Aqueous Film Forming Foam, also known as AFFF and Firefighting Foam, is a fire retardant often used by firefighters, military personnel, and those in commercial airports to put out fuel-based fires. However, this foam has some devastating effects that everyone should watch out for.
There are still studies taking place about the dangers of AFFF, but we know this: it has carcinogens and “forever chemicals,” meaning that the chemicals can’t be safely disposed of or broken down.
Not only are firefighters and other workers consistently being exposed to the dangers of AFFF, but it’s affecting the environment and people in nearby areas as well. Those who live on properties near airports and military bases are likely exposed, and local water supplies are likely contaminated as well.
There are thousands upon thousands of people in local communities that have been exposed to these foams and have carcinogenic chemicals in their bodies that they don’t even know about.
If you think you may have been exposed to AFFF, what can you do? Matt Dolman, Stan Gipe, and the team at Dolman Law Group are working with lawyers across the country to solve these cases.
Learn more in this episode of the David vs. Goliath podcast with elite personal injury lawyers Matt Dolman and Stan Gipe. Together, they discuss the dangers of AFFF, how it’s negatively impacting the health and wellbeing of both people and the environment, and what to do if you think you’ve been exposed.
In this episode:
- [00:49] Matt Dolman introduces his guest, Stan Gipe
- [01:00] What is AFFF (Aqueous Film Forming Foam)?
- [03:27] The dangers of AFFF — and how it affects more than just firefighters
- [06:57] How many have been exposed to these forever chemicals?
- [09:28] How Dolman Law Group is working to investigate cases from AFFF carcinogens
- [12:08] Why you should jump on this issue early if you’re experiencing effects from AFFF exposure
Transcript
Welcome to another episode of the Dolman Law Group podcast. I’m Matt Dolman, managing partner at Dolman Law Group, here with my special guest who’s been here many times, Stan Gipe.
Hey. Always a pleasure to be here.
So tell us what we’re going to be talking about today.
Today we’re talking about something called AFFF and I think we refer to it as AFFF because it’s called aqueous film forming foam.
And we just had a series of bloopers where I kept mispronouncing film forming foam and saying it over and over again, the wrong way. But AFFF is a firefighting retardant that we’ve been working on and it poses significant dangers to those who are in the firefighting industry, commercial volunteer firefighters, as well as firefighters that are on commercial airports, and there’s plenty of them, along with both naval and air force firefighters. And finally, those who live in the properties that are adjacent or nearby airports, military bases. What we’re worrying about now is that this AFFF, which has known carcinogens, they’re known as forever chemicals, and we’ll get into that in a moment. They can contaminate the local water supply through the aquifers, and we’re still learning about the dangers and the studies are ongoing and it’s a very fluid area of science and the law, but make no mistake about this might be the next frontier that could be almost as big as asbestos. You want to talk a little more about AFFF?
Yeah. Okay. Kind of back up to, AFFF, in and of itself, it’s a fantastic product. Okay. It is very effective at putting out fires that are based on fuels, aviation fuels, oil based fires, and what it does, just picture, it tries to put a foam blanket over the chemical that’s burning. You spray it on the chemical, it creates a foam blanket and it blocks out all the oxygen.
Sure.
Putting the fire out. And for this, it’s fantastic. It works great. It’s one of the best products for doing this. So you see what happens. People are looking for a product, they find something that works, they begin embracing it and rolling it out. Then they start look, okay, well, hey, something’s happening? What’s going on here? And you start looking deeper. And the more stuff gets used, they look deeper and deeper and realize, oh man, some of the chemicals in this aqueous film forming foam, or AFFF, they’re carcinogens. Okay? Some of this can really hurt people and they start looking and looking and suddenly realize, oh my gosh, the level of these chemicals in this foam is unreal. It’s got a real potential to cause injury. And then, like you brought up, the second step, they look at the chemicals and go, my gosh, these are forever chemicals. They’re called forever chemicals because their half life is so long they don’t really break down.
Yeah. They don’t break down in the body. They don’t break down in the environment. And they last for many, many, many years, and God knows what they’re going to do to you.
And this is used, I mean, the FAA up until 2018 required airports to use this foam.
Sure.
And in 2018, they started looking at some of the stuff saying, wait, we got to back off. I think this foam is still actually used in a lot of military establishments and military bases because of its effect in this, despite the fact that it’s got such harm causing and cancer causing properties out there. Now, what’s kind of gone on and people think, okay, well it’s a fire. How often do you fight fires? No, the problem you’ve got-
You train with it.
