In this podcast episode, EWG President and Co-founder Ken Cook speaks with environmentalist Kari Rhinehart, who suffered the loss of a child due to a rare brain tumor. When other children in her Franklin, Ind., community started to get sick, she and other parents tried to find out why – and in doing so collected data revealing contamination in their drinking water.
Cook also spoke with Rhinehart’s attorney, Chris Nidel, a former chemical engineer turned environmental lawyer, about the industrial pollution that led to the contamination.
As EWG has documented for years, companies throughout the U.S. have polluted drinking water supplies with the “forever chemicals” known as PFAS and almost countless other chemicals. EWG’s landmark Tap Water Database provides details on regulated and unregulated contaminants in drinking water supplies in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.
Many of these chemicals are present at significant levels that could pose health threats to people who drink the water. And it’s not just drinking water that can create risks, as the public can be exposed to toxic chemicals through what they eat, the cosmetics they use, their cleaning products at home and more.
Disclaimer: This transcript was compiled using software and may include typographical errors.
###
Ken: Hello, everyone. Ken Cook here, and I'm having another episode. Today, I'm speaking with someone I've been following for some time and who I heard speak earlier this year at a symposium on the topic of the brain, our environment, and the impacts that chemicals can have on our bodies, and the kinds of health outcomes that come along with that exposure.
Kari Rhinehart is one of the people who really makes me stop and think about what I do as a full time environmentalist. How I go about it, and especially why. I think her story will make you stop and think too. People come to environmental work in all different ways. And Kari's story is especially compelling, to put it mildly.
Kari is a person who illustrates how deeply the connection between the environment and human health runs, how our environment impacts families and communities, and especially the power one person can have to affect change. Kari, welcome to the podcast. I'm tickled that you're able to join us. Thank you for taking your time.
Kari: Hi, Ken. Thank you for having me. It's my honor as well. Thank you so much.
Ken: Let's dive into it, and environmentalism doesn't start off the same way for everybody. Can you tell us a little bit of background about how you came to experience or understand the pollution in your community near Franklin, Indiana, and the tragic consequences for your family?
Kari: So in 2014, my oldest daughter, Emma Grace, was 13 years old and had gone to a routine eye exam. With her dad and I was working that day in the ER and I got a text from her dad and he said, do you know what papilledema is and that is optic nerve swelling and the eye doctor had seen it that day and Emma and I said, bring her to me because it's indicative of brain swelling and that day we checked her into my ER and we found a brain tumor that ended up being a glioblastoma.
Which is extraordinarily rare in children. It's the same tumor that Ted Kennedy had Joe Biden's son had it. You see it in older men, usually not in teenage girls. My world imploded of course. And the focus. Went directly to Emma and taking care of her. Unfortunately with glioblastomas, the survival rate is incredibly low and in children, it's even lower as most people know.
Pediatric cancer research gets miniscule amount of money towards it and pediatric brain research is even worse. We knew we didn't have a lot of time and so three months later Emma died. And I had no idea why when you're in this situation, most of the time the answer is bad luck. Yeah, it's just luck of the draw and it turns out that's total bullshit Because it's not bad luck a 13 year old doesn't get a glioblastoma because of bad luck what we later learned in our community You know teenagers don't get ovarian cancer We don't get teenage boys with testicular cancer and you know all these other crazy cancers that turned out there were You Three other girls in a two block radius in two years with brain tumors that weren't DIPGs, which are the most common type of brain tumors in kids.
They were all rare Pediatric brain tumors. Nobody knew that until we started putting them on a map But what happened was about a year after Emma died Another mom had noticed there were a lot of kids from our county and a nurse at the hospital made a comment Oh, we see a lot of kids from your area And that triggered in her to start reaching out to the media.
And that kind of snowballed from there and Sandra Chapman, she's a TV reporter. She really dug in and that was the first time after that story came out was the first time I ever heard that there was An EPA Superfund site within a half a mile of my house I had no idea
Ken: And EPA had been trying to remediate that site for a long time at what point Even as the remediation was underway. It sort of got a clean bill of health from the agency These are the things that drive all of us crazy in this work. There are Example after example, where a federal agency or a state agency has either come in and missed something, underestimated the impact of it, or has claimed that there's no problem, or that it's being cleaned up or has been cleaned up. What was it like in your circumstance?
Kari: We had a problem from EPA down, from EPA down to local. I don't even know where to begin. It was such a cluster to be honest. EPA had handed sites off to the state, the state had handed them back to EPA over the year. Things had started in the eighties. It wasn't like one thing slipped through the crack and got missed.
This was decades of just complete and utter neglect, ineptness, willfully blind.
Ken: How was the contamination first discovered back in the 80s? And I ask because story after story, we really sort of rely on for our, you know, our first line of defense is luck.
