Firefighting foam leaves toxic legacy in Californians’ drinking water • Hacker News Board

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

#111

Post by christophilus » Tue, Oct 08, 2019, 7:32 PM UTC

twblalock wrote: post #102

gurumeditations wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our future has really been stolen from us. Decades of pollution from greed and decadence and excess, as Thunberg says “fantasies of eternal economic growth”, have totally destroyed our future (speaking as a young person). Climate change robs us of a stable world, robots rob us of our livelihoods, and decades of ‘economic growth’ have poisoned our bodies and minds from birth through polluted water, air, and food. Ever…

Cleaning all that stuff up is an opportunity for growth. Entire industries will need to be involved in order to pull it off.

Sounds like the broken window fallacy: https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/08/broken-window-fa...

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

#112

Post by jdkee » Tue, Oct 08, 2019, 7:33 PM UTC

twblalock wrote: post #102

gurumeditations wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our future has really been stolen from us. Decades of pollution from greed and decadence and excess, as Thunberg says “fantasies of eternal economic growth”, have totally destroyed our future (speaking as a young person). Climate change robs us of a stable world, robots rob us of our livelihoods, and decades of ‘economic growth’ have poisoned our bodies and minds from birth through polluted water, air, and food. Ever…

Cleaning all that stuff up is an opportunity for growth. Entire industries will need to be involved in order to pull it off.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window

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

#113

Post by sambull » Tue, Oct 08, 2019, 7:46 PM UTC

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 dad used to talk about this in the 80's and 90's just dumping solvents etc from maintenance shops right into the creek behind the air force base. It was just SOP. That creek runs straight to a river (about 4 miles) in a major metro area of California.

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

#114

Post by AceJohnny2 » Tue, Oct 08, 2019, 7:48 PM UTC

samatman wrote: post #105

erentz wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Even worse... many women from the community I grew up in have developed strange autoimmune disorders in their 40s and 50s. Interesting myself, my wife, and a number of friends have remarked on how a lot of people around us are getting sick with difficult to explain neurological illness in the past few years. I try to keep my skeptical hat on and say it’s all probably within some base rate, and we are just older, et…

Silicon Valley, as the name indicates, was once the world capital of semiconductor manufacture. It leads the nation in Superfund sites per square mile.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/26/lens/the-superfund-sites-...

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

#115

Post by jug » Tue, Oct 08, 2019, 7:55 PM UTC

This happened here in Sweden too. Same chemical, same problem. A huge scandal especially among concerned parents where children had grown up with it. In our case it happened due to its use on a nearby Air Force base.

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

#116

Post by tlb » Tue, Oct 08, 2019, 8:11 PM UTC

christophilus wrote: post #111

twblalock wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cleaning all that stuff up is an opportunity for growth. Entire industries will need to be involved in order to pull it off.

Sounds like the broken window fallacy: https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/08/broken-window-fa...

The fallacy is that it's good to break windows. Even though it's not good to break them, fixing windows that are already broken is worthwhile.

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

#117

Post by chuck8088 » Tue, Oct 08, 2019, 8:26 PM UTC

rhacker wrote: post #51

I feel like everyone thinks Flint and Erin Brockovich were the only two water incidents in the country. If you look for water pollution news - you'll find that places near garbage dumps are coming up highly toxic, all over the country. Everyone seems to think the administration has it under control. They don't. There is benzene, hexavalent chromium and thousands of pollutants found in our water all over the country.…

I would also like to add Willow Grove Airforce Base to this list. There is a cancer ring around Horsham thanks to this foam.

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

#118

Post by ramphastidae » Tue, Oct 08, 2019, 8:40 PM UTC

rhacker wrote: post #51

I feel like everyone thinks Flint and Erin Brockovich were the only two water incidents in the country. If you look for water pollution news - you'll find that places near garbage dumps are coming up highly toxic, all over the country. Everyone seems to think the administration has it under control. They don't. There is benzene, hexavalent chromium and thousands of pollutants found in our water all over the country.…

Agreed. There are nearly 4,000 sites in the U.S. with double the lead levels of Flint: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-lead-map/reuters-find...

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

#119

Post by ubertoop » Tue, Oct 08, 2019, 8:50 PM UTC

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…

I just want to follow this up with a rather sad and disturbing metric[1] from the EPA regarding this superfund site in Rancho Cordova:

"...groundwater extraction and treatment systems (GETs) are operating throughout the site: ARGET, GET A, GET B, GET D, GET E/F, GET H-A, GET J, GET K-A, GET L-A and GET L-B. Together, they remove over 20 million gallons of contaminated groundwater each day on average. Through the end of 2010, all groundwater extraction and treatment systems in OU-3 and OU-5 have treated a cumulative total of 107,000 million gallons of groundwater and removed more than 850,000 pounds of chemical contaminants. Western"

Just think about that. 850,000 pounds of chemical contaminates removed from the DRINKING WATER of surrounding communities. If you ask me, pollution on this level should be criminal. It's projected to take 200+ years to fully cleanup. Where's the concern over public health? Barely being discussed.

I've heard some people say that it's "all cleaned up" and "the water is totally safe". I'm skeptical. Sure, those systems are in place, and designed to extract known chemicals... But:

a) What's the error rate? Surely, some is let through.

b) What about the unknown chemicals? What in that froth of contaminated soil has yet to be identified as carcinogenic, neurotoxic, etc.? Surely some of that isn't targeted for removal in the filtration process?

...

Some whom I've spoken with doubt that industrial pollutants are the cause of the strange rise in auto immune disorders in the community. They generally seem pretty averse to the idea that a corporation could damage the environment in such a way. It's a weird "us and them" way of thinking... Any discussion of ecological damage is written off in their minds as a necessary evil for progress. I come from a background steeped in respect for science, engineering, and business yet I don't share that view.

I recommend "The Devil We Know" if you're skeptical about industrial pollutants [2].

[1] https://cumulis.epa.gov/supercpad/SiteProfiles/index.cfm?fus...

[2] https://youtu.be/hs4mzSPIzXo

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

#120

Post by StreamBright » Tue, Oct 08, 2019, 8:56 PM UTC

trockbort wrote: post #109

aledalgrande wrote: post #85

How can people in the US live with this level of poison in the water? I would think that the government would pick up on it and get it fixed. It is an essential element for life. Even before we start talking to damage to the environment.

The US government is the biggest polluter of them all. The US government does not care about human health or environmental preservation. Yet Americans in general cling to some deep belief that their government cares for them, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

This is the argument that I use against more taxation. If you pay more taxes it will be spent by these guys who as many example shows will commit enormous crimes against humanity without real consequences.