Callie Lyons – The Journalist Who Forced a Chemical Giant Into the Light

The forgotten origins of America’s forever-chemical crisis — told by the woman who uncovered it.

By Stuart Day

A River, a Childhood, and a Catastrophe Hidden in Plain Sight

The Ohio River looks calm from the bank where Jill meets Callie Lyons — a still surface with a long memory. Jill grew up downstream from Parkersburg, swimming, tubing, and spending summers along this water. She never knew the invisible danger drifting through every current.

Callie didn’t grow up here. She came from a small cattle town in Kansas — a place where the smell of livestock was considered the smell of money. After moving to Parkserbergh WV and taking a job with Marietta press as a local resporter it would be her reporting would pull her deep into the chemical heart of Appalachia, exposing a crisis that began with cattle, consumed a community, and ultimately spread across the world.

The story started with a herd that shouldn’t have died — and it unfolds in parallel with the same events later chronicled through attorney Rob Bilott’s fight against DuPont. But while Bilott’s litigation brought national attention, Callie was the journalist on the ground documenting what it meant for the people who lived in the shadow of the Washington Works plant. Her work became the connective tissue between the Tennant family’s nightmare, the unfolding legal battle, and the community’s long-overdue reckoning.

The Tennant Farm: The Case That Sparked a National Reckoning

In the shadow of DuPont’s Washington Works plant, the Tennant family had farmed the same land for generations. Nothing about their operation had changed — until DuPont quietly dug up waste from older landfills and moved it to a new, unlined dump bordering the Tennants’ property.

Then the creek turned black. Then it began to bubble. Then the cattle began to suffer.

Every one of their 280 cows died. Slowly. Horrifically. With deformities, lesions, illnesses no vet wanted to diagnose. The state blamed the farmers. Lawyers refused the case. The Tennant family was treated like pariahs.

So they documented everything — hours of footage showing dying cattle and poisoned water.

That footage made its way to an attorney who had always defended industry. He took the case — the same legal thread that would eventually place corporate attorney Rob Bilott on a collision course with DuPont, as later depicted in Dark Waters. But long before Hollywood dramatized the fight, Callie was one of the first reporters chronicling the Tennants’ ordeal from inside this community, witnessing the social, economic, and emotional fracture lines no national outlet could see. And that’s when the truth began to surface.

The Chemical With No Smell, No Taste, No Warning — And the System That Hid It

What the Tennants uncovered wasn’t a local mystery. It was the first visible crack in a national system of secrecy — one that allowed DuPont to keep C8 out of public scrutiny for decades. Bilott’s discovery process would later reveal internal documents showing the company had known of the chemical’s dangers since at least the 1970s. But Calli’s reporting captured the lived experience behind those documents: the cattle dying in real time, the water turning, the locals being dismissed and sometimes vilified for raising concerns.

C8 — also known as PFOA — was a chemical invented for the Manhattan Project and later repurposed for consumer uses like Teflon. It had no smell, no taste, and no visible plume. You couldn’t detect it in water. You couldn’t sense it in air.

But once inside the body, it stayed. It bound to fat. It accumulated. It changed people.

For decades, residents along the Ohio River had been drinking it, bathing in it, cooking with it.

“We all found out that we had been drinking contaminated water since the 50s,” Callie says. “Everyone who lives here has, and no one had a clue.”

Scientists found that environmental exposure levels translated into 105 times higher concentrations in human blood.

C8 was everywhere — including in newborns who had never touched the outside world.

The Science Panel That Finally Forced the Truth Into the Record

The Tennant case opened the door, but it was a local gym teacher who pushed it wide.

He had seen strange birth defects in his students. He’d received a letter from the water district that didn’t sit right. His questions led to a class-action lawsuit and the creation of one of the largest epidemiological studies in U.S. history.

70,000 people — including Jill — contributed blood and medical histories.

For seven years, a panel of world-renowned epidemiologists studied the data. When their findings were released, the shift was seismic.

After decades of DuPont insisting C8 had no human health impacts, the science panel linked the chemical to six diseases — including testicular cancer.

Callie remembers the moment that first link became official:

“We went from no human health effects to testicular cancer. That was the proof we had all been looking for.”

The scientific record was now irrefutable.

Filtration: A Lifeline That Doesn’t End the Drowning

The lawsuit required DuPont to install carbon filtration systems across the region. But filtration doesn’t remove C8 — it only reduces it. If filters aren’t changed fast enough, contaminated water gets worse, not better.