Kari: I think the original issue and issues were found through just regular monitoring and regulations, but it was as if they saw the problem, but then they just pretended it wasn't there, or they said, okay, well, we'll fix it.
And then nobody actually made sure they fixed it. And then when they realized they hadn't fixed it, they just continued to look the other way over and over again. And of course, it was moms going to local officials, you know, you start local when you don't know what else to do. And I mean, you talk about witches being burned at the stake, you're called everything under the sun when you start going in and talking to local officials, you know, you're hysterical soccer moms, you don't know what you're talking about.
And it didn't matter that you walked in with people who'd worked for the EPA. It didn't matter that you walked in with hydro geologists, who knew what they were talking about at your side, you're just a hysterical mom. You know, you're looking for attention. You're grieving. The amount of gaslighting that goes on from the local agencies, politicians.
I've always said if they spend as much time actually doing their job as they spent trying to tell me that I'm wrong, we wouldn't even be in this situation to begin with. You know, it's amazing to me the links and efforts that these corporations, the companies, and even the, you know, EPA and other agencies go to, to say oh, no, no, no, everything's fine. Everything's fine.
And then turn around and have to eat crow because they're wrong. And they know they're wrong. And it comes out publicly. And it's like, they just think they're going to get away with it until you get some loud mouth mom like me, who won't go away, and they just hope that we don't show up.
Ken: Yeah, and if you, again, go back over the history of some of the famous contamination events, there are moms at the center of every single story, really. Erin Brockovich was on the show, of course. She's a, she's a mom and was wagging one of her kids out to the site in Hinkley and you know through your grief, you decided you were going to fight this and you were going to join with other moms, other parents, I don't want to leave the dads out, who just couldn't really accept that this was bad luck or an accident or couldn't be helped or everything was safe and you didn't have to worry about it.
You pushed through all of those and it's good that you did because you were right and they were wrong.
Kari: You know, maybe it was a coping mechanism. Maybe it's just my own, you know, nature that I have to know the truth. A large part of it for me was not wanting people to forget Emma and who she was and how important her life was, how her life mattered.
And that, This was done to her, that this was done to her. This wasn't an accident that just happened. It wasn't bad luck, that there was a reason for this and that we were going to find that reason. And no one, especially once I started getting this list of kids and putting them on a map, was going to tell me differently, that there was not a problem because you couldn't have an ounce of common sense and look at that map and tell me that it made sense. And to this day, I don't care what letters you have behind your name. I don't care how many decades of experience you have. That map does not make sense. The end.
Ken: That's right. It's not a coincidence. It's not bad luck. The neglect and by design neglect of doing what should have been right from the get go and taking care of this waste.
People have known for decades and decades that TCE is something that gets in water and shouldn't be there. There's been, you know, at first, I know the primary concern around TCE was not cancer, but now that story has unfolded and it is recognized as a human carcinogen and EPA has just taken steps, uh, to ban most of the uses of it.
We can talk about that. And the organization that you started is, uh, the name of which I can't get out of my mind, which, uh, If It Was Your Child. Tell us about the formation of that group and what together you have done.
Kari: The group was originally just the original parents who were interviewed in the first piece done by Sandra Chapman and all of the parents in that group had children who had been affected by cancer. Sadly at that point I was the only one who had lost a child. We've lost many of those children by now. So it was a way for us to just talk to each other.
Ken: Yeah,
Kari: But then as we started, the list of kids that had cancer in our community started to grow, that group of parents on that Facebook group started to grow and then it just kind of evolved from there. You know, the charge of the environmental protection agency is to protect human health.
So why would I not go there first? Right? Right. Yet the doors just kept getting slammed in our faces. But it was funny because the more the media caught on and the more the media wanted to talk to us and the more we agreed to do it because it wasn't something I wanted to do. Nobody wants to go on national TV and cry. No one wants to go on national TV and talk about the worst day of their life
Ken: Yeah
Kari: But it quickly became apparent that the EPA and all the other agencies and local politicians and whatnot, they suddenly wanted to crack those doors open a little bit more if it meant that, you know, they weren't going to get dogged so much and that they looked like they were actually doing their jobs for a change.
It's sad that that's what it takes.
Ken: Yeah, and when you think of the ways in which, in many ways, parts of this country, journalists are maligned or disbelieved or thought of as, uh, co opted. My experience has been just the opposite, uh, that they like to do the same sort of thing you and I do, which is if I see a rock, I want to pick it up and look underneath it and see what's there. That's what we have in common with journalists.
Kari: So a house a mile and a half south of the original site that had really high levels of PCE. When we had tested, when I say we, the environmental engineering firm that we use tested, it, it was like, um, one and a half times the PCE level you could have inside of a, like a dry cleaning business, which was astronomical. And of course we're trying to figure out why.
Ken: Yeah.
Kari: And that got the state's attention and they came in and they, they tested. And it was funny because they do these things that just, I don't understand why, because people aren't stupid, but they went to this homeowner, who also had had a child with cancer, and they didn't realize how well educated she had made herself before they got there.
