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TRANSCRIPT of October 11, 2020 Dr. Graham Peaslee interview with AFSO21LLC’s Kevin Ferrara
Welcome everybody to AFSO21 Radio. You’re listening to The Weekend Wrap-up.
KF. Welcome to another episode of AFSO21 radio the Weekend Wrap-up podcast. I’m your host Kevin Ferrara. And this week I’m joined by Dr. Graham Peaslee a renowned leader in the science community — who along with his team of students and esteemed colleges has kicked open the door to reveal PFAS in firefighter turnout gear.
Dr Peaslee joins me today to discuss his work as well as clarifies some discrepancies recently published online. Before I introduce Doctor Peaslee lets pause for a few moments to hear from our sponsor Fire Dept Coffee.
Welcome back everyone. Let’s get started on what I anticipate is going to be a very revealing interview. Dr Peaslee, welcome to the Weekend Wrap-up.
GP: Well thank you Kevin, it’s good to be here.
KF: Dr Peaslee, to my knowledge, you’re not a firefighter and, it’s obvious I’m not a scientist. Fortunately, we seem to be on the same page regarding PFAS contamination and exposure. So, for the listeners who aren’t familiar with you and your work dealing with PFAS and firefighter turnout gear, can you please share how you personally became involved in researching PFAS?
GP: Sure. PFAS in general I began researching long before — relevant to the fire services. But, about oh, ten years ago now, I was at a conference and I have a technique when measuring flame retardants. And the woman at the conference said, “well, if you could do that with fluorine boy, you’d have something to study”. Now, I didn’t understand what PFAS were at the time so I listened to her and I went and I found out I could measure fluorine and I called her back the week after the conference and said; “I can measure it”. She sent me a sample of textiles actually at the time, and I put it in front of the beam and little less than two hours later we had a signal. Ah, and I understood that that was quite unique — to having PFAS on it, in fact we had to, we had a positive sample. They sent us a pair of Dockers which in those days were fluorinated, and we saw it right away and I said, “is this what we’re looking for?” and we said, “well we’ve gotta test something that isn’t” and we had no control. We had no idea what to do, so I made a student take off his shirt, and we ran his shirt through the beam. There was no fluorine. And so, I said, “ok, we can see it on textiles”. And that began a very long and complicated study between the current method which is very chemical instrumentation specific , and is quite, quite precise but very, very tedious to do and then we published several papers on our new technique *that is spectroscopic could look at these things quickly. And then the rest as they say is history. We’ve just gotten more and more projects, bigger and bigger projects and they included food packaging, they included more textiles, they included ground water and soil samples and we’re actually trying to expand into blood. So, we’re — we’re trying to measure everything. But it’s ah, that’s where our interest in PFAS began.
KF: Okay. Outstanding. Well Doctor Peaslee, before we discuss the elephant in the room, and hopefully I’m pronouncing his name — Doctor Chrostowski, his op-ed, as I look at it — you know, I want to take a few minutes minuets to talk about parts-per-billion versus parts-per-trillion, as hopefully this will be important later in the podcast.
So in 2016 the EPA established individual lifetime health advisory of 70 parts-per-trillion for PFOA and PFOS, which converts to — assuming my fuzzy math is correct, 0.07 parts-per-billion. Is, is that correct?
GP: That’s correct. A factor of a thousand between trillion and billion.
KF: Okay, so we’re gonna keep that to the side for now listeners and we’re gonna circle back to that. So, Doctor Peaslee as I mentioned the elephant in the room, and what many in the fire service community, and especially on social media are talking about, seems to be Doctor Chrostowski’s op-ed on the Fire Rescue website. And Fire Rescue stated, ‘the doctor is a consultant for Lion’. But you know, for me after — after reading through his op-ed, it seems at least to my eyes, it came across as an attempt to discredit your stellar work regarding PFAS in firefighter turnout gear. And, in no way, I’m accusing Doctor Chrostowski of anything, however, many have reached out to me and stated, you know, they think, when they think of consultants hired by companies — and you know transparency, I’m a fire protection emergency service consultant myself, they think consultants are perceived as being biased. You know that they’re working for that company, everything is geared / directed to that company. What are your, what are your thoughts on that?
GP: I think any listener or investigator should always consider the sources. And we know, especially in this day and age, that sources aren’t all that they appear. It’s pretty easy to put together something on the web and pretty easy to get something written up and published in terms of opinion pieces you can say anything you like. And the ground truth thing is harder to do. Especially if it’s a scientific issue and it comes with parts-per-billion, parts-per-trillion. Ah, but you have to — there’s some basic research you can do and ah, this opinion piece I wasn’t aware of until it came out. Ah, it, it didn’t particularly phase me until they sort of try to cloud the issues.
And several of the things Doctor Chrostowski says are correct, but then, you start with something that’s correct and you extend well beyond where its’ correctness lies. And everybody’s guilty of this. We all want the position to be represented so they represent a position and, well, if you assume that the Mississippi grows at so many centimeters a year, it’s clear in a hundred years we’ll have a bridge to Mexico or to Cuba. And that’s not true — something else happens but you can make an extension that it is not sensible from the material presented. And this particular opinion was written, and I had to look up who it was, and, he’s never published on PFAS before
KF: Oh wow.
GP: — and in fact hasn’t published much at all — and so, this is, this is not something I worry about in terms of my, my science because he doesn’t do my science and, he doesn’t in fact do any science he’s a paid consultant. And so I think that you should be aware that he’s paid to say this.
They’re great points — I can repudiate them as they come up and we can talk about you know, discuss them.
KF: Sure.
