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PARKERSBURG -- A documentary about C8 contamination in the Mid-Ohio Valley has been added to Netflix.
"The Devil We Know" by awarding-winning director Stephanie Soechtig is about how an investigation by a Washington Bottom farmer into why his cattle were dying led to the discoveries that C8, once used by DuPont to make Teflon at the Washington Works, affected water supplies in the region and may cause six diseases in humans.
The documentary alleges DuPont attempted to cover up the effects of C8, also called PFOA.
The documentary premiered at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival.
It was shown in October at the Smoot Theatre in Parkersburg through the efforts of Andrew Brownfield of Charlotte, N.C., and Ben Hawkins of Arlington, Va., former residents of Parkersburg who were childhood friends of the late Dr. Michael Cox, who died in 2017 from pancreatic cancer at the age of 42.
Netflix is a streaming service providing numerous shows.
The heroes of the story were not the attorneys, but ordinary people, said Harry Deitzler, an attorney in the original C8 lawsuits against DuPont that led to the study by the C8 Science Panel of the health data from about 70,000 residents of the Mid-Ohio Valley.
Among those was Wilbur Tennant, who first documented the death of his cows, which grazed in a field adjacent to DuPont, with video and narration, Deitzler said. What Tennant did eventually had a worldwide impact, Deitzler said.
"He had the vision…the perception of the reality of what was going on…and documented it when nobody else had a clue," Deitzler said.
Tennant didn't live long enough to see the significance of what he did, Deitzler said.
"You can tell by his narration he knew what was going on," Deitzler said.
The other heroes were local residents Dr. Paul Brooks and the late Art Maher of BrookMar, the company that organized and obtained the health data studied by the Science Panel, Deitzler said. It was the largest health study in the history of the world, he said.
"That was totally unprecedented," Deitzler said.