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dark waters movie - is that stuff actually real or just hollywood

Patient · · 8 views
So I watched Dark Waters last night with my wife and it got me thinking about all the contamination stuff that goes on and nobody talks about it. The movie's about DuPont and that lawyer guy, Mark Ruffalo playing him. But is that actually what happened or did they make it all dramatic for the cameras.

I'm asking because I've been doing some reading since my meso diagnosis and there's a lot of sketchy stuff companies knew about and just didn't tell people. Makes me wonder how much of that movie was real.

Anyway the reason I'm bringing it up is because I was exposed to asbestos brake dust for like 30 years at the shop, and I'm wondering if there's a pattern here where companies just know this stuff is killing people and they cover it up. DuPont knew about PFOA contamination in West Virginia and they basically covered it up for decades. That's the Dark Waters story.

So yeah, the movie is based on a real lawsuit. Mark Ruffalo's character is based on a real lawyer named Rob Bilott who actually sued DuPont. The contamination happened in Parkersburg, West Virginia and it was in the water and everything. The company knew it was toxic and they didn't warn people.

Makes me think about the asbestos guys. They knew. They absolutely knew back in the 70s when I was breathing that brake dust in. Same pattern, different poison.

Has anyone else looked into whether their exposure company tried to hide stuff

4 Replies

Patient
They knew. I'm absolutely certain they knew because I've been digging through decades of internal memos and research papers since my diagnosis in November. Johns-Manville had studies dating back to the 1930s showing asbestos caused lung disease, and they actively suppressed that data. It's not speculation, it's documented.

Dark Waters is actually pretty faithful to what happened with DuPont. The lawyer Rob Bilott is real, the PFOA contamination is real, and yeah, they covered it up for years while people drank poisoned water. My oncologist actually mentioned the parallel when we were discussing my peritoneal mesothelioma. He said the asbestos companies followed almost the exact same playbook that DuPont did.

What's infuriating is the timeline. My exposure was 1978 to 1985 at the Manville plant here in Cleveland. By then we already knew asbestos was dangerous. The Surgeon General had warned about it in 1964. But they kept using it anyway, kept telling workers it was safe, and kept making money. I have journal entries from my early symptoms in 2023 that I didn't even connect to asbestos at the time because nobody ever told me it was a risk.

If you're looking into your company's knowledge, check if there's litigation history or if they settled cases quietly. Sometimes that paper trail tells you everything. The companies knew the same way DuPont knew about PFOA. The only difference was which chemical was killing us.
Attorney ✓ Expert Response
What Patricia mentioned about the memos is exactly what made asbestos litigation so significant legally. Those internal documents became the backbone of thousands of cases starting in the late 1970s. The Sumner Simpson papers, discovered during the Raybestos litigation around 1977, showed industry executives literally writing to each other about suppressing research. One letter from 1935 discussed keeping a study "confidential" so it wouldn't cause "undue alarm."

The DuPont/PFOA situation Rob Bilott uncovered follows the same basic pattern and honestly it's not Hollywood drama, it's just... how it tends to go with profitable industrial chemicals.

For brake dust specifically, there's documented evidence that manufacturers knew chrysotile asbestos fibers were being released during grinding and pad replacement. Some internal studies go back to the early 1960s. Whether that evidence is accessible and usable in your particular case depends on which manufacturers supplied your shop and what state you're in, because statutes of limitations and discovery rules vary quite a bit.

Worth talking to an asbestos attorney about what documentation might still exist for your exposure period. The paper trail from those decades is more substantial than most people realize.
Patient
Yeah that's exactly what I'm talking about, those memos prove they knew. The Sumner Simpson stuff from the 30s is wild, like they were literally sitting around deciding not to tell people. And then they kept doing the same thing for decades after that. Makes you mad when you think about it.

Did that kind of documentary evidence end up being what won most of those cases back then, or was there other stuff that mattered too?
Attorney ✓ Expert Response
The Dark Waters comparison is actually pretty apt legally. The Bilott case established something we see echoed in asbestos litigation constantly, which is that internal knowledge is the whole ballgame. DuPont had toxicology data on PFOA going back to the 1950s and the court record on that is public.

With brake dust specifically, the friction product manufacturers had their own internal testing programs running through the 60s and 70s. Some of those documents surfaced in discovery around 2001, 2002 and they showed awareness of fiber release at levels that were... let's say concerning. Same pattern Rob Bilott uncovered, just a different industry.

So yeah, your instinct about the pattern is sound. Whether that documentation is relevant to your specific exposure situation depends on which manufacturers' products were in your shop, which varies a lot by jurisdiction and by what's still available in the bankruptcy trust system. Consult an attorney about your particular circumstances, but the short answer to your original question is no, they didn't make that part up for Hollywood.

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