And they were going to test her home and they said, okay, well, we're going to do an inventory of your home as they should, because you do that before you, you do the vapor intrusion testing, you know, they go in and look, what do you have in your home? Could it be causing these results? Blah, blah, blah. So they go into her, her, her closet in the front and they pull out a suit that's in a dry cleaning bag and they say oh, well look, here you go.
You've got dry cleaning. So it's no wonder they found those levels so high in your house. Her husband works construction, so this is the only dry cleaned item in their home, right? And she said that's from a wedding five years ago. She said, so you're telling me that that one suit in my house, from five years ago made the levels in my home one and a half times higher than the dry cleaning business down the street. And that's from the state department of environmental management.
Like I expect that from the corporation that did the polluting. I would expect that from their representative, but from the state who's supposed to protect that family, especially in the home of someone who has a child who has leukemia, like, how do you, how do you look yourself in the mirror that night you go home and you look at your family and your wife says, how was your day?
And you feel good about yourself, but that is the pervasive kind of behavior and attitude from the top to the bottom.
Ken: Yeah, that you encountered. It's not unusual. I think there's something about those bureaucratic jobs, for every mom that comes in they might have five industry lobbyists or engineers or technicians who come in and pound away at how are we supposed to make a living? How do you know these levels are dangerous at all? I mean, the industries that made or use TCE and some of these other solvents, they fight to the bitter end to keep them on the market and keep them in the use patterns. You know, as we said at EWG, right up until the time the agency banned it, the agency would say it's safe.
Kari: Right. Until the second we are going to pull it off the market.
Ken: Yeah. Yeah. So yesterday it was safe. Today, it's got to go.
Kari: Not so much.
Ken: And, uh, of course it was unsafe the whole time. And in a situation where, uh, from what I've read about this facility, this location in Franklin, they obviously knew they were dumping this stuff in a way that was going to contaminate, you know, the sewage treatment system, get through the pipes into the ground. It's really shocking, and it comes out time and time again. And the fact that then people hang on to that story line in the industry for so long.
Kari: In my situation, it feels like when you're in the middle of it, it's so like, how can this be happening? Surely, like I'm the only person in the world this is happening to, this can't be happening anywhere else. Right. And people say, of course, you know, should I leave? Should I move somewhere? Where should I live? Where are you going to go?
Ken: Yeah.
Kari: Where are you going to go? I would say, you know, the benefit you have of where you are now is that, you know, at least we know what we know here.
Ken: Yeah.
Kari: And you may move somewhere where you didn't have a pain-in-the-ass mom like me who wouldn't quit and discovered this, and it may be another 30 years, and it may be getting in your kid's school, you know, the entire time, like it was getting in my kid's schools.
Ken: They found it in the school as well.
Kari: Yeah. It sits on the wellfield. I mean, but to this day, no one can tell me, no one will tell me how it got there, but they have mitigation systems now. So it's okay. You know?
Ken: Yeah. And the dynamic in the community is also complex, right?
Kari: Incredibly.
Ken: People don't think about this, and I, uh, it happens everywhere.
It's happened to friends of mine in Anniston, Alabama. I know it happened at Love Canal. It happened in Hinkley. It happened in Parkersburg, all these places, the dynamic in the community is complicated because for most of us, that's certainly true in my family, you know, one of our biggest assets that we have, our wealth, is tied up in our home.
So if there's a report of contamination in the community, you worry, well, does that mean I lose wealth because property values go down? How do I sell a house?
Kari: So, it's funny that you bring that up, because my son came home, I think he was 12. His dad is in real estate. He came home one day and he said, Mom, did you know all the realtors in Franklin hate you?
Ken: Oh, yeah.
Kari: And I said, Oh, do they? Why do you think they hate me? And he said, Because you're making Franklin look bad.
Ken: It's not the toxic pollution that's the problem, it's you.
Kari: Right, it's not that the houses are a problem, because they're contaminated. I'm making Franklin look bad and I was like, wow, an entire town just gaslit my 12 year old.
Ken: Yeah. Anniston, Alabama, where Peace Monsanto contaminated the community with PCBs. You know, there was a big fight for years over not designating it a Superfund site. Because the good news was you'd get maybe some federal money, never enough to clean it up. The bad news was you'd be under that Superfund cloud and everyone's housing values would go down.
Kari: Which is nuts. And we tried to, you know, really educate the public and the community about the fact that once Superfund sites are cleaned up, you see the economic value come back and rebound and like 30 percent increase in home values because you feel better and we try to explain this like to the mayor. The town will trust you more if you tell them the truth. Your value will go up if you tell them the truth.
Ken: Uh, you mentioned the testing. How did you figure out to do the testing and find the right people to do it?
