It started with a phone call in 1998.
"There was a gentleman on the line who was telling me about cows dying on his property," Rob Bilott recalls. "And I had no idea why he was calling me... because at the time, I was representing big chemical companies and big corporations."
As a partner at the prestigious Cincinnati-based law firm Taft Stettinius & Hollister, where he continues to practice today, Bilott had built his career defending corporate clients.
But there was a personal connection.
"This gentleman was calling from my grandmother's hometown. And so even though this wasn't the kind of thing I normally did, I agreed to meet with him."
What Bilott discovered in that meeting set him on a path spanning more than 25 years.
"When we dug into it and I started to get the files and the documents, that's when we really started to realize we were dealing with these unregulated contaminants that were incredibly toxic and persistent and bioaccumulative and carcinogenic."
The case, which at first seemed small, unraveled into something much larger.
"It was likely not only making these cows sick but likely in the drinking water all over the surrounding community, tens of thousands of people. And then we realized it was getting out into the blood of almost the entire world," Bilott said.
As he pored over documents, the scale of the crisis became undeniable.
"We were possibly the only ones on the planet outside of these companies that knew about this health threat and felt a real responsibility to bring that out to the world."
Bilott’s work exposing the dangers of PFAS, also known as "forever chemicals," led to groundbreaking litigation, global awareness, and sweeping policy changes. It also earned him the Right Livelihood Award in 2017, often called the "Alternative Nobel Prize."
"It was an incredible honor," Bilott says. "It [the Right Livelihood Award] helped provide a platform to begin reaching out globally and helping people understand that the issues we had been fighting in the U.S. were not just about a cow farmer in a small town in West Virginia. This was a global public health issue."
The Right Livelihood Center, based at UC Santa Cruz, plays a key role in advancing this work. Founded in 2013 as a partnership between UC Santa Cruz and the Right Livelihood Foundation, the center connects faculty and students with Laureates to research and promote solutions to global challenges. Housed within the Institute for Social Transformation at UC Santa Cruz, the Right Livelihood Center fosters education and advocacy through research collaborations and student engagement.
Bilott is now working to bring his message to an even wider audience through his new documentary How to Poison a Planet, created in collaboration with award-winning actor and environmental activist Mark Ruffalo. The documentary premiered in New York on February 27.
"One of the things that has been a primary focus of mine for many years now has been finding ways to help get this public health threat awareness out in a broader sense across the planet."
The film highlights a lesser-known side of the PFAS crisis.
"In my book Exposure: Poisoned Water, Corporate Greed, and One Lawyer’s Twenty-Year Battle against DuPont, which inspired the film Dark Waters [in which Ruffalo portrays Bilott in his legal fight against the chemical companies] and the documentary The Devil We Know, we showed what DuPont knew and how it covered this information up. What hasn’t been explored as much has been what the original inventor of these chemicals—3M—knew about it, and how they helped cover this up for decades, Bilott says.
Bilott describes the scale of the problem: "These same chemicals are being found in drinking water all over the planet. They're being found in the rain, even in the mountains of Tibet. The stuff is being found in the blood of virtually every living creature on the planet, even in polar bears."
For Bilott, the most important lesson in his fight against PFAS is that change begins with individuals.
"You may be up against some of the biggest corporate powers on the planet. You may be up against the existing regulatory system, the legal system, or the whole scientific system—but that can be changed. And it starts with individuals speaking up and being willing to take that on."
To students and advocates, his message is clear: "Be willing to step out of your comfort zone. You don’t have to follow a specific path to make a difference. I was at a corporate defense law firm, not the kind of place you’d think would lead to environmental justice work—but that background gave me the tools I needed to take on this fight. Wherever you are, seize the opportunity to create change."
