Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Firefighting foam leaves toxic legacy in Californians’ drinking water

latimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 145 posts

Re: Firefighting foam leaves toxic legacy in Californians’ drinking water

#61

Post by Scoundreller »

jb775 wrote: post #28
hammock wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a worldwide problem. I would safely guess just about every airfield in America is dealing with this issue, even if there hasn't been a specific article written about it yet.

There have been many articles written about it, google "PFAS contamination". I moved into a new house last year near 2 closed down USAF military bases (known to have been previously contaminated by firefighter foam) and did a ton of research on the issue since the house water comes from a well (free water!). I ended up getting a professional water filtration system installed in our basement (carbon tanks, UV light fi…

There’s gotta be a cheaper ongoing way to do this. For the carbon, should be possible to buy it by the barrel. Germicidal UV lights should be cheap (they’re mainly uncoated fluorescent lamps) and dunno about the RO membranes...

Re: Firefighting foam leaves toxic legacy in Californians’ drinking water

#62

Post by mrguyorama »

eloff wrote: post #45
isthispermanent wrote: post #44

This kind of reminds of when we dump tons of salt on the roads when winter storms come around the east coast. It solves one problem but what other problems is it causing? It would be incredibly naive to think dumping all these chemicals on the ground wouldn't cause some type of negative externality.

It rusts cars for one. It could make the soil too salty for growing if runoff accumulates in one place, but usually it will be diluted too much to matter. I don't know if chemicals other than salt are used commonly on roads, that could cause other issues.

Northern Maine is too poor to afford significant amounts of road salt, so they supplement heavily with plain dirt and sand.

Re: Firefighting foam leaves toxic legacy in Californians’ drinking water

#63

Post by LeifCarrotson »

philips wrote: post #49

Can someone recommend a consumer water testing kit that covers things like this?

No, you can't test for PFAS with consumer kit, it's dangerous at 70 parts-per-trillion levels and is tricky to handle without contamination. The test itself is expensive, too. I'm in the part of Rockford, Michigan contaminated by Wolverine/Hush Puppies/Caterpillar shoe leather tannery scraps, and they've paid Rose & Westra GZA to send techs to my house every 6 months. A friend just outside the supposedly affected area paid $300 to have a test performed, which came back with And that's just one possible issue. You can't feasibly test for every possible exotic contaminant.

In my case, however, a pair of 48"x10" granular activated carbon filters (with auxiliary sediment filters, water softener, and UV light) have proven completely effective at removing PFAS from my water.

Re: Firefighting foam leaves toxic legacy in Californians’ drinking water

#64

Post by jabl »

opwieurposiu wrote: post #35
hanniabu wrote: post #6

I was always told that this foam wasn't toxic

Well if the choice is between getting sprayed with burning jet fuel or sprayed with fluorinated foam I will take the foam every time. Maybe we should save the good stuff like halon and PFAS foam for emergencies and use something more eco for training.

In principle, but otoh it makes a lot of sense to train with the same stuff you use for real.

That being said, recently non-flourinated firefighting foams have been developed (based on some sugars IIRC), so there's hope these will be able to replace the old stuff.

Re: Firefighting foam leaves toxic legacy in Californians’ drinking water

#65

Post by lightedman »

whafro wrote: post #55
jen_h wrote: post #25

Filter your water if you live anywhere near an airport or military base anywhere, it's not just California. In Satellite Beach, Florida, the contamination from Patrick AFB was discovered after a group of Satellite Beach High alumni realized they all developed cancer around the same time and decided to start digging. [ https://pfasproject.com/2018/08/08/satellite-beach-florida-f... ] They dumped everything in a trench…

My father, who was in the aircraft refueling industry for decades until his passing earlier this year, would routinely rant about his customers' (the airports, generally) tolerance for leaking jet fuel into the ground. He reported, and I have no source aside from him, that JFK allows up to 10,000 gallons of jet fuel to leak into the ground. Per day. And he claimed that most airports with hydrant systems had similarly…

I used to live across from the FedEx section of Memphis International, could see it over my fence. I used to watch with binoculars. They absolutely spill(ed) tons of fuel and did nothing to try cleaning it up.