GP: Um, I think that anybody who engages in somebody who has skin in the game, you know if they’re going to be interested in selling you something the salesman will always have something to sell you, um, I think this is a sales pitch, and you are certainly well within your rights to listen to it and take it into consideration, but then just do your own ground-truthing. If you’re going to buy an expensive pool or an expensive car you’re not gonna just believe the sales pitch, you’re going to look it up on the web, you’re going to go to Blue Book, you’re going to do something to make — and so in all cases, just take a look at the data that’s out there.
And since it is the firefighters, the firefighter are the ones that are at risk here, I think that they have it upon themselves to look and sort of judge themselves.
My study was independent. I was not paid by any fire gear company or any chemical company to say what I did. In fact, they’d prefer I wouldn’t. Ah, but I was contacted by a firefighters spouse who said that “this stuff is in the gear, is it true?” . And I measured it, and it was in the gear. Um, it’s made with this material to keep it waterproof and so is a functional feature of it.
“oh well it doesn’t come off then” … Well, it does come off. We proved that and it comes off with exposure and with sunlight and with wear and tear. Um, and it comes off at measurable amounts. They are small, they are trace amounts, they are part-per-billion. But a part-per-billion as you said, is a thousand more times than part-per-trillion. But then the argument is; ‘well, part-per-billion isn’t dangerous to humans. Part-per-trillion is when you drink it in the groundwater. And that’s very true. You have to have that — lifetime exposure is that you’re assuming you drink the water every day for the rest of your life at 70 part-per-trillion — that will have measurable health effects and they will be bad.
Since you don’t eat your turnout gear — and you shouldn’t — then ah, that’s a good lesson for your listeners — if they’re tempted to, please don’t lick the turnout gear. But I, what if you don’t drink it, if you don’t put it in drinking water? Well, there’s two issues with that. One is that all the turnout gear will go into the drinking water cause we dispose of it in landfills. And that means all that chemical will come off in a landfill sometime. But that’s a generation ahead. Your kids will be drinking it but not you.
Well, that bothers me in the first point. But the second point is if it’s on the material and rubs off — and in our paper we describe for the first time ever — my students were handling the gear and they measured the fluorine coming off on their hands. Which means, you know, most firefighters aren’t gonna wear nitrile gloves to handle gear — nobody ever has, nobody ever told em to. And I’m not recommending that at the moment. I’m just saying that be aware that’s a source of these chemicals — it’s on your skin. If you washed your hands before you eat, and after you eat, and before you touched your face, and before anything else happens, you’re probably not going to ingest much. You’re not going to inhale much of this.
Ah, but does it go through the skin? And nobody knows. There are old published studies by companies that say, “it doesn’t go through skin, it’s all perfectly safe”. But we’ve heard that from DuPont before. And it’s not true.
KF: Right –
GP: It will go through skin, but I don’t know how far and how fast. Maybe it’s not significant — um, and that’s what we’re in the process — with several other groups, trying to do studies on skin.
But, if this goes through the skin then it represents a source of material that could be getting into the firefighters’ blood. Um, I don’t know if it’s bigger or less that the source of material that gets in from A-triple-F (AFFF) — the aqueous film forming foams, Class B foams, are a tremendous source of this stuff — we see it in all the drinking water in the country because of the military bases use of it.
KF: Right –
GP: But, the fire — civilian fire departments use it, and if you’re occupationally exposed could it get in through skin absorption, could it get in from ingestion? Accidental ingestion? Absolutely. And those things we don’t know are bigger effects or lesser effects. All I’m saying is this is a potential source and needs to be studied. And, oh, by the way, why are we using this? And that’s the — that’s the last kicker. I mean, in the paper we don’t say, ‘stop wearing gear’, that’s the last thing we say. You need to wear your PPE to keep you safe. You gotta, you gotta tell your listeners that, but, if you know that the gear is — especially highly technical piece of apparatus to keep you safe, it’s to keep you safe at three-hundred degrees, and flame um, then be aware it’s treated with chemicals that are keeping you safe and are keeping you dry, in this case, and could it be made with other chemicals that aren’t hazardous? That will keep you just as dry?
And, the answer is yeah. There are other ways to make this stuff that doesn’t involve PFAS and, um, seems no have no other dangerous chemicals involved. So why couldn’t we use materials likes that? And that’s where the argument falls back to the manufacturers. What’s the reason? And there are no reasons for the outer shell.
There are a couple of rules in NFPA (National Fire Protection Association) — we can make outer shells that are NFPA compliant. 1971 compliant (NFPA 1971 here) And that’s been shown because a company’s already done it. Um, but, and this is what we’re trying to do, we’re trying to get market forces to move toward fluorine free. Why wouldn’t we? Well there’s a rule. A rule that you can’t get rid of the liners at the moment because they have to be made out of Teflon. (insert nfpa moisture barrier nfpa info here) ‘well but Teflon’s perfectly safe’.. Well, once again, in the grand scheme that’s a good statement. If you ate a Teflon roll it would go passing right through you and you would be relatively safe. It wouldn’t be good, I wouldn’t recommend it.
But, there are things involved in the manufacture of Teflon that are (a.) bad for the environment and (b.) stick to the material that is made. And we discovered that coming off the moisture barriers as well. And so there’s — ‘but those PFAS are safe’. Well, there’s no such thing as a safe PFAS. Nobody’s demonstrated they’re safe. Ah, we have in fact demonstrated that all PFAS have some toxicity and we just haven’t finished the studies on all of em. So, all the ones we’ve looked at are toxic. And all of them are persistent. And my guess is that in a few years we’ll have enough evidence to show even the short chain ones they claim are safe are in fact maybe what we call a ‘regrettable substitution’. And they may be more toxic. Who knows?
