A Boring Dystopia

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Firefighters Wore Gear Containing “Forever Chemicals.” The Forest Service Knew and Stayed Silent for Years. (www.propublica.org)

submitted 1 day ago by supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz to c/aboringdystopia@lemmy.world

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[–] how_we_burned@lemmy.zip 4 points 20 hours ago

The problem isn't that PFASs are in fire fighting gear.

In fact it's PTFEs that are in firefighting gear, and due to the stability of this chemical and how this gear is disposed of its very unlikely d that their clothes are being dumped in the environment.

PFAS are, by and large a by-product of Teflon / Gore-Tex production, and even then from decades ago (as most manufacturers have exited or are exiting the use of PFAS, whilst there are much tighter controls on effluence now days).

So the majority of PFAS pollution in the environment is primarily due to the dumping of effluence from these facilities, accidents and firefighting foams, especially that used by the military fire suppression and in their use to fight fires.

Take the Blue Mountains region in Australia. Pristine environment, massive national park. In 1992 and 2002 we had two petrol tanker crashes. Now understandbly the authorities were pretty much get those tanker fires under control before the whole park burns up. So fire-fighters used PFAS imbued foams to suppress them. This in turn caused horrendous amounts of this chemical to be washed into the water table.

And thus this beautiful environment now has some of Australia's worst PFAS pollution.

Same for land surrounding airbases where they regularly practices fire suppression.

Worse is how PFAS is evaporated from polluted waterways and bodies into clouds. So you don't even need to live near a pfas polluted area to become exposed.

Veritasium has a great video on this awfully depressing subject https://youtu.be/SC2eSujzrUY

https://pfas.australianmap.net/

https://www.ewg.org/interactive-maps/pfas_contamination/ (for the US)