Re: Firefighting foam leaves toxic legacy in Californians’ drinking water

#66

Post by hammock »

sgc wrote: post #53
eloff wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It rusts cars for one. It could make the soil too salty for growing if runoff accumulates in one place, but usually it will be diluted too much to matter. I don't know if chemicals other than salt are used commonly on roads, that could cause other issues.

Zeolites are one of the widely used alternatives developed specifically to replace salt use. They are an oil derivative, so I am not hopeful of their long term effects. They are also very expensive comparatively.

Zeolites? Oil derivative?

Re: Firefighting foam leaves toxic legacy in Californians’ drinking water

#67

Post by skeptical900067 »

LeifCarrotson wrote: post #63
philips wrote: post #49

Can someone recommend a consumer water testing kit that covers things like this?

No, you can't test for PFAS with consumer kit, it's dangerous at 70 parts-per-trillion levels and is tricky to handle without contamination. The test itself is expensive, too. I'm in the part of Rockford, Michigan contaminated by Wolverine/Hush Puppies/Caterpillar shoe leather tannery scraps, and they've paid Rose & Westra GZA to send techs to my house every 6 months. A friend just outside the supposedly affected are…

Those sound like big filters. Where are they installed, and how often do you replace? Or is that just pitcher volume?

Re: Firefighting foam leaves toxic legacy in Californians’ drinking water

#68

Post by philipkglass »

sgc wrote: post #53
eloff wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It rusts cars for one. It could make the soil too salty for growing if runoff accumulates in one place, but usually it will be diluted too much to matter. I don't know if chemicals other than salt are used commonly on roads, that could cause other issues.

Zeolites are one of the widely used alternatives developed specifically to replace salt use. They are an oil derivative, so I am not hopeful of their long term effects. They are also very expensive comparatively.

Zeolites are used as catalysts in processing oil, but they're not oil derivatives.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeolite

Re: Firefighting foam leaves toxic legacy in Californians’ drinking water

#69

Post by mikestew »

jeanvaljean2463 wrote: post #20
mschuster91 wrote: post #2

> The Air Force delivered free five-gallon jugs of water to the Mendez home for more than two years. In 2018, it paid to have the house connected to the municipal water system. Ruben Mendez said he now pays $100 a month for water he used to get for free. Sorry, what? 100$ a month for residential water ? Either this guy is running a farm operation or something is seriously broken.

https://kfor.com/2019/09/03/im-just-frustrated-edmond-reside... Where I live people's bills are going from $100 to over $600 a month. I saw someone's post on Nextdoor saying that their bill was $2700. Ours was $963 up from about $270 with no change in usage. I would be thrilled to pay $100 a month for water.

The person in the article said he was watering his lawn for $40/month previously. The fact that it jumped to $250 while maintaining his watering habits does not garner much sympathy from me. Were it $250 so that he might hydrate his children and maintain a reasonable standard of living, well that's another thing. But just so your grass doesn't go dormant? Here, water your grass with my tears.

In summary, I think some poor examples were chosen.

Re: Firefighting foam leaves toxic legacy in Californians’ drinking water

#70

Post by bcrosby95 »

ubertoop wrote: post #54

I grew up approximately 2.5 miles from a major rocket manufacturer. We're talking R&D and manufacturing of jet propulsion and rocket systems since the 80s. They totally polluted the water tables in the area with by-products of rocket fuel and other industrial chemicals used to clean engines. They were fined in the 90s and supposedly worked with local water authorities to setup a filtration system... but decades later…

Are you talking about the Santa Susana Labs that was used by Rocketdyne for a period of time? Or is there another area with a similarly screwed up story?

I live in the area (about 5 miles south of the former lab) and didn't hear anything about it until I moved here. Since then I've read stories about how people living in Simi Valley used to be able to watch some of their rocket tests.

Those labs are also the site of one of the worst nuclear power incident in the US - but this was in the 50s. There are also reports of Rocketdyne shooting barrels of chemicals until they exploded into the 90s. Apparently they regularly and illegally disposed of contaminated materials by burning them in open air pits. That's a little insane.

Post reply on HN