And, um, a little bit every day, does that add up to a single exposure of A-triple-F? I don’t know. Those are the questions that still need to be answered. We don’t try to answer them all in the paper. But we just wanted to make people aware and now the right people are aware.
NIOSH (insert jeff burgess page here) is actually conducting a study on it. And that’s a good study to be done.
Um, and, we are conducting skin studies and things like that. So, we’ll know as time goes along. But I think in the meanwhile, it’s good to get that information out to the firefighter. They have the right to know what risk is. They’re good risk analysis as it is. ** ? 13:30 they’re gonna determine whether the structure fire is gonna be handled this way or that way — why don’t we just give them — they know how to decon after a fire to get rid of the combustion products, the combustion products are terribly toxic. And we know that, so we know how to minimize our exposure to them.
So now we tell em one other thing to minimize your exposure to. You know this gear, while we still make it this way is going to be coated with material that comes off — you really do want to wash it, you really do want to wanna decon from it. You really don’t want to be lounging in it when you don’t have to be. And um that’s not a huge change in policy, it’s just something to be aware of and people are doing that. And if we discover later on that’s overly precautionary, you don’t need to, it hasn’t cost a lot effort at this point. But my guess is nobody’s gonna be able to prove this stuff is safe. And it is there.
So yes, we saw it in parts-per-billion level on the coat. And we were able to extract even more than that of the light chain stuff. We were able to get part-per-million levels. Which is a million times greater than the part-per-billion. But again, we don’t drink it. Um, so it was um, but all this stuff comes off on your skin and if it goes through then we have an issue. Or if you ingest some of it. That’s a, that’s a concern and I think the firefighters need to be aware of that and just react accordingly. It’s not ‘stop business’. It’s to make policies to keep you guys as safe as possible. And that’s the purpose of it.
KF: Sure. And exactly and getting into these calculations. In the op-ed (insert) um, you know, Doctor Chrostowski talks about, they found tiny, trace levels of PFOA. That’s the one part-per-billion. And, you know, I always say to the lay person that sounds like, you know, the amount found was somewhat insignificant. But once we you know, we start doing the conversions, and it sounds like my, my math is correct, that, that comes out to about 14 times more than what the EPA’s lifetime health advisory was. And even, you know, I went through, your work and found you know, there was a used 2014 firefighter pant thermal liner that was tested, and it indicated 850 parts-per-billion of PFOA.
And converting that, that sounds like about 12,000 times more than the EPA’s 70 part-per-trillion lifetime health advisory.
GP: Absolutely.
KF: You know if that’s correct — and I mean, and that sounds significant — should knowing that, you know as you talked about, the material does discard, you know like dust, and things. You know obviously we’re not gonna lick the turnout gear but when it does get wet it gets on our skin or you know, our face.
GP: Yup.
KF: Firefighters, you know, instead of pulling out a tissue or whatever they’ll just wipe their face with the sleeve of their arm. So should we be, as firefighters, be concerned for our health and safety? When using firefighter turnout gear? And, and I totally get it. What we have today is what we have today. We don’t’ have a replacement yet so we gotta use what we have. But, is there, is there a valid or significant concern for their health and safety, um, with this gear, knowing that amount of PFOA found is pretty substantial.
GP: Yeah. I’m going to expand upon that just a little bit and say it’s not just PFOA. We found a whole bunch of other stuff as well.
So, the PFOA is what is regulated. And what we know causes cancer. And what we know causes four other types of disease. Um, it also causes immune suppression — and we know that. Ah, so immune suppression is not a good thing in anybody, ah — especially not somebody who’s exposed to a lot of other elements. And so I think that’s the bigger concern — yes PFOA’s very toxic and you are right to be concerned about it.
Ah, it comes in several different forms, it can come from A-triple-F (AFFF) — it doesn’t come from combustion products — unless you’re burning a Teflon factory or something. It’s not gonna be in the combustion products widely, but it does come from A-triple-F exposure, it does come from your drinking water if you you’ve had A-triple-F anywhere nearby and it does come from the gear.
Now, you don’t lick the gear, you don’t eat the gear. The fact that it’s twelve thousand (12,000) times above the health advisory limit means that there’s a fair amount there. Um, you certainly wouldn’t want to put that in the landfill because it’s all gonna get in the drinking water — and a single coat could contaminate far more than a swimming — Olympic sized swimming pool — over four hundred (400) of them in fact. So, what happens if we put this all in the landfill which is where it ends up? So those are bigger questions.
The real question for the firefighter is what happens when I wear it? What happens when I take it on and off? What happens if my kids get into it? Those are things that I would be very worried about. And I would say the precautionary principal is — this is work gear, this is designed to keep you safe — it belongs at work, it belongs to be washed separately from everything else and it belongs not to be worn when you don’t need it. If you’re not actively on a call don’t wear it.
Those are sort of simple policies. Yeah, it’s a pain to put it on and off ah, but if you’re interested in your health, I think that would be a very simple precaution for now. Um and those are they types of things we’ve been trying to get to.
The numbers can be confusing. We can always measure different gear. The fact that since the 2014 gear — you know the companies assured me they all switched in 2012 — well, not exactly. And the fact that the chemical that they’ve made the coat up with now is made with both C6 *insert data and C8 *insert data* precursors — those are chemicals that are not PFOA but they turn into PFOA with exposure. Oops. And so that means they’re legal to manufacture but they aren’t technically PFOA but after they oxidize in the air or in the bloodstream, they’ll turn into PFOA. And that, that’s not good.