Kari: So, Shannon Lisa was my, our savior in everything. There were other moms for sure that were a hundred percent involved in everything, but Shannon Lisa worked with the Edison Wetlands Group in New Jersey and we got hooked up with her through Trevor's Trek.
Shannon started doing FOIA requests and teaching us how to do that. Shannon's a bulldog and she did her thing on her end and they funded getting the first 14 homes tested. They came to Indiana. They paid for the environmental engineering for Mundell and associates, who's been, um, in Indianapolis doing this for decades and ironically had done some testing on some of the sites that they were looking at decades ago.
And when he heard he was coming back, and that these were sites of concern. He couldn't believe that they were still a problem.
Ken: He thought they'd been taken care of.
Kari: Right. Like how would this still even be a problem? Like I was there 20 years ago or whatever testing for that company. You're telling me they're still having issues, right?
The first testing that Mondello and Associates did for us was vapor intrusion testing. So testing to see if vapors were coming up, toxic vapors were coming up through people's foundations in their homes. It was definitely tough because you're trying to learn everything yourself in a world that you have no experience in at all.
Also navigating it and being kind of a liaison for the community, who is also petrified at the same time, it was difficult. So I always say Emma sends the right people to me at the right time. With a lot of professionals who know all the technicalities and can explain it to me in layman's terms is super helpful.
But yeah, when we did the first testing, we were concerned that the community would think that if we didn't hit, find anything at the maximum contamination limit, which is what the EPA would allow the companies to have, that everybody would just dismiss it and say, well, you were wrong. We were shocked because we actually had hits that were above the maximum contamination limit and that was a tiny sampling of just 14 homes. That got their attention. That was what it took to finally get the EPA to say, Oh, maybe they're not just hysterical soccer moms.
Ken: Right. And of course, in subsequent years, the agency has found it so toxic that they're strongly restricting its further use for all of these industrial purposes like the ones that it was used for in Franklin.
So EPA and other regulatory agencies, they are pushed to establish a legal limit that isn't necessarily safe. There's back and forth between the companies, their lobbyists, their scientists. And staff at these regulatory agencies. And often what comes about as the legal limit is really just a compromise that allows the companies to continue to operate or allows them to escape some liability, but doesn't necessarily clean things up to the level that's safe.
And of course, anyone who was exposed during the interim or the earlier period when it was legal is still subject to the harm that can come from those exposures. It's really hard for people to understand, but it's really important to say an awful lot of pollution occurs in this country, legally. Air pollution, water pollution, it's all below a limit that's legal, but it doesn't mean it's safe and it's compounded in a situation like you faced in, in Franklin.
Kari: For sure. And you look at like TCE, that contaminated Franklin and that all these years just to be told that it's, you know, overreacting and whatnot, and to be trying to work so hard to get the EPA to look at it more seriously and to ultimately get that call that they're going to ban TCE, you know, it's very satisfying to hear that and know that.
But then at the same time you think all this time we've been telling you and yet you just said it's okay, you know, and we're letting our community members, our children, the people we love be exposed to it. It's hard for me still to wrap my head around how they're so retroactive about things.
Ken: Yeah, and how the advantage is so much on the side of the industries or in this case the polluters. They have all the technical insight. They have every motive in the world to go up against a volunteer group of moms. They have the money to do it. Uh, they have lawyers, they have engineers, everyone else. So they can delay the day of reckoning and every day of delay for them is money in their pocket or avoidance of having to pay fines or face liability. Whereas for those of us on the receiving end, including your daughter and your whole family, every day counts also in terms of the risk.
Kari: Absolutely.
Ken: We manage a, uh, a database of tap water contaminants, as you probably know, and our latest map, and we're about to update it early next year, we found TCE in the drinking water of something like 19 million Americans across the country.
So this is, you know, this is a substantial contamination problem. We know that The standard is too late to deal with much of the contamination. They may ban the new use of it in industrial settings, but they can't, they can't ban it out of groundwater. They can't ban it out of soil if it's in there, and it is from decades of improper storage, improper use, improper disposal, and just regular industrial application. It's going to be in our world for a long time and end up in people. And it's going to make folks sick, even though it's banned as an industrial chemical now.
Kari: And it just takes so long to get rid of, you know, in the groundwater, even when they're treating it, they're still, I mean, the groundwater is still being treated here.
It's still not finished. Um, and I think that's part of the problem here too is that people think that because they excavated the soil, they replaced the sewer lines, which were a huge problem because the sewer lines were letting them get back into people's homes when they were flushing their toilets and they excavated all those contaminated soil.
And so people could physically see that work, but they don't physically see the groundwater. And so I think they feel like, Oh, well, everything's fine now, but that groundwater is still under remediation and will be for quite some time. It's scary to me because, you know, at a certain point it's like, you know, I can't do this forever.
Who will keep their finger on, who will keep their finger on it forever. Because I don't trust that the agencies will.
