TEXT IN SUPPORT OF H.3661 by Professor Graham Peaslee
https://malegislature.gov/Bills/191/H3661/BillHistory
Prof. Graham F. Peaslee
1. While the protective personal equipment (PPE) worn by firefighters is essential for their health during (and immediately after) a fire event, the specific chemicals added to keep this gear waterproof are not, in my opinion, essential. There are alternative chemicals and alternative manufacturing methods that use safer chemicals that could keep the PPE water and oil resistant.
2. The primary reason for my first statement is the widespread use of Per- and Polyflourinated Alkyl Substances (PFAS) to treat the textiles used in firefighter PPE. These chemicals, as a class, are known to be very persistent — they last for thousands of years in the environment. Many of these chemicals are also known to be bioaccumulative and toxic. While research still continues into the relative toxicity of each of the specific PFAS used (long-chain versus short-chain, etc.) there is mounting scientific evidence that many of them are immunotoxic, and several of them have already been linked to specific disease outcomes in animals and humans.
3. In my research, we have discovered that all firefighting textiles commonly available to US firefighters have several layers treated with PFAS, and both the inner moisture barrier and the outer shell have percent levels of these chemicals present. This is not a minor amount — but represents a potential source of PFAS exposure to the firefighters. In addition, we have discovered that a significant fraction of these PFAS will shed from the garment with exposure to sunlight, water and regular use over time. While the extent of ingestion, inhalation or dermal absorption of these chemicals into the firefighter is currently unknown, the precautionary principle should be applied to urge current firefighters to treat their gear with respect, and only use it in actual fire events, and to keep it sequestered from human contact when not in use. We are publishing a peer-reviewed paper to this effect while we continue to study exposure pathways into the firefighter.
4. Lastly, in addition to immediate threat to the firefighter from his/her PPE as a source of these chemicals, there is a larger community concern about the end-of-life for these textiles. While part-per-billion and part-per-million levels of PFAS are readily available from the surface of these garments while worn by the firefighters, when the gear is taken out of service in 5–10 years, it is currently cut up and put into commercial landfills. In 10–20 years of decomposition in a landfill, almost all of these PFAS will be released into the leachate, and subsequently into the environment — including our drinking water because there is no currently available technology to remove PFAS from landfill leachate. This is going to become a problem that persists for decades in every state as long as we use PFAS-treated textiles instead of switching to newer (or older) textile technologies.