Ah then, you know the more recent (19:19) stuff may be made with C6, but nobody has shown that C6 is safe. In fact, the Europeans are now banning C6 (data) it will take them another six years to do so but the C6 is gonna get banned there. We’re going to find some wonderful correlation with C6 and disease — it lasts in the blood longer as a sulfonate — a little less as an acid. Um, and there’re going to be studies saying we shouldn’t be using that either so I’m — I’m concerned with treating * truly? this whole thing.
Again, it gets back to the point of do we need it? Is it essential use? Firefighting is an essential service. Firefighters are essential. To keep them safe is essential in my mind. I think we shouldn’t waste our firefighters. And we should have them in protective gear that works.
There’s nothing about PFAS that makes this gear essential — there’s nothing about essential about PFAS in the gear. You can make a perfectly safe garment without it. Um, and that’s been demonstrated. A companies already made one. Ah, so why are we arguing about this? Why wouldn’t we just take the precautionary approach of not buying the company line? And you know, it’s the sales rep at the chemical companies — not anybody else who’s pushing this. And so we could live without that chemical for all the reasons that we’re trying to pass along to our children of what we put in the landfill, but also what we’re exposed to on the job and if this isn’t necessary why are we even talking about it?
We just should switch. And that’s what I’m hoping to drive and say; “look, if there’s a company that’ll make it without, I think we should order those things from the company, and why not?” Because that will be the market force wave driving it. We could wait till it regulates. Europe regulates everything. America doesn’t really regulate this. This is all self-regulatory.
And they’ll be lawsuits and things that’ll help drive people away but I think it’s more important — I’m not worried about those, I’m worried about just getting the best thing in front of the firefighter — so they have the choice. You can say, “You can have this gear with PFAS and this gear without”. “This is a known carcinogen; this one doesn’t have carcinogens built into it.” You still will have to decon with either suit because the combustion products are carcinogenic — and that’s your real worry. But that’s why you wear the SCBA and things like this.
This one was just insidious because people didn’t know it was there — and that’s what we’re trying to find out.
KF: So you mentioned about disposal and it’s — it’s very interesting in that, I’m retired from the Air Force and we had well over ten thousand (10,000) just in the air force that had turnout gear and we — you know back a few years they switched over between proximity turnout gear to structural. Well once that gear reaches its ten year retirement life they have to — they have to dispose of it, and so if we can’t simply put it in the garbage can and take it to a landfill, which a lot of places do, um how do we — how do we properly dispose of that so it doesn’t leech into the ground and drinking water?
GP: That’s an excellent question and there’s not a lot of answers yet. The correct way to get rid of this — the only way known at the moment — is high temperature incineration. So, you send it to a high temperature incinerator — and the Europeans have those and they use them quite frequently. The US has never really done that. We have so much land in the US that we typically bury our trash. Um, and that has led to all sorts of unfortunate things coming out of our landfills.
But, um the high temperature incineration is costly — who’s paying that? Um, you know, it costs to buy it. Are you gonna pay more to get rid of it? So, we typically will send it to the academy’s where they’re teaching people how to become firefighters. Or, we send it to Mexico — oh great for that gift guys, thank you! Ah, and so I think there’s all sorts of ways it can be gotten rid of. None of them are particularly appealing at the moment.
Um, I would love to have a program to get these textiles not in the landfill. Treat those as hazardous waste and then dispose of it with incineration. Again people are not terribly (*inaudible) with incinerators — what if they’re not high temperature — what if they’re old ones and they don’t work well? Well that’s a bit of an issue too. But I think that um, that’s what we’re — again that’s a long term worry, and there can be regulations on what will go in the landfill and things like that — might have to pay money to go to a contaminated land fill — or a contaminate land fill. Michigan’s got a — a lined land fill to put hazardous waste in.
But so far this hasn’t met the category of that because nobody’s talking about how much comes off. But there are literally a pound of material built into these suits. Um, and you just said, ten thousand Air Force — but there’s one-point-two-million firefighters in the US? And each of them has a suit or two — not talking about the volunteers and the military — I mean there’s a lot of suits out there and they’re all gonna hit the landfill if we’re not careful. So that’s a much bigger discussion than you and I — and we have to think about that in terms of ecology too.
KF: One other thing, I don’t know if you’re aware of, you know I’ve seen on the internet and everything, some companies — small companies out there — they’re actually re-purposing old turnout gear. And they’re making bags,
GP: Yeah, I’ve seen it –
KF: — they’re making blankets — you know, what, what are your thoughts on that? I mean I was shocked when I saw it and you know, after reading up on PFAS I’m like, ‘why are we doing this?’ I mean –
GP: Yup, it’s because they didn’t know they had a chemical on it. They assumed it — they’re supporting the fire services and I laud that, that’s a great thing to do, they can sell it and make money for their — like selling the pink tee shirts — why wouldn’t you wear a pink tee shirt? And say, ‘I support breast cancer’?
KF: Right
GP: That’s — that’s the type of thing you do and here’s somebody repurposing used turnout gear — and you first off, you think about, well, there’s also combustion products — well, ‘it’s washed’.
Well ok, but this PFAS is structurally intact in it. And as it gets aged, especially the aged gear — we found out had more coming off — so yeah, a used — in a handbag — oh, no.
So, I sent — I sent the clip, I found a couple ads and I sent it around to some of my exposure scientist friends and there were quite a few ‘OMG’s’ coming back on the — on the text and things like that. It’s like, you know this — we — we’ve done this to ourselves again and again.
Remember back — and one of the exposure scientists we talk about — about the flame retardants. And we put them into polyurethane foam, and that’s fine cause it’s a seat cushion — you don’t eat the seat cushion.