Ken: No, I think that's exactly right. It is a concern, but you've had an enormous impact, and I know there's no, um, it's not a compensation for losing Emma Grace in any way. And I know a little bit about that experience of losing a child.
And I just want to sort of close our conversation, if I could, by asking you if, um, there's anything that, um, you'd like to share about Emma? What she was like, how her memory lives with you? It seems to me it's living through the work that you have done. I think TCE is getting banned in some considerable measure because of you, and moms like you who have challenged the industry, the agency, the outdated science and all the rest of it.
And simply said, this just doesn't seem right.
Kari: Well, it's been, this is the 10 year anniversary of Emma's passing. And earlier this year, Dr. Freehoff from the EPA actually called me before the EPA announced that they were banning TCE because she wanted to tell me personally that Emma's legacy will always be associated with TCE being banned.
So that right there was probably the most satisfying thing that I will ever be able to have happened when it comes to this, because Emma has been guiding me from the beginning. I tell a story about her funeral and my niece, her best friend, Maddie, picked out the music for Emma's funeral, and Emma was a big Carrie Underwood fan, and that was, um, the first concert I ever took her to was Carrie Underwood.
As the funeral was over and we were walking out of the church, the song by Carrie Underwood, Something in the Water starts playing. And I didn't even, for years after like well into the fight, it didn't even register until one day I was in the ER getting ready to go to DC. I think it was when Michael Dorson, they were wanting to confirm Michael Dorson into the EPA and I was getting ready to go to DC and for that and to fight against that.
And I was telling someone, um, about it and I used the phrase something in the water and it was like, I had an instant flashback to walking out of the church during that funeral and it just hit me in that moment. That she was telling me from the second, that moment, but there have been a million different things along the way, you know, that have reminded me that she's with me and that she's pushing me and every time I've wanted to give up, there's been something that's happened, you know, the, the very first test results from Mundell and associates on the 14 homes that they tested for us came out on Emma's, what would have been Emma's 16th birthday.
You know, just things like that all along the way have reminded me that she's looking down on me and she's with me and she's fighting and she's pushing me. So, but you asked me about Emma and so Emma was a funny kid and she was quiet around people she didn't know, but at home she wouldn't shut up and, uh, probably ornery me.
She's a swimmer, since she was five years old she swam competitively. Um, and Emma was an artist. She loved to draw pencil drawings. So she was always, always drawing, constantly drawing. We were always taking notebooks with us and pencils everywhere we went. She's the oldest of nine grandkids. And we always called her little mama because she liked to run around telling everybody what to do.
So she's definitely missed by all of her cousins and family, that's for sure. But we feel her spirit with us strong. And I see her and her brother and sister, Sam and Sophie, all the time in big and little ways.
Ken: You know, as frustrating as it has been over the years to get a call from the top official, other than the head of EPA, in charge of toxic chemicals and chemical safety pollution prevention, she's the number one regulator in the United States and that makes her the number one regulator in the world. And if she's calling you, Kari, to tell you that the ban on this chemical that affected your family so powerfully, is in no small measure something she wants to tell you about, as being part of Emma's legacy and your legacy, that's a pretty big damn deal, Carrie. So that matters.
Kari: It was a big day.
Ken: Yeah. A big day. Well, Kari , thank you so much for taking the time. When I heard you speak at the conference on the brain and environment symposium, I just, uh, I wanted to get to know you better, first of all. I, and I also wanted to make sure that if I could, uh, help share your story and have our audience learn a little bit about it. What inspired you, I hope will inspire everyone else out there. If someone's up against a similar set of problems, and this is happening all over the country still, they could take a page or two from your book, Carrie, and Emma's book, and keep up the fight. You've really made a big difference and I thank you for it.
Kari: Thank you, Ken. I really appreciate being here.
Ken: Kari Reinhart. What an incredible person. No one should have to walk the journey she's been on. And I'm awed by her strength and grace. I, I'm sure you are too.
My next guest is helping Kari and people like her. To make the world a cleaner and healthier place. A recurring theme in my episodes is that the government often needs a firm kick in the ass by the courts to do the right thing. That's the case here. So without further ado, Kari Reinhart's attorney, the amazing Chris Nidel.
I have the pleasure of speaking today with Chris Nydell, who has a really fascinating background. He graduated from the University of Virginia with a bachelor's degree in chemical engineering. Then he went to graduate school at MIT. And then just to finish things off, because I think you wanted more student debt, you went to law school.
But fascinating background for someone who's taking on the topic that we're talking about today and the combination of that kind of scientific and technical background, with a legal degree and a passion for protecting people from environmental harm is a little too rare for my liking, and I'm delighted to meet you knowing that that's what you embody.
Chris: Yeah, that's, that's, that's right. I finished grad school. I actually got a job with one of the most admired companies in the world at the time, a pharmaceutical company. And while I was there, I had what maybe the more religious side of me would, would say is a Paul moment, where I realized that pharmaceutical companies didn't really care for the environment and they didn't really care for human health either.
