Some people call it a public health threat, others call it the new asbestos, and others call it a very difficult word to pronounce with many many syllables. We talk to the top person of the Pentagon in charge of this mystery chemical from the eCos conference in Vermont. This is Parts per Billion. Heillo once again to another special episode of Parts per Billion, the podcast from Bloomberg Environment.
I'm your host, David Schultz. Today I'm in Burlington International Airport in Burlington, Vermont, and I'm here heading home from a conference of a group of state environmental regulators meeting under the auspices of eCos, or the Environmental Council of the States. And from that somewhat awkward acronym, we now turn to an even more awkward acronym, p FATS. P FAS is a family of chemicals that can be found in products like nonstick pans, scotch guard fabric, and especially
in foam that's used to put out fires. These chemicals take forever to break down on the environment, and they've been linked to serious health problems when they can daminate drinking water supplies. The problem is especially acute on and around military bases, where firefighting foam with PFAS was sprayed liberally on landing strips and tarmacs. Cleaning this up is one of the big new problems that the Pentagon is facing, and the Pentagon Supreme Commander on this issue is Maureene Sullivan,
the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for the Environment. I spoke with Marine at the eCos conference about what we know and don't know about PFAS, But first I challenged her to take a stab at pronouncing the thing I'm putting you on this FOT Can you can you pronounce the whole thing? It's poor or polyfluorinated alkalide substances, So it took me a while to do that. I cannot tell you what p FOSS and p FOA stand for, which are just two of a suite of these perfluorinated
polychlorinated substances. There's approximately three to five thousand different of the p FAST family of compounds. And I'm not even going to attempt to say that into a microphone. So I commend your bravery there. Where did they come from? Who? Who created these chemicals? So they're all man made chemicals. They do not occur in nature. I understand they were started to be manufactured in the fifties. Now their use
is pretty widespread. It's used in paper products, it's used in industrial applications, it's used in where it comes to the Department of Defense, it's UH portfolio. Is it is used in aircraft firefighting foam? So aircraft firefighting foam. Yes, And when you so, if there's like a fire on the runway, you'd spray this foam on the runway. Is that it? Well, you'd apply it to a phone fire that is involves a jet fuel. So let's talk about
why that's a problem. You know, these chemicals I gather UH can last in the environment for a very long time and also can costant health problems. Can you talk about that? Well, I'm not the expert on the health problems, to be honest with you. They are persistent, so they stay for a long time. Thus you said, sorry, I just want to sort of believer that point a little bit. When you say persistent, you mean they what do you
mean by that? They don't break down. So once they're in the environment, they're in the environment and they move. So if they're in water, they would move with the water. If so, they would be taken up by into your body if you drink the water or if you eat food that's been exposed to it, so they'll just stay
in the environment, they don't break down. And then I know you mentioned you're not the expert on the health issues, but can you just talk a little bit about some of the concerns and the reasons why people are so worried about this. Well, the health issues are evolving right now. There's a lot of research being done. There's implications of the impacts on thyroid, cholesterol levels like that. So again I would defer to health agencies to really answer those
questions in detail. So they can cause some health problems. We don't totally know what they are, but it sounds like they're serious enough that we have, you know, environmental regulators, we have drinking water administrators who are very concerned about this and are setting limits as to how much people should should consume. Correct EPA in the Office of Water issued what was called a preliminary Health advisory several years ago, but in twenty and sixteen in May, they issued a
lifetime health advisory. Then they set the levels under this advisory, it's seventy parts per trillion, which is that's a very tiny amount. It's a very tiny amount. But we're seeing a lot of you know, communities have their water tested, and you know, they're getting results that are well well above seventy parts per trillion, not you know, everywhere, but in enough places that and geographically distributed. It's not in
any one part of the country. And it seems like a lot of them are communities that are based near military installations or on military installations. Right. Well, yes, well, let me just step back here. The Interstate Technology Research Council has actually done some research and they found with the peak manufacturing year for three AM and two thousand, the foam the compounds going to foam accounted only for three percent of where the PIFOS was going to only
three percent. So where's the rest. The rest is going to paper products, industrial activities, fabrics like carpets and things like that. So you're saying it's maybe a misnomer that it is sort of military related. I think it is. I think you're seeing the attention on the Department of Defense is because we have a program we moved out right away in May of twenty sixteen to look for sources to to test our water to see if we were the source for the water around our bases, and
we were very open about it. So so we were we were active, and we were vocal about it, and I think that's caused that caused people to say, oh, it's all about D O D. But I will cautions that this these compounds are used in a wide variety
of applications. But I will admit we are a source, and we're we're stepping up to meaning our responsibilities because we are a source, and in identifying those locations where we have in fact used it, where where we have known or suspected releases, and and moving through the process under CIRCLEA to address those and we say, circlar that's the the This like super fun, super fun, Yeah, super fun, comprehensive environmental Yes, it's just a lot. Well, well, you know,
we'll assume if you're listening to this, you know at circling. Yes, thank you that said. You know, as you mentioned, you know, the military is a source. You know, maybe not the biggest source, that's sort of debatable, but like in the military is a source. How do we clean this up? Because people people are saying this is the next asbestos. You know, this is going to be a chemical contamination that's going to be with us for a long time.
How do we start addressing this, Well, the process is laid out in the in the super fun law, So we're following that where we're identifying where we have known or suspected releases. Where that is, then we do the investigation to say where was released, what are the circumstances, and how the water flowed from those locations out potentially
into the communities. If we suspect that it is impacting the water outside of our bases, we are working with those communities and those homeowners to test their water, drinking water and if there is if the water tests above seventy parts per trillion, we are working either with the homeowners or the communities to put in provide alternative water, or hook them up to other sources of water or
install treatment systems. So that doesn't sound cheap, you know, finding other sources of drinking water, you know, filtering out identit just you mean that the mirror identifying people. Let's talk dollars and cents here. You know, how much is this going to cost the Pentagon That's a really good question.
I have done a very rough calculation back of the envelope that this was going to add about two billion dollars to our cleanup liability right now, our liability for all the cleanup of all the other chemical sits including unexploded ordinance sits at about twenty seven billion dollars for the Department of Defense work we still have to do. Wow. So so you know, you're already you know, liable for twenty seven billion. This is going to add another two billion.
That's pretty significant. And this is going to be you know, taxpayer dollars that are going to be paying for this right right, correct? Yes, I mean all of our money comes from the federal budget, so it is, it's in the it's in the Department of Defense budget. How long do you think this will take? You know, is this going to be something that will be you know, a generation at the Pentagon or is this something you can do in maybe five ten years or less. I think
it's a generation, to be honest with you. Once we cut off human exposure, it's going to take us years to figure out what are the sources, how does it prioritize with all the other chemicals we have to clean up? And within that twenty seven billion is also cleaning up unexploded ordinance on military installations, both current and former military installations, so the acute risk of explosive hazards has to be factored into that prioritization process. Yeah, unexploded ordinance seems pretty
important as well. That was Maureen Sullivan, the point person for p FAST issues at the Pentagon On, speaking from the eCos conference in Stove, Vermont. For more of our reporting on PFAZ and other chemical issues, visit our website at Newstop Bloomberg Environment dot com. This episode of parsper Billion was produced by myself with help from Rachel Dagel and Jessica Coombs. Our editor is Marissa Horn and our audio engineer is Nicholas an Zelata. The music for Parsperbillion
is a message by Jizarre. It was used under Creative Commons license. More information can be found at Better with Music dot com