Statement NAS PFAS Town Hall
Public Comment ~ NAS Town Hall — April 7, 2021
My husband Lt. Paul Cotter (ret) of Worcester, MA medically retired from his career as a firefighter after his cancer diagnosis in 2015. We now serve as advocates seeking to elevate the community of 1.3 million firefighters and their PFAS exposure recognition, health studies, medical monitoring and justice.
While there are literally hundreds of studies on firefighter turnout gear, not one study produced the knowledge that PFOA was used as a byproduct of manufacturing in firefighter turnout gear. After being told PFOA ‘ if’ present would only be there in ‘trace amounts’.
We took on industry and labor to find the truth ourselves as manufactures produced ‘consultant’ science for us to swallow.
In June 2020, Dr. Graham Peaslee, Notre Dame nuclear physicist published the first study ever conducted on the chemicals used to make turnout gear.
In the years leading up to this study, it became startling clear that firefighters are not receiving the education, medical monitoring, and health studies needed to provide a bare minimum toolkit on the exposures they face to both the PFAS in their gear, now known as the most ‘highly fluorinated textile seen by nuclear physicist Graham Peaslee’, nor their AFFF exposures.
In our roles as leaders in the National PFAS Contamination Coalition, we hear our allies discuss health studies, blood testing, outcomes, RAB’s (restoration advisory board), collection, remediation, community awareness, inclusion, exclusion, etc. We are not having those discussions with firefighters.
What makes the fire service as a whole very complicated is we are seen as ‘separate’ groups by federal and state agencies. For example, while DoD firefighters will have the option to test their blood for PFAS, civilian (municipal and volunteer firefighters) will not have that option.
Since then, there have been small increments of studies underway by NIOSH to study PFAS in firefighters, and there is a current plan in place by NIST that has a 3 year program to study the effects of PFAS in firefighter turnout gear. While we are most welcome for all of these efforts it does not go far enough.
In the case of turnout gear, firefighters are wearing the most heavily fluorinated textile seen by nuclear physicist Graham Peaslee. And, they have been for over 20 years.
Largely in part to the corporate hold industry has over the fire service with the likes of DuPont, 3M, Gore, and Lion Gear who have been the voting members of our NFPA (National Fire Protection Association) safety standards institution while remaining silent on the long and short chain PFAS used for decades in turnout gear, but having much to say about firefighter cancer and products of combustion. That immersion spread into the labor union as well when DuPont and 3M became the major sponsors of our cancer summits, while omitting all discussion of PFOA in turnout gear.
PFAS in the fire service has not yet reached the ‘fire department physician reference’ guide that fire many fire departments and labor orgs provide to their members. In this area we would like to physicians notified that firefighters have a elevated PFAS exposure risk from combined sources; turnout gear, dust in fire houses, AFFF
With the reach of NAS, we see this is a monumental opportunity to share independent science and elevate the need for education, awareness, remediation, and replacement of PFAS coated turnout gear as well as toxic AFFF within 51,000 fire houses in the USA.
This comment today is to give the NAS insight into the fire service as to what is missing for first responders who use the equipment with little awareness as the toxicity it carries.
The attached documents are included to show the findings by Dr Graham Peaslee as to the amounts of PFOA and PFAS in turnout gear, as well as in firehouse dust.
With the studies attached it is also a great concern that firefighters are not aware of the risk they are in due to the elevated levels of PFAS in their system — and that this concerns their immune system, endocrine system, and yet unknown harms of Covid-19.
We look forward to working with NAS as your organization writes the next chapter on the peer-reviewed science needed to secure medical monitoring and health studies for firefighters and veterans who are and were occupationally exposed to this class of chemicals.
Sincerely,
Diane Cotter
Your Turnout Gear and PFOA
www.yourturnoutgearandpfoa.com