And so I was put in a position where the career that I was good at and sort of loved being a part of, that I didn't feel right doing it anymore. So I left and went to law school.
Ken: Yeah. Tell us a little bit of how you found your way to Kari Reinhart and her, her case, and how, as an attorney practicing in your area, you evaluate which cases you're going to take on.
Chris: Yeah, I spent a while in Texas at a big plaintiff's firm, doing work with Aaron Brockovich's firm, and doing big cases with big budgets and private jets, and that wasn't really, uh, for me. I wanted to be able to do cases that I believed in from an evidentiary perspective, that I believed in from a human compassion and justice perspective.
And not necessarily ones that would meet the financial and economic models of the big law firms that were doing toxic torts at the time. And so the first case that I filed was a, was a case up in Massachusetts, seven plaintiffs toxic tort case against the electronics industry dumping PCBs. Kids were playing in a baseball field that they didn't know was, you know, the puddles on the field were PCBs.
Because of those experiences, I have a real strong interest in epidemiology and toxicology and trying to figure out and evaluate why people are getting sick. So I'm one of the types of people that when you tell me that your son or daughter was diagnosed with cancer, I'm asking all kinds of offensive questions, right?
I'm asking, where do you work? Where do you live? Are you on a water well, where do they go to school? And so, as a part of that, I was on the board of a nonprofit called the National Disease Clusters Alliance, a group of, you know, activists that were interested in helping to investigate Community disease clusters, primarily cancer clusters. You know, sometime in the, in the mid 2010s where I first came across Kari’s story, you know, Kari and her community at the time were focused on finding answers, getting accountability, getting cleanups and, and trying to figure things out.
And then it was a couple of years later that I spoke to her. There was new information about a facility that was just very near where she raised her daughter. And so with that new information we were able to build a case and I think at that point she was prepared to, to try and put a case together and so that's how we started working together.
And I can tell you, I don't know any other firm would file a case like that. We had three people with cancer. Carrie's daughter had died, another, young girl had died from leukemia, and then we had another adult that had kidney cancer. That's not a case that fits many firms' economic models. And yeah, our goal is to be able to file cases that we believe in without being constrained by the economics or at least trying to be as minimally constrained by the economics as we can.
Ken: Yeah, people I think don't understand, generally speaking, two things. One, the role that lawyers in your line of work play in bringing justice where the government's processes have not delivered justice. And secondly, the important role across the board that civil actions play in advancing environmental protection where governmental processes have failed.
Chris: Yeah. Oh, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. I can speak to that. That's, uh, that's, that's sort of the story of, uh, of my every day. I had a case very early on, a childhood leukemia case. Where a child was diagnosed with leukemia living in a mobile home community that was right adjacent to a bulk petroleum facility, you know, big white tanks that you see on the side of the highway.
So the EPA and the state had done an assessment and in that region back in the mid 80s, I guess it was. They assumed that every facility was a hazard, that there was contamination on the facility. And then they looked to see if there were any receptors of that hazard. And if there were no receptors, they could basically ignore the facility.
Ken: And what's, a receptor is a human being?
Chris: It's a, uh, distancing term for, you know, a human being, right? So it's a, it's a human being or human beings. And in this case, they assumed there was no, not, not assumed, they concluded that there were no human beings that would be exposed to groundwater contamination at this facility.
However, there was groundwater contamination. It wasn't just an assumption. There were, they had spilled thousands of gallons of gasoline at this facility. So there was benzene and other VOCs in the groundwater that they knew of. And then there was also a water well for that mobile home community that was sitting right next door.
And what's interesting when you talk about the regulators and why there need to be lawyers, is that the EPA put together a report, you know, the risk is 100, but there's no receptors, so actual risk is zero. In the back of that report, there was a photo log, and in the photo log, there was a picture of the well in the community.
And there was a handwritten note by the picture of the well that said, is this a water well? So I, coming in twenty years later after someone had gotten sick, probably multiple people had gotten sick, but I represented one of them. And I called up the guy at the EPA who would authored the report, and I said, hey, I want to talk to you about this report.
He said oh, that was a long time ago I said, yeah, sure. He said, well, I don't have it, you know. I said let me send it to you ,I sent it to him and I said why is it that you said that there were no receptors, but you've got a picture of the well? And he pretty quickly said, you know, I don't know if I should be talking to you, um, you know, we shouldn't be talking.
But I said to him, I said, I said, why didn't you go knock on the door of those mobile homes? This really gets to the crux of your question. He said, well, the statutes didn't require us to do that. And I said, well, I'm not asking you about the statute. I'm asking you, why didn't you take off your EPA golf shirt and put on a t- shirt and a baseball hat and knock on the door and go, hey, don't drink the water. You know, like just, just heads up. As a human to human, knock on the door.
