A Formal Fallacy — Well Respected Authorities in the Fire Service who Tow the Industry Line That Not All PFAS are Harmful.
Recently I was shown two articles related to PFAS in PPE by respected members of fire service who are prominent figures in health and safety, PPE, and NFPA.
Dr Christina Baxter was interviewed on a recent well known podcast discussing many aspects of her work and during the last 25 minutes of the interview the discussion turned to ‘the elephant in the room’ — PFAS in PPE.
I wasn’t sure on Dr Baxter’s position after hearing the interview but gave benefit of the doubt until a colleague showed me the new website Dr Baxter and Jeff Stull recently published. After reading through the website it was undeniable to me that this is another industry driven dialogue using their positions of power and authority to minimize the risks that PFAS in firefighter turnout gear pose to first responders.
The problem here is, Jeff and Christina are making assumptions. And they are using numbers that do not include the combined dust in your station, nor the most heavily fluorinated textile ever seen by Dr Graham Peaslee:
The following email exchange took place and I was going to leave it at that until, another aspect arose this week in mid-November that alarmed me.
So, that was that. But what caught my eye this week was another article by Jeff Stull who is head of our NFPA Task Force on the chemicals used in PPE. This article was just sent to me but published in September:
If we examine the current criteria that relate to how easily clothing is cleaned, there are only a few requirements. Outer shell materials are required to have relatively low water absorption. Up until the last edition of NFPA 1971 (2013), shell materials were allowed to absorb 30% of their water weight and still be acceptable. That limit was reduced to 15% in 2018, but only for water. In fact, most materials show water weight gain at levels lower than 5% when washed repeatedly under harsh conditions. The concern for going lower has become an issue because material suppliers fear that limitations on finishes due to the use of controversial chemicals put onto these materials will make it impossible for these materials to offer lower levels of water absorption-resistance. It is further expected that less-effective fabric finishes will also mean that clothing surfaces will also absorb much larger quantities of various hazardous fireground chemicals or make these chemicals harder to remove through cleaning. The absence of any standardized criteria within NFPA 1971 to address how readily clothing materials pick and retain expected contaminants makes it difficult to assess this specific need for firefighter PPE.
That is stunning.
For 20 years you have been wearing PFOA. And now the industry is concerned about you absorbing much larger quantities of various hazardous fire-ground chemicals? Well just a gall darn minute here.. cause.. doesn’t NFPA 1971 set the very rigid test for Water Resistance? So if there is a new finish, and it can’t meet the standard of NFPA 1971, it will not make it on and that standard doesn’t change because of the use of a different finish. It either makes it or it doesn’t. And, fwiw, there is a coating available by Safety Components that meets NFPA. You can order it in 2021.
You will still be wrapped in a Teflon wrapper however till W.L. Gore gets with the program and gives us a PTFE free moisture barrier. Right now your moisture barrier is over 30% Teflon. You threw out your Teflon frying pan right? But you’re still wrapped in Teflon because W.L. Gore won’t budge.
You deserve much better. The truth. Not scare tactics and shell games with NFPA standards that mean one thing for you and another for industry.
This entire phenomenon smells like the tobacco industry’s deadly nicotine ‘look here- not there’ campaign.
WE WANT COMPLETELY PFAS FREE GEAR.
However, despite the statements and denials, you can see that Dr Peaslee’s study did find PFOA in Globe Gear. It was in everything except a 2017 moisture barrier.
And the OEKO-Tek standard that is being tossed around like the holy grail means nothing in regards to the new C6 ‘ ten times less toxic’ coating. That’s because Oeko-Tex 100 has no language for short chain PFAS. It’s only for C8 and above. The stuff you’ve worn for 20 years.
So while Jeff has the ability to reach masses, via his reach in media, I do not. Please share the knowledge you learn here. While we’d like to think highly of the leaders in the NFPA, and fire service we have to look at authority with a degree of side eye.