Well, guess where we take old polyurethane foam? We used to put them into the gymnastic pits that — the mosh pits that the gymnasts — these are all prepubescent girls that jump into the pit. And this is an endocrine disruptor. It destroys their reproductive organs
KF: Wow -
GP: That’s not good. And it took this scientist to make a paper to say we should(n’t) do that — you saw the cloud of dust every time the gymnast used to jump into these pits and it’s the same, you know, professional football players on turf grass, they get the black dust coming up when they breathe it.
These are the things we do to ourselves and the turnout gear is one more avenue of it. There’s nothing inherently wrong with making fire safe materials. And making it dry was important — it doesn’t get water weight with material. But, making it dry is not the overriding — the only thing that turnout gear does, and I think you can still get turnout gear that does everything else, and you keep it dry with you know, more standard chemicals that aren’t (a.) any more expensive, and (b.) potentially, well very hazardous I think when they come off.
KF: Well, Doctor Peaslee, you know, I heard you talk about the European Nation regulations and everything, and regarding firefighter health and safety — in — in 2018 the state of Washington — Governor Jay Inslee signed into law legislation that requires anyone selling firefighter turnout gear containing PFAS to notify the buyer . Well, hearing that, do you believe other states — and it sounds like it’s an obvious — do you think other states or other nations should draft and pass similar legislation for this?
GP: I think that’s a very clever idea because it just says, ‘there’s a risk there guys -so know it up front’. And it doesn’t prevent you from buying it. It just says you know, ‘if I have a choice — do I want the carcinogenic one or the not’? And you have to evaluate whether it works for you and in your situation. You know, I understand there are different levels of fires you face and things like this. But, yet the standard turnout gear is meeting a very conform- very high standard in the US.
I think we should continue to keep that standard — but I think that the worry is um, we maybe — we may have not looked at the individual ingredients. And I think having an ingredient list is important. California has done that and in fact is adding that same law that Washington did to their laws too. So once California does it that’s twenty percent of the nation. Um, that starts getting lots of attention.
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=201920200SB1044
And I think other states will follow suit. It’s unfortunate the federal government can’t do regulations like that but I um, it’s good enough to have states that have large market forces like California. And they have a Prop 65 warning that says if you have PFOS or PFOA in your product you have to put declaratives; ‘potential carcinogen’ — and you know the turnout gear has been excepted from that and it’s not going to be in the new law. And they have to put a label on it saying it contains carcinogenic materials.
You may not get cancer cause it may not get into you — it may also be, now that you try to dispose of it do you cut the label off and hide it when you dispose of it? No –you’re throwing the carcinogenic chemical in the landfill. And that will be — those are the types of laws that will pass, that will get people thinking about, ‘well where should it go when I’m done with it?’
And that’s the last thing you want the fire departments to have to deal with — you’ve got enough regulations and restrictions and paperwork to fill out as it is. The last thing you want to do is — ‘now I’ve got this stuff piling up in the back room, what do I do with it?’
We really would like somebody at the legislative end to say look, there should be a policy to buy this stuff back, um or the company that sold it to you should take it back — ok, but I’m not sure what they’re gonna do with it either. And so, you know there’s no clear cut, easy solution for what happens unless we have some sort of national program to take care of that. And um, I think everybody’s dealing with it.
The companies will tell you, ‘well fire gears not the only thing that’s fluorinated’. And they’re absolutely right. There’s a lot of athletic wear that’s also fluorinated. The outercoats used to be fluorinated but they’re all now moving away from it, interestingly enough because they were picketed back in 2014. And so, the Columbia jackets and Nike and all those places are now moving away from fluorine. They managed to find waterproofing without it. If they can do it I’m pretty sure our turnout gear manufacturers can do it too.
KF: Sure.
GP: And so, if we — if we get rid of it that’s the first step. What’s already buried is buried. Ah, but I think it’s going to be, you know — step by step we reduce the exposure for all of us with our families and our firefighters because the idea that we don’t use A-triple-F anymore that’s fluorinated is catching fire.
Ah the army has now phased it out all but aircraft carriers and submarines. Ah, they will be phased out by 2024. We’re not using the A-triple-F anymore. And that will be a huge change in our drinking water. And just as getting rid of this gear will remove another step, it doesn’t remove other sources. You might have a industry that still uses PFAS and it might be in your drinking water but not up at other peoples. But step by step you take this approach in removing it and increasing education.
And labeling is a big part of education. Every time you put that new gear on it’s pretty nice to have a new set of gear and you look at the labels because it tells you how to wash it and how not to do this to it — ‘all warranties are void if you put a pair of scissors to it’ right? (Laughter)
But, it’s –it’s one of those things that um it — and you have specialists who deal with this. So I think having it (label) there suddenly gets peoples mind thinking, ‘you know, I don’t think I want my kids playing with this in the trunk of the car’.
I got a firefighter here and he works two jobs and he keeps a set in his car, and he’s like, “I think I’m not gonna do that anymore”.
KF: Yeah.
GP: I know it’s not — but you know if you’re gonna — ask em for a set in each place. That’s your price now. Um and that means you’re not carrying it around, you’re not letting the kids play with it and you know, making other products out of it. It’s a wonderful idea (other products) let’s do it with the insignia or something that isn’t gonna be as toxic. And I don’t want to squash entrepreneurial people that are making handbags out of this — but that’s not my major concern. I’m more concerned about the health of the people dealing with this stuff — and the firefighters are somebody that — “why weren’t we told about this” “why isn’t this labeled anyway”?
Well, they don’t want to worry about this, ‘it’s perfectly safe, it’s trace amounts’.
Well, No. No. And No. It’s not perfectly safe and it’s not just trace amounts. It’s there and health effects occur with trace amounts so the fact that’s it’s trace amounts of bad stuff — oh and by the way, there’s other stuff besides PFOA.