Ken: As another receptor. One receptor to another. Right. Right.
Chris: So it didn't happen from the company. Right? And it didn't happen, unfortunately, from the regulators. We don't expect the companies necessarily to go and do that, although I pose the same question to them.
But, why didn't the regulators do that? Right? Why didn't the human receptors working as regulators go out and do that, and they didn't. And we see the same thing where Kari’s located. There was a statement of basis done. So they first identified contamination in 1982, 83. They identified that contamination was going off site directly into the adjacent neighborhood by certainly no later than 85, 86.
Ken: And this is the TCE?
Chris: TCE and PCE, correct. Both carcinogens went off into the community by the mid 80s. They know it's going off into the community. By 1990, the EPA has a consent decree. By 1998, the EPA has a statement of basis that they approved for their regulatory cleanup, right? And they had another consent decree in 1998. And basically, the EPA at that point was, you know, we've got a plan in place. Everything's fine.
Ken: Everything's legal.
Chris: And unfortunately, kids were continuing to get diagnosed with cancer. And so, Kari and her friends in the community put together an effort that, you know, along with another non profit that they raised money for, to go out and do testing in the community.
And when they did the testing and they went public with those results, which was around 2018, so, you know, we go from 1998, 20 years later, of people being exposed, and people dealing with the effects of this, that could have been all prevented, right? And now Kari goes out, she gets the help of the community, she gets the help of the non profit, she gets the help of some technical scientists that go out and do the testing, and they show that there is a problem, right? That, that, that the fix that was approved by the EPA in 1998 was not a fix. It was not sufficient. People are continuing to be exposed. And so a whole thing was opened back up where the EPA kind of woke up asleep at the switch.
In fact, we had emails during the litigation where the EPA would come back to the company and the company would say, we hope this goes to the forgotten file. Right? Because they know that the EPA has only got so much energy and attention for, for, for oversight.
Ken: So much bandwidth. Yeah.
Chris: Yeah. And so they did then start doing testing and they forced them to clean up the sewer line, which is where they had been dumping these chemicals directly into the community and do testing inside homes where they found, uh, some homes with high levels.
There's a record in there that showed that people were smelling these chemicals in the mid nineties. inside their homes. And, and one, there was a shocking document where there was a complaint from a lab technician, husband of a lab technician that lived in one of these houses. Said I'm smelling chemicals in my house by the drain line, right?
I think was in the bathroom and the company went out tested the sewer line, found TCE in the sewer line. The date of the memo from the company's consultant that went out and tested the line was the ninth month of my client's pregnancy where her husband was the one that called in the complaint.
Ken: Yeah.
Chris: And six years later, she's, you know, the daughter's diagnosed with leukemia, right? Fully, completely preventable disease. And that child died from her leukemia, right? So, the system is, is, is not protecting people.
Ken: A theme that comes up whenever I talk to lawyers who are seeking justice for people who've not been well served by the federal agencies, the state agencies, the inspectors, and so forth, the information that the companies have but don't disclose.
It's everything from PCBs in Anniston, Alabama, MTBE and all over the country, in particular in Santa Monica, PFOA and PFOS cases brought against DuPont and 3M, where the companies knew everything. And they knew it for years and years, and somehow it's not illegal for them to hold that close in confidence.
But if they're the only ones who have the information, and the government agencies really aren't empowered to barge in there and say, give me everything you've got, all your memos. All they're required to do is whatever the regulations require. That's where you need to have a tenacious civil attorney, like yourself to go in and begin to pull out the truth that the companies have known about contamination, about tests that reveal toxic exposures, all kinds of information about spills, whatever the case may be, it only comes out in civil litigation.
Otherwise, we're working in this kind of make believe world, where we assume the government is doing its job and the government's assuming it's getting the information that's relevant from the companies and then the processes engaged to protect the people who are in harm's way. But none of that is true in many cases, right?
Chris: Yeah, no, it's really fascinating. In Kari’s case in Indiana, so even though the EPA had kind of said, well, 1998, you got to have a plan, go and do it, you're good to go. But there was a provision in there that said, if you develop knowledge that there is some ongoing risk, You need to, within, and I think it was like 24 hours by, by phone and 48 hours in writing, notify the EPA.
I mean, they knew all this stuff, right? I mean, I had these, these consultants memos that said people are smelling this stuff. They're complaining about odors down the street. We're testing it. We're finding it. They had high levels going right down the street in the sewer line. And so I used that provision against them, you know, in depositions and, and certainly would have used that in trial.
Because they, they didn't do it and, and I, you know, figuratively in depositions, putting these documents in front of them saying, you know, what were you guys doing? Like, why, why did this not happen? And we see from their own lawyer's memos, right? So when they had this battle with the EPA, the EPA wanted them to notify the public and do some other things. And then what did they do? They had their lawyers send letters to the company. And it's actually the same thing currently in, in this case in California, but the lawyers send letters and say, we don't want to increase the risk of hysteria and litigation, like those were their words, right?