Yeah. That’s exactly it. If you’re a firefighter in an airport, your first rodeo’s not going to be the 747 rolling down the runway on fire. You’re going to have practice once a week for months and years on end using this foam on stuff. It’s the same way at military basis.
Yes.
So you’ve got two different aspects of this one. Okay. During that process, you were exposed to the chemical.
Yeah.
While you were out there as a firefighter, you’re doing this, you’re spraying the foam, you’re getting exposed to the chemical.
Over and over again.
You’re ingesting over and over. But here’s a second problem, this is a forever chemical. Okay. Where you sprayed it, wherever you practice, is now an area that’s also contaminated with this product.
No question about it.
Okay.
The workers, the people who cleaned it up. Now, let’s take it one step further. It rains. What happens? Well, this stuff kind of moves, it contaminates the ground. Then it contaminates the groundwater. And you sort of got a huge domino effect of this chemical that never goes away.
Exactly.
And it continues to move throughout the system so now what we’re finding is this is causing massive problems. Okay. It’s causing a ton of problems. One, if you own an airport, which is only municipalities for the most part-
Well, we’re seeing them. They’re actually filing lawsuits against-
One just recently about Tampa Airport. If you look, it was in the St. Pete Times, I believe, last week or two weeks ago, I read Tampa Airport’s filing their lawsuit because now they’ve used this foam, they got to clean it up. They’ve got to clean up the ground. They got to clean up the area that was used. And this, if you’ve never dealt with that, this is millions of dollars.
Oh, remediation efforts. Of course.
I mean, it’s not just, “Hey, we rinse it off.” It’s, if you’re cleaning this soil, if you’ve got contaminated soil, you’ve actually got to take the soil out of there in drums.
Yeah.
Okay. Well, what do you do with the drums? You can’t dump them somewhere because they’re contaminated, then you’re just contaminating other soils. You got to find somewhere to store all these drums of dirt. Okay. Because there’s no way to clean it, it’s a forever chemical. And you’ve got the same thing going on with groundwater. Okay.
It’s ridiculous.
They’re pulling the groundwater out in these wells, it’s all contaminated. What can you do with it? You can’t pour it back on the ground. You can’t pour it anywhere because it’s going to get into other groundwater. So you got one, there’s a huge cost of removing this stuff, and then two, because it’s so contaminated, the storage cost associated with these things is off the charge.
Yes. Not to mention the individual effect, the firefighters, but also the workers, the individuals in airports, for instance, those who are servicing the planes, those who may have been actually exposed to the elements itself. But not to mention the domino effect, the slippery slope of, it enters the aquifers, enters the drinking water, it’s contaminated nearby areas. How far does this actually reach? How many individuals have been exposed to these forever chemicals? And I think we’re still learning about that.
We’re still learning, but I can tell you, the Tampa Bay area is one of the hotbeds for this.
Sure.
Because we’ve got MacDill.
Got MacDill and you got the commercial airport of Tampa.
Right above MacDill in particular, they’ve used a lot of AFFF down there, and there’s really no civilians. Okay. This is all military personnel when you’re down there. So they’re all getting involved. There’s clean up, there’s practice. It’s not just, “Hey, there’s 20 firefighters for the airport.” No, we’re training all kinds of military personnel on how to do this.
Sure.
They rotate through the base. Someone’s there for six months and someone else comes in, they got to be trained on it. So the volume you’re getting at these military institutions is massive. And look at the planes they bring in, if you’ve seen the air fest, the amount of planes that come in.
Sure.
The amount of practice and testing they’re doing there is off the chart. And it’s not their fault, I mean, they got to be ready. If a plane goes down, you got to be ready to deal with it.
At any moment. Yeah.
But we’ve got thousands upon thousands upon thousands of people in our local community that have been exposed to these foams, have got carcinogenic chemicals in their body that they don’t even know about. That they-
Who have been diagnosed with cancer, but might not be able to relate it back and not sure, what may have caused the cancer. Well, if you actually worked in an airport, it’s worth investigating. If you worked on a military base, it certainly is worth investigating. If you were a firefighter, it’s not very difficult to show the cause of link between AFFF and being that’s a known carcinogen and how much of that carcinogen is actually active in AFFF, and now you’re diagnosed of cancer. The correlation is pretty obvious.
Yeah. And I’m going to tell you, there’s certain types of cancers, but if you’re someone who’s been diagnosed with a cancer. Okay. And you worked anywhere on the exterior part of an airport, whether it be baggage handling, wherever, you need to look into it. Okay.
