Erin Brockovich and environmental justice litigation

Erin Brockovich

The ethics of Erin Brockovich (2000)

The story of Erin Brockovich is often heralded as an example of how one woman can make a difference. Erin, a 'lowly' legal secretary and single mother, had her story immortalized in an award-winning film starring Julia Roberts. Her work was instrumental in the legal case eventually won against the California-based Pacific Gas and Electric Company. According to Brockovich's website, Erin's investigation, largely on her own instigation "established that the health of countless people who lived in and around Hinkley, California, in the 1960's, 70's and 80's had been severely compromised by exposure to toxic Chromium 6. The Chromium 6 had leaked into the groundwater from the nearby Pacific Gas and Electric Company's Compressor Station. In 1996, as a result of the largest direct action lawsuit of its kind, spearheaded by me and Ed Masry, the giant utility paid the largest toxic tort injury settlement in U.S. history: $333 million in damages to more than 600 Hinkley residents" ("Erin Brockovich: Biography, 2009). Erin stated that the company knew of the presence of the carcinogen in the water supply, but recklessly ignored the contamination. Rather than acting swiftly, it covered up its shameful practices. People suffered, not knowing why, at tremendous emotional and physical cost to themselves and to their families because of the utility company's negligence.

Many have taken issue with some of the hard, scientific and epidemiological facts of the film. Michael Fumento of the Wall Street Journal and the American Spectator, while calling the production "slick and enjoyable," said the script grossly misrepresented the strength of Brockovich's case. First, while Fumento acknowledges that PG&E's nearby plant was leaking the rust inhibitor Chromium 6, into the water supply, "the suit blamed the chemical for dozens of symptoms, ranging from nosebleeds to breast cancer, Hodgkin's disease, miscarriages and spinal deterioration," and the agent could not possibly have caused more than a handful of the symptoms described" as it is linked only to cancer of the lung and of the septum" (Fumento, "Erin Brockovich, Exposed," The Wall Street Journal, 2000). Chromium 6 is a Class A carcinogen only in "extremely heavy occupational exposure, as when manufacturing it or using it in welding; the exposure in these cases was through inhalation. That explains why the two cancers connect to Chromium 6 are "parts of the body with which air makes direct contact during inhalation," while it is a Class D (no link) carcinogen for ingestion through the water supply (Fumento, "Errin' Brockovich, 2000). The amount of Chromium 6 in Hinkley's water never exceeded 0.58 parts per million, even according to the film -- well below what would produce any side effects at all. There was no commonality of symptoms or suspiciously high rate of one, particular disease, all things that a legitimate epidemiologist would look for when evaluating the carcinogenic potential of the chemical in the water.