There’s maybe — for every PFOA molecule we’re finding a hundred other per fluorinated molecules. Ah so it’s a hundred times worse. All those numbers multiply by a hundred and then suddenly you realize why I’m concerned about this. Um, I can’t prove that all hundred fluorine molecules are dangerous — maybe- maybe some of them are safe — we haven’t found one of them that’s safe yet.
Ah so I’m — I’m gonna be pretty proactive and say look — I don’t want — if my son were in the fire services, I would ask him not be put in this stuff because that’s what I would prefer. Um, I would want him to be safe. I would want him to wear the best gear out there. And, they do make excellent gear. There’s no doubt about that. But there’s not a single chemist among the companies that make this gear. They buy the cloth from another material that builds — they — even they don’t buy the chemicals. They buy the chemicals from a chemical company up the food chain. And the only one who’s at fault here is the one pushing this chemical up the food chain because these manufactures of cloth and the manufacturer of the gear they just believe what’s being told to them. And they were told it was safe. Um, well — you should question what you get told. And I think that’s true for all of us.
Ah, you should question me. Go look up all the literature's. I’ve got everything — reported literature — and you can reproduce the test studies and people have. Ah so that’s- that’s not the issue for me.
https://www.researchgate.net/scientific-contributions/Graham-F-Peaslee-2107552056
I think the issue is now what do we do about it? And I’m not going to tell the fire services how to do it. You’re the experts on how you run a station, on how you run a department and what’s the procurement procedure and disposal procedure and what are the polices for the guys — you know having the rookies mop the floor a little bit more to get the dust off — yup — that might be a new policy. Sorry rookies.
It’s one of those things that happens, and if it keeps us all a little safer, that’s a pretty low hanging fruit.
Um, we are about to publish a study on how — on the dust in the fire stations. And that’s gonna be pretty awful. There’s PFAS in all the dust.
KF: Wow –
GP: So, I think that there’s — associated with where the gear is stored. Oops. And so I think this is going to be, you know, storage and usage patterns and things like that are going to be ones that you want — ah — that you want to affect some sort of general policies and not — and not try to be specific and wait for rules to come down from the government.
That’s never gonna happen quickly. But you educate the firefighters who are in charge of procurement and in charge of training and say, “look, do we have an option here?” And the answer will be; ‘the options will become available’. And it’s not gonna happen overnight and ah — it shouldn’t be more expensive; it should be cheaper actually.
Ah, so — but the suits may not look as pretty, or they may get dirty quicker. All the better for the companies — they’ll sell more of them. Ah, but I think it’s one of those things that we — remember the mentality when you had to wear the SCBA’s the first time? I mean, there were guys who were tough, they weren’t gonna wear it.
KF: Yeah.
GP: That got changed. It took a generation but everybody’s now wearing it because — it’s — nobody’s stupid. Um, and we know — we know smoke is dangerous. Um, I’m not gonna say this is as dangerous as smoke — it isn’t — I don’t think it is. But I think it is a unknown risk that we’re unknowingly exposed to. Why is it there? And can we do something simple to get rid of it — just buy — just buying without it would be something simple we could do. And it’s done. In ten years, we’re all done. And we don’t have to worry about this anymore.
KF: You know you mentioned earlier about an ingredient listing for these and we see it in food. You know, we go through the grocery stores and we always look at the labels and you’re like, “oh it has — it contains this, or that”. We base our decisions whether we want that product or not. Is an ingredient list necessary or — you know — it sounds like it’s important when it comes to products used in the firehouse.
A lot of the safety data sheets that I found for A-triple-F or high expansion foam, it’s got a high percentage of unknown toxicity in the ingredients — we don’t know what those are. But do you think it’s — you know for the end users like firefighters, or whoever uses these products, is it important? And should manufacturers be providing that ingredient list so end users or the buyers can make a decision whether they want that particular product or not?
GP: Absolutely. I mean this is just — it doesn’t add a great deal of expense. The owners of the material, the manufacturers have to know what they’re putting into it. They may not know the toxicity and that might add expense so they may not be able to produce toxicity reports. But they certainly know what chemicals they use. It’s just a list. They have to buy new ones when they run out, right?
KF: Yeah.
GP: So they have that list already on electronic format. They don’t want to tell you cause if there is a carcinogen later identified — maybe when they started making it, it wasn’t known. But now somebody says, ‘oh that particular chemical causes cancer’. Then, we live in a very litigious society and people will come after you and say, ‘I got this cancer because I was touching your gear’.
Um, and that’s — that’s the way the US regulates. It sounds a little appalling, but we wait for a cancer to happen, and then somebody sues and then no longer that chemical is being used. We haven’t banned any chemicals in this country. So, I think that labeling law is a very low hanging fruit. It doesn’t cost a lot to the manufacturer. And they have to declare it. And if they discover it in their declaration they were using an ingredient they didn’t know — and, why are they using it? Then they can start planning now about — ‘it’s in there but I’m planning ahead — my plan (b) is to phase that out.
KF: Sure.
GP: Make it what we call greener chemistry. And so those labeling laws have had that effect. Um, it’s a very simple law — it doesn’t send people to jail. It doesn’t allow people to sue. It just says, ‘declare what you’re making it out of’. ‘Oh well it’s proprietary, I don’t want to tell you’. Well, you can tell us in general. You can make these things out of asbestos if we wanted to. They don’t thankfully. But we know asbestos is bad — but asbestos is legal. You can make anything out of asbestos still.
The reason you don’t is that the mesothelioma lawyers will get you on late night TV. And they will sue you out of existence. And that’s one way of regulation that works. There’s no more asbestos used in this country because of it.