100%.
If you’re anyone who’s been on MacDill Air Force Base, you’re anyone who’s worked in that establishment, been around the airports, been around where the planes are landing and you get cancer, you need to look into it because they’re starting to say the link between these chemicals and cancer looks strong. Okay. And as research continues, it’s starting to show more and more of a link and the more we know about these chemicals and the more we’re finding out, the more dangerous they seem.
No question about it. Be the cause of different types of cancers. And I want to make sure that those who are listening out there who are eventually going to hear this podcast, we’re investigating these cases nationwide, so we work with a team of lawyers throughout the country. We have strategic relationships with the lawyers who are licensed in particular jurisdictions that will work with us on these cases so we’re investigating these cases right now, nationwide. And there’s, I think that AFFF is going to explode as more people learn about this and the media continues to pick up on these lawsuits filed by municipalities against 3M and the other big manufacturers.
It’s kind of similar, in what may hold a day in this type of litigation going forward is that 3M is a publicly traded company, no different than Bayer who bought out Monsanto and they’re dealing with Roundup. Eventually, you’re hoping that the manufacturer’s going to come to the table and realize not only their exposure, but that this is going to inevitably affect stock prices and the shareholders are going to complain. And then the corporate officers are going to be held accountable and it’s going to force them to come to the table and deal with this in a realistic manner. And we’re very hopeful that they’re going to give out fair compensation for the victims and the victims, it’s untold how many people have been exposed to this.
Right. And then what you bring, you’ve got a very different sort of corporate reaction. When you’ve got a corporation that’s losing money. Okay. That’s one thing, they can deal with it however they want. When you got a corporation, a publicly traded company, someone, and they’ve said, “Look, your product’s out there killing people.”
Yeah.
Okay. You got to get on the front end of that because that is bad. Okay. It’s not, “I made a business mistake.” It’s not, “Hey, I made a bad investment,” which is, “Hey, that’s a risk of business. You invest in something. That’s what you’re assuming, a risk of loss.” Okay. This is, “I’ve created a product that’s killing people.”
And creating environmental disaster.
Well, yeah. And that, okay, no one’s happy about. I don’t care what business you’re in, you’re allowed to do what you want, you’re allowed to make money, you’re allowed to lose money.
Yeah. They’re not going to look it as the cost of doing business or a business loss.
But if I find out you’re doing something that’s hurting me, that’s hurting our community, that’s hurting my environment, you better fix it. And that’s the sort of attitude you see on these, is the public as a whole holds companies much more accountable when they do harm to the public, do harm to individuals, do harm to our environment, than they do when they do harm to themselves. No one cares if they go bankrupt.
No. It’s a reptilian theory.
Right. No one cares if they go bankrupt. I don’t care if you lose money, just don’t pollute my community. Okay? I don’t want you putting a chemical somewhere my kid’s going to be.
Said it. I can’t say any better than that. Anything else in closing thoughts?
No. One thing I’ll say, this is still a developing area. Okay. I can tell you, you want to get in on the front end of it, if you are experiencing any of this, you can feel free to call us at the Dolman Law Group. We’re looking into these claims. We’re exploring these claims. We’re pursuing these claims. And I can tell you, there is no one firm that’s going to be doing this stuff alone. When you’re dealing with these sort of big issues, these massive claims, it’s a conglomerate of people that work together to bring these cases forward.
Yep.
And you just want to make sure you’re getting with someone who knows what’s going on, who’s aware of the issues moving forward, and can get you with the right group of people to get you compensation for this claim. Because unlike your individual auto claim where it’s a mono, we mono, I’ll see you in the courtroom, there are huge support groups behind each of these-
No question.
Groups making cases, so…
Yeah, if you’ve been diagnosed with cancer and you’re a commercial volunteer firefighter, you work on a military naval base, air force base or you live in a property that’s adjacent to a commercial airport, give us a ring, (727) 451-6900. I don’t care where in the country you are, we work with a team of lawyers throughout the country, we’re licensed in many different jurisdictions, and we’re going to work with them on your case. So, again, you can find more information at www. D, like in David, O-L-M-A-N-L-A-W .com. I’m Matt Dolman, managing partner at Dolman Law Group, this is Stan Gipe from Papa and Gipe, and we work together on these claims.
Yeah, it’s been a pleasure. Always a pleasure.
Thank you, Stan. Always.