Private wells remain at risk. Rain still carries chemicals across the landscape. The river still receives new discharges.

“You’re reducing it,” Callie says. “But you’re not eliminating it. It’s still there.”

Few residents use the medical monitoring they are entitled to — often because no one told them it exists.

GenX: The Rebranded Chemical That Didn’t Solve a Thing

After public pressure intensified, the industry pushed a new narrative: C8 was being phased out, replaced by GenX — a supposedly safer alternative.

But as Callie explains, GenX enters the bloodstream even faster. It may be just as harmful. And DuPont — now Chemours — never stopped producing C8 either.

“They’re still making C8,” she says. “When it stops, we will all know. They’ve never made that announcement.”

The crisis isn’t historical. It’s ongoing.

A Community Forced to Choose Between Survival and Survival

The harm was never just chemical — it was cultural.

Workers exposed daily insisted the chemical was safe because they weren’t sick. Neighbors ostracized the Tennants for threatening the local economy. A woman in a dollar store told Callie she accepted her cancer because, in her words, “I’ve always lived well. They’ve always taken care of me.”

This is the impossible bargain Appalachia has been asked to make for generations: Your health or your job. Your family or your future.

As Callie puts it, “Appalachians have been repeatedly poisoned. And they just get tougher and more in your face with it.”

Why This Story Matters — Here, Now, Everywhere

C8 is not an Appalachian chemical. It is a global one.

It is in the blood of almost everyone alive. It is in every ocean. It is in rain. It is in soil. It is in newborns.

And it all traces back to places like Parkersburg. To the Tennant farm. To a chemical no one could see. To a community that was never told the truth.

Callie spent years documenting what happened — often at personal cost. Her kids were treated differently at school. A radio station refused to let her use her real name. But she kept going.

“This is still very much a crisis,” she says.

For Jill, who grew up in this river’s current, the shock is personal. She is part of the exposed class. Her childhood is part of this story.

And for the rest of the world, this episode is a warning: Once a forever chemical enters the environment, there is no such thing as after.

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Citations and Resources:

LEGAL / REGULATORY – DUPONT, CHEMOURS, C8

Ohio Successfully Sues DuPont for ‘Forever Chemicals’Chemical Processing2024https://www.chemicalprocessing.com/industrynews/news/33015827/ohio-successfully-sues-dupont-for-forever-chemicals

Robert BilottWikipedia2024https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Bilott

Dark Waters True Story: How One Lawyer Took Down DuPontTIME2019https://time.com/5737451/dark-waters-true-story-rob-bilott/

The Lawyer Who Became DuPont’s Worst NightmareNew York Times Magazine2016https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/10/magazine/the-lawyer-who-became-duponts-worst-nightmare.html

DuPont C8 Contamination in Parkersburg: Community ImpactEnvironmental Health Newsn.d.https://www.ehn.org/dupont-c8-parkersburg

Welcome to Beautiful ParkersburgHighline / Huffington Post2016https://highline.huffingtonpost.com/articles/en/welcome-to-beautiful-parkersburg/

C8 SCIENCE PANEL / PROBABLE LINKS

The Science Panel (Summary of Probable Link Findings)Hill, Peterson, Carper, Bee & Deitz (HPCBD)n.d.https://www.hpcbd.com/personal-injury/dupont-c8/the-science-panel/

C8: Probable Link EvaluationEnvironmental Health Perspectives2012https://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/doi/10.1289/ehp.121-a340

GLOBAL PFAS CONTAMINATION / ENVIRONMENTAL LOAD

PFAS Are Ubiquitous in Earth’s Water Cycle and AtmosphereNature Geoscience2024https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-024-01402-8

Toxic ‘Forever Chemicals’ Found in Many Places EPA Didn’t ExpectNew York Times2024https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/08/climate/pfas-forever-chemicals-water.html

Groundbreaking Map Shows Toxic ‘Forever Chemicals’ in More Than 330 Military InstallationsEnvironmental Working Group2023https://www.ewg.org/news-insights/news-release/2023/02/groundbreaking-map-shows-toxic-forever-chemicals-more-330

HUMAN EXPOSURE / GENERAL HEALTH IMPACTS

Human Exposure PathwaysATSDR / CDC2024https://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/pfas/hcp/clinical-overview/human-exposure.html

