Military bases in Hampton Roads recently announced investigations into pollution of public water supplies caused by the U.S. Defense Department’s use of firefighting foam laced with chemicals linked to cancer, colitis, cholesterol and several other maladies.
Taxpayers in Hampton Roads will soon understand what communities across Virginia and the country are also starting to grasp: A decades-long, nationwide public health crisis born of corporate greed and government indifference is about to cost billions of public dollars.
As politicians, pundits and regular people bemoan this now-inevitable expense, they might also ask themselves whether and how this could have been avoided.
Since the 1950s, products infused with synthetic chemicals known as PFAS made life easier for millions of Americans. Scotchgard kept carpets and furniture from staining. Teflon kept food from sticking to pans. Similar chemical coatings made clothes and shoes waterproof. And they allowed military personnel and municipal firefighters to smother dangerous, high-temperature fires with a specially made foam.
But because they are so slow to break down in nature, these substances, now dubbed “forever chemicals,” also poisoned water, earth and air and built up in the bodies of humans, animals and fish.
Over time, this turned into an environmental scourge that exposed millions of people to potential health risks. Across half a century of rarely regulated distribution, PFAS (short for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) have become environmentally ubiquitous. Studies show roughly 97% of Americans carry measurable amounts of PFAS in their bloodstreams.
So, as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency tries to implement lower legal limits in drinking water for just two of thousands of kinds of PFAS, the question arises:
Are we going to learn from our mistakes?
Once-sealed documents in court cases show that manufacturers knew about PFAS problems for decades but chose not to reveal them. For instance, 3M, one of the leading PFAS makers, knew in 1978 that its product appeared more toxic to animals than it thought and that PFAS was building up in bloodstreams of employees who made it. But the company chose not to tell government regulators or the public, as federal regulations required.
Meanwhile, 3M and other companies pumped waste water from PFAS production into rivers or disposed of it in ways that fouled private wells and public water systems. As they did so, billions of dollars in PFAS-related sales rolled in.
For decades, the fight to get the government to control PFAS exposure pitted rich, multinational corporations, such as 3M and DuPont, against environmental activists, such as the Environmental Working Group. Victims’ civil complaints took decades to reach conclusion. If victims secured settlements, those settlements specified that PFAS makers did not have to admit wrongdoing.
As evidence mounted of the dangers of PFAS, denial and deceit by deep-pocketed defendants continued. Many politicians, lobbied by the chemical industry, ran time-consuming interference to government intervention. Companies that were sued claimed they could not be held liable because supposed PFAS victims encountered so many different environmental factors that they could not prove that PFAS specifically caused their health problem.
This blocked any route to justice for folks such as Joanne Stanton and her son. They live in Pennsylvania. Stanton, her family and her neighbors grew up drinking from a watershed that was heavily polluted with runoff from two military bases that used PFAS firefighting foam. Stanton was one of three unrelated women on the same street with a child who developed cancerous brain tumors containing embryonic tissue. She is sure PFAS pollution contributed, but cannot prove it.
In 2017, a lawsuit involving health risks caused by a DuPont Teflon plant settled for $671 million. The settlement did not demand a corporate admission of wrongdoing or immediate government reductions of PFAS in drinking water. But the settlement did force a study of illnesses among area residents with no connection to the Teflon plant. The study found likely links between PFOA, a type of PFAS, and kidney cancer, testicular cancer, ulcerative colitis, thyroid disease and hypertension during pregnancy.
Still, in a congressional subcommittee hearing in 2019, a 3M executive testified under oath that PFAS at existing levels in the environment had not caused a single human injury.
As the fight to lower limits on PFAS in drinking water drags on, the lesson for Americans lingers.
Fool me once, shame on you.
Fool me twice?
Jim Spencer of Williamsburg is a former Virginian-Pilot reporter and Daily Press columnist. He also wrote for the Chicago Tribune, the Denver Post, and the Minneapolis Star Tribune, where he covered the “forever chemicals” crisis.