Europe banned it and they also don’t have asbestos. Which one is quicker? Well, quite frankly suing somebody is quite quick, um, the paper we put out on fast food packaging — every fast food packaging that we mentioned in the paper, all twenty of them, the companies switched away from PFAS in eighteen months.
KF: Wow.
GP: I don’t think there’s a single rule that any government could have passed that would have forced it quicker than that. They just didn’t want any association — they –they sell hamburgers, they sell French fries, they sell pastries. They don’t want any association with chemicals that are bad. Just make it go away.
It turns out going back to the other paper was cheaper. The paper manufactures loved it they said, “Great, we sold more!”
KF: Yeah.
GP: Everybody switch their gear out next time — it’s easy to do. It’s also a whole lot easier when you have a whole textile industry around this fabric. But you know what? It’s a chance to innovate guys; you can come up with something new and different and works just as well if not better.
Um, and the end result will be that it’s going to be some work for some people to transition. I know that. And I’m not forcing anybody to do it. I certainly don’t want any harm to come to these companies. I want them to be in business and stay as productive as they are now.
KF: Absolutely.
GP: But, I would — as a firefighter — really demand my health comes first. And it does. And I think the more people talk about it — there’s a little bit of outrage about how these things are made. And I think, you know, the fire services should look within.
The issue I have is — I mean the — you have a National Fire Protection, NFPA um, agency — (inaudible) gear, and I thing that’s essential, you get to look at what’s in it.
Um you have firefighters on that and people in service who understand the requirements of gear should be, technical experts which sounds like a reasonable addition. Until those technical experts have competing interests.
And so, when you have chemical companies sitting on your panels to decide their chemical is safe to use in your gear, I think you have a conflict of interest. And, ah, I’m not saying they’re not experts. But, they know where their paychecks coming from. And, if you buy more of their chemical, that helps the company.
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And I think that they should be non-voting members, certainly. Um, and they should be consultants as rights would have it. And you know, independence is a wonderful thing to have and I think the firefighting association has made good decisions and has excellent gear certainly. Ah, but they’re letting chemicals slip through. Because they’re not chemists per se and the chemical experts they’re having are often employed by the companies that make the chemicals which gives you a slanted perspective as to what the safety will be.
Am I being over cautious? Maybe. But I prefer to be on that side than not cautious enough. And there’s no way that putting parts per billion, or hundreds of parts per billion on your skin, of a carcinogenic chemical is a good thing.
It might wash off. You may be fine. Ah but, what if it doesn’t? Um, that’s — that’s an issue. And we will find out more as we go in the next couple of years. And it could be worse than we thought. My — my hope is that it isn’t. I hope it isn’t a bigger issue. But, why is it going in the landfill anyway?
So, if we get rid of it in general it’ll help all of us. And nobody — any industry has come back with why is it necessary? Ah, it isn’t. You can get waterproof-ness out of other chemicals. Um, and they should know that, and they are still working on a response to that one.
KF: We talk about cancer off and on throughout the interview here, and in this particular op-ed that we’ve been talking about here, the author states; “the connection between PFAS and cancer is extremely weak”. And I — I sort of took that personally because as a firefighter I’ve been repeatedly exposed to the products containing PFAS and I’ve spoken and befriended a lot of firefighters diagnosed with cancer. And finally doctors and the VA are recognizing that PFAS increases risks of cancer and everything with that.
You know, so, some claim that we as firefighters — because of the whole PFAS — and firefighter turnout gear and products that we use — that we’re — we’re sort of acting out of fear. That the information we have access to is misleading, unsupported and therefore readers unnecessarily caused a panic within the fire service community.
Are we as firefighters being nonsensical? You know, are we — are we jumping the gun here? Or is there some you know — do we have valid concern between PFAS, you know, no matter where it comes from — and — and cancer? And it’s not just firefighters. I look at the overall population.
GP: No, I think it’s a great question, Kevin. And you have the right to know what determines your health. Um, nobody’s going to be perfect and predict what your health outcome will be.
But, if you look at the fire services in general, cancer rates are elevated significantly above the general population. And you guys are very well aware of that. And it used to be cardiac events used to kill the firefighter the most. And that was because you were lugging heavy equipment up and down ladders.
But, where did that — that took over — that took second place in 1975 or something like that and ever since then cancer rates have been growing. And it’s largely because the fires are more toxic. There are more plastics and more carcinogens that will go in the flames, so we put breathing apparatus on.
Again, safer for the environ — safer for the firefighter in that environment. So now, why don’t the cancer rates start going back down? Or at least leveling off? And they don’t. They continue to increase.
And so there are other things we’re obviously exposed to — there could be all sorts of pre dispositions towards cancer and things like that — that come from chemicals we don’t know about.
PFAS is one hundred percent associated with cancer. It’s been proven beyond a doubt in a court of law. That PFOA and PFOS cause testicular and kidney cancer. BANG. Sixty-nine thousand people gave their blood to prove that and DuPont paid six-hundred-and-seventy-one-million dollars because of it.
And they’re still paying. Um, and that’s the outcome of that C8 Study back in 2012.
Now, we just mentioned PFOA and PFOS. That’s two of the four-thousand or five-thousand chemicals that are called PFAS in general. Um, we didn’t do the studies on the other four-thousand-nine-hundred-ninety-eight. Um, that’s just the two that they did. It took em ten years and twenty million dollars to prove that.
Um, we know that the other chemicals have very similar properties, but they go to different organs. So my gut feeling would be if it’s going to an organ it can do damage there. We don’t know what the damage is — we don’t know which one is strongest too-
It’s very hard to prove what causes cancer as you know. It’s often your immune system responds to cancer and stops it most of the time. Ah, but not all the time and when it takes hold and your immune system becomes compromised you are more susceptible to genetic forms of cancer.