Ken: Yeah.
Chris: So they don't want hysteria. They don't want litigation.
What they really don't want is to protect people from the poisons that they're putting out into the community, that they made money off for decades, you know, and the community is bearing the burden of that and they don't want to have any responsibility for it. And the thing of it is, is that, you know, there's regulators and they fail us for multiple reasons.
Probably the majority of which is just being outstretched, overburdened, and maybe ignorant. Too much reliance on the company's info and intelligence. But these companies are made up of human actors. Right. They are also receptors. Right.
Ken: And you have to think occasionally they reproduce and have children.
Chris: There's a problem with our corporate structure, which allows people, or affords people, or generates in people this mentality that it's the company acting, but it's not. It's, it's a bunch of people, whether it's a small company, a big company, it's a bunch of people making decisions that have the ability to harm people.
You know, it's like these people go home and they kiss their kids goodnight and they go down to Latin America to do missionary work. But they're not worried about the people that they're killing from 9 to 5, and I don't get it.
Ken: And there's a file that they've put away that afternoon before they came home that documents that they're poisoning those people.
Yeah, no, I'm with you. It's a puzzlement, but it's also important to convey to people that this information does not come out under our current rules and regulations in a way that really tells us what's actually going on. The blindness of the public interest to all of this, if we didn't have the courts to go to and didn't have champions like yourself, we just would never find out.
It would just be hidden pretty much indefinitely until, you know, the company found another cheaper way, uh, that perhaps involved different poisons, but there's really no recourse, beyond going in and holding them accountable in the way that you've done. How has the case unfolded that Kari brought to your doorstep?
Chris: So, I mean, I've told you some of the facts that we uncovered that I think were really critical facts. I mean, to see what they knew. And, and again, the regulatory agencies aren't seeing that. And the newspapers aren't seeing that for the most part, right? So Kari came through the National Disease Clusters Alliance, we started talking generally about whether there were pesticides in the community. I know there were, you know, some of the areas that she was looking in, in the county, could have been your farmland.
There were various other impacts, auto body shops, dry cleaners, all of these other sources. And so we started looking generally, that was not focused on a lawsuit that was focused more on, you know, the epidemiology and the toxicology of what might be going on in the community.
When the new information came out about this plume going right down the road and into the creek where she used to play with her daughter, um, is when we put together the lawsuit. As far as Kari’s lawsuit and the other two cancers that I mentioned, we have settled those cases, we still have the property damage case, so we still have a claim in the community for people that own property in the contaminated area.
We are continuing to file those cases on behalf of people that have contaminated properties, and we will continue to litigate, uh, those claims on behalf of people that live in that neighborhood that, that was impacted by these, uh, these companies.
Ken: Well, Chris, you've been very generous with your time.
Thank you for giving us the rundown on how that case evolved, but I want to thank you even more for your perspective on these issues because I think most Americans are not fully aware of all the protections that are in place for the polluters. They may not get off scot free, but it does feel oftentimes like a slap on the wrist by the time the damage has been discovered by the public that's been known for decades by companies in many cases and by the time justice is rendered, which can take even more years. Thank you for sticking with it. Thank you for illuminating this through the story of Kari Rhinehart and your personal experience, and thank you for standing up and being a champion.
Chris: Yeah, I appreciate your time and appreciate the attention, and I don't think it can be said enough that we really need people that are willing to take a stand in their communities.
Every time I talk to people, the first thing that they say is, you know, we're not the type of people to file lawsuits. You know, and I always kind of laugh at that. People don't file lawsuits until they realize that someone has really done something terrible to them and that they're a victim. And, you know, we need more people that have the courage to do that because it's not an easy process.
Ken: That's right. And the companies, among other things, they're counting on in their favor to continue this pollution, they're counting on the fact that people don't feel like they're the kind of people who sue.
Chris: Yeah, that's right. That's right.
Ken: Thank you, Kari Reinhart and Chris Nadel for coming on the show and thank you out there for listening.
If you'd like to learn more, be sure to check out our show notes for additional links, for a deeper dive into today's discussion. Make sure to follow our show on Instagram at KenCooksPodcast and if you're interested in learning more about EWG, head on over to EWG.org or check out the EWG Instagram account @EnvironmentalWorking Group. If you like this episode, send it to a friend who you think would like it too. Environmentalism is all about meeting people where they're at, and if you're listening to this, you probably know someone who might be interested in today's episode, they just don't know it yet.
My ask is that you send it to that person or to as many people as you see fit. Today's episode is dedicated to Kari’s daughter, Emma Grace, and it was produced by the amazing, Beth Rowe and Mary Kelly. Our show's theme music is by Moby and thank you again for listening.