Wrapped in Chemicals: PFAS Fact #1ChemSec2023https://chemsec.org/wrappedinchemicals/facts/pfas-fact-1/

‘Forever Chemicals’ Called PFAS Show Up in Your Food, Clothes and HomeNRDC2024https://www.nrdc.org/stories/forever-chemicals-called-pfas-show-your-food-clothes-and-home

Growing Impact: PFAS and Human Health (Podcast)Penn State IEE2024https://iee.psu.edu/news/podcast/growing-impact-pfas-and-human-health

GENX – TOXICITY & REGULATION

GenX Toxicity Assessment Fact SheetEPA2023https://www.epa.gov/system/files/documents/2023-03/GenX-Toxicity-Assessment-factsheet-March-2023-update.pdf

Human Health Toxicity Assessments for GenX ChemicalsEPA2021–2023https://www.epa.gov/chemical-research/human-health-toxicity-assessments-genx-chemicals

Forever Chemical GenX More Toxic Than Previously Acknowledged, Says EPAEnvironmental Working Group2021https://www.ewg.org/news-insights/statement/2021/10/forever-chemical-genx-more-toxic-previously-acknowledged-says-epa

The Hunt for GenX Chemicals in PeopleChemical & Engineering News (ACS)2019https://cen.acs.org/environment/persistent-pollutants/hunt-GenX-chemicals-people/97/i14

REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH / PREGNANCY

Maternal PFAS Exposure and Reduced Birth Weight: Systematic ReviewEnvironmental International2020https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160412020320808

Exposure to Toxic Forever Chemicals During Pregnancy Increases Odds of Childhood ObesityEnvironmental Working Group2023https://www.ewg.org/news-insights/news/2023/07/study-exposure-toxic-forever-chemicals-during-pregnancy-increases-odds

PFAS and Breastfeeding: Systematic ReviewEnvironmental Research2020https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33223205/

Maternal PFAS Exposure and Adiposity in ChildhoodNature Metabolism2023https://www.nature.com/articles/s41366-023-01401-6

PFAS Exposure Associated With Pregnancy LossScientific Reports2020https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-74026-8

METABOLIC / OBESITY / ENDOCRINE EFFECTS

Serum PFAS and Obesity in U.S. AdultsEnvironmental Health2024https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s12940-024-01140-9

Exposure to PFAS and Effects on Lipid MetabolismChemosphere2025https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0045653525001729

PFAS Exposure and Metabolic AlterationsEnvironmental Toxicology and Pharmacology2025https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0147651325004397

VITAMIN D DISRUPTION / ENDOCRINE PATHWAYS

Endocrine Disruption of Vitamin D Activity by PFOAPFAS Central / Study Summaryn.d.https://pfascentral.org/science/endocrine-disruption-of-vitamin-d-activity-by-perfluoro-octanoic-acid-pfoa

Association Between PFAS Exposure and Vitamin D LevelsEnvironment International2021https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7926449/

PFAS as Endocrine DisruptorsThe Endocrine Society2024https://www.endocrine.org/topics/edc/what-edcs-are/common-edcs/pfas

MENTAL HEALTH / NEUROTOXICITY

Serum PFAS and Depression in AdultsEnvironmental Research2023https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0013935123023575

Neurotransmission Targets of PFAS NeurotoxicityChemical Research in Toxicology2022https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10446502/

PFAS Toxicity: Mechanisms, Molecular Targets and Neurotoxic EffectsFrontiers in Toxicology2022https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/toxicology/articles/10.3389/ftox.2022.881584/full

Association Between PFAS Exposure and Neurobehavioral ProblemsScience of the Total Environment2024https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0048969724070980

PFAS Exposure Impacts Brain Structure and FunctionEnvironmental Health Perspectives2021https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7727701/

What the Brain Really Thinks About ‘Forever Chemicals’Purdue University2020https://www.purdue.edu/newsroom/archive/releases/2020/Q1/what-the-brain-really-thinks-about-forever-chemicals.html

Scientists Warn of Overlooked Mental-Health Effects From PFASMad in America2025https://www.madinamerica.com/2025/09/scientists-warn-of-overlooked-mental-health-effects-from-pfas/

PFAS Exposure Linked With Anxiety and Depression SymptomsJournal of Affective Disorders2022https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36108719/

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