed that they had been poisoned by the hazardous chemical the DuPont dumped into their water and it was a big risk for you and it took over your entire life but kudos to you counselor for using your law degree take on this fight well you know as you just heard from mark we're talking about a massive public health threat you know this is something where when we first found
out about it it was affecting we thought one farm one family then we realized this was a chemical that was in the entire surrounding communities drinking water and as we kept digging through the documents and seeing all these documents that really nobody else had seen we realized this stuff was in water all over the country all over the world and not just that was getting in everybody's blood of this mark indicated this stuff when it gets in our blood it sticks and it stays there and it builds up over time you know we're now talking
about probably one of the the biggest environmental contamination stories and history and most of us still don't know about it well you know we know about Flint Michigan one water supply yet here we're talking about something that's in water all over the world in all of our blood in animals polar bears eagles and we're all just now starting to hear about this because this information was withheld and covered up for four years but they always do isn't it isn't that typical we saw Erin Brockovich we saw that movie and we know what that Love Canal
which was another cover-up story that's what they do according to the New York Times the Trump administration is trying to roll back more than 80 environmental rules and regulations I don't know if they're they were able to do it so easily there's a lot of pushback but including the Clean Water Act for God's sakes think that everybody drinks speak to that if you will well I mean that's disastrous and you know we have a if you care about your water and you want clean water then you know what to do in 2020 yeah but the
real truth of this is this transcends any one presidency or administration this has been going on for 50 years this movie is fantastic and I just hope everyone goes out and watches it but for people watching this show right now what can the normal everyday person do to help fight for clean drinking water because we all need that I mean one of the things I think you'll see in the movie you know is we're talking about a community that came together and started speaking out and saying we're not going to put up with this we
want this out of our water and really what we're trying to do is make sure that none of the other communities that are finding out almost every day that this chemicals and their water somewhere across the country they don't have to do what that community did it took them 20 years to bring this story out so that people don't have to do this again but there's a great coalition that's being put together in conjunction with the movie of community groups and environmental organizations that have been working on this for years making information available where is
this chemical still used where what kind of products can I switch to that don't use this what companies are switching away from it so a lot of that information is going to be made available here with the release of the movies yeah and also respect your whistleblowers because they are the ones to really out this type of behavior this guy is a hero he really is [Applause] he's a hero he's a hero not because you want to be him but because you see how hard it was to be him yeah he really took the journey
that very few of us take and it's an honor to be sitting here with them and it's an incredible story it's it's exciting it's dangerous but you're important to mark because you picked up on the story it made a movie so that people understand what's going on well they're important person too thank you yes you know Jane Fonda was just here last week to talk about her climate change protests cuz you know you've been arrested four times that we know of right now and and she asked a lot of folks to join her in tonight
who you might be taking a little trip I was asked to join and I'm gonna join her in December excellent yeah it's so nice to be you with the two of you I'm not we've not met oh yeah he's been here come every time he's you know thanks to Mark Ruffalo and Rob Bello dark waters is in theaters on November 22nd and Robert has written a new book about his fight against DuPont called exposure you