For example, breast cancer and prostate cancer are both genetically linked to a gene that turns on or off. But if you have a healthy immune system you don’t get cancer.
What happens if this chemical doesn’t attack and cause cancer? What happens if it attacks your immune system? And then your body doesn’t recognize or becomes less adept at fighting cancer. Then you get all sorts of weird ones.
So there’s a study published, several studies published, not on firefighters but on transplant patients, ah- that after you get a liver transplant or a lung transplant (insert) or any sort of organ transplant — they’re going to put you on immunosuppressants because they don’t want the body to reject the new organ, right? And it saves your life. And so, you do that.
And then they did a — you know — a study of ten-thousand or twenty-thousand transplant patients and they said, ‘what cancers did they get ten years later?’ And they are higher cancer levels. And they get, of all things; leukemia, multiple myeloma, soft squamous — all these types of soft cell cancers.
Which remarkably are the same thing that firefighters are getting. Leukemia is number one, right? And ah, multiple myeloma is up there. Kidney cancer’s up there like PFOA.
But it doesn’t have to — people say, ‘well, prostate cancers there and that’s not associated with PFOA’. And they’re absolutely right. It isn’t. Ah, but, could it be associated with a genetic predisposition that’s now being triggered by the reduction in — listen, cancer’s a complicated disease. I don’t pretend to understand it. But I know that when you have a definite link to some cancers and you have a link to hypertension and thyroids and preeclampsia pregnancy induced hypertension, and ulcerative colitis, it’s affecting multiple organs. And that’s just C8 alone.
What happens if we get C6? What happens if we do the sulfonates? What happens if we do the — ah, the ethers that are now being generated? What happens if we have these long molecules that we know are even worse, ah- that are the precursors? So those are all chemicals we don’t know what the reaction are — we don’t know what the mixture in the body would be.
So yeah, I think that the link between cancer and PFAS is undeniable and well established. Anybody wants to look up the C8 study or go see Dark Waters that’ll describe some of the diseases that were found and how the industry thought they were getting around it.
Um, the chemical industry got scalded pretty badly on that one because they’ve lost several hundreds of millions of dollars in lawsuits because in the drinking water it kills a lot of people.
And so, we’re not drinking this stuff. Maybe it’s safe on your skin? I’d be- I wouldn’t take a dollar bet on that thing. You know, if I’ve got the worlds’ best drying agent — it’s the worlds’ best surfactant. It keeps the water away from you and oils and water separate — well the human body and the skin in particular, is a very carefully designed membrane to keep water and oil separate. Um, this is the worlds’ best surfactant, it’s designed to go through that thing.
What if? And that’s the — that’s the most concerning part. And so what if we’re exposing ourselves unknowing to the compounds? So — we should look at every compound that we’re exposed to in life, and sort of say; ‘what’s necessary, what’s convenient?’. It’s for convenient that this is the best drying agent ever. But what happens if we take the second best this time? And it works, you know, passes NFPA 1971 and it works — keeps the gear dry? Then why wouldn’t I live with something that doesn’t have a known carcinogen in it as opposed to one that we know does?
KF: Well, Doctor Peaslee, this is — this is your opportunity to talk about any issue you feel is of utmost importance regarding you know — PFAS, turnout gear, firefighter health and safety. So, with that do you have anything on your mind that listeners from literally around the world would appreciate hearing you speak about?
GP: Well first of all I have to thank your listeners for their service. This is for the firefighters. And I’m doing this because people reached out to me and I was impacted by what I saw, and what I heard, and what I measured.
And I think that you guys deserve to have a voice. You are excellent at making your own decisions so I’m not going to tell you what decision to make — but I’m going to get the information with which you need to make that decision.
And I don’t want to be interpreted as being anti-government, or anti-company, or anything like that.
I’m just being pro-firefighter at this point. I want people to understand what they’re using. And how it’s keeping them safe, but how it may also be a potential risk. And you know, just minimize risk when you can.
Ah, I’m not asking for dramatic changes. I think you guys should decide what changes are feasible. And which aren’t, and you should do that right at the street level more-or-less. What a Captain thinks he can do with his crew is entirely where the decision should be made of what can be done, and what’s safe and what’s expedient in terms of getting to a fire with your turnout gear on. All that sort of stuff is well beyond my decision level.
But now that we know this, I think you should continue to educate yourselves and just be proactive in talking about it. ‘Well, I heard Peaslee say this..’ ‘How true is that?’ And, ‘I heard somebody else say this’. You know, you got lots — you got the internet, you can look this stuff up. And you have to use some sort of reasoning skills — you have to listen to people.
And be civil, there’s nothing wrong with this — I have nothing against the companies that sold turnout gear. They’re trying to make a living and they’re producing good gear. There’s nothing wrong with that and they’re mostly — they-re all American! That’s pretty cool right? So, we want to support that.
But I think that they’ve been duped. I think they’ve bought the Kool-Aid and they haven’t, you know — they don’t realize it all the time. And they really don’t want to realize it. There’s liabilities and things like that. But I think the correct step forward is well — is very apparent to them and the companies are going that way.
It’s not even the manufactures of the clothing — the manufacturers of the textiles were told it was perfectly safe. It’s the same companies that told A-triple-Fers oh — this is safe as soap! And so the Air Force guys are still wearing nothing but their pants on to put this stuff out. And they are getting A-triple-F exposure like crazy.
KF: Yeah.
GP: And so that was — that’s the mistake being made. It’s way up the food chain from any of the companies selling this stuff. So, I have no particular problems with companies trying to run around and hire consultants to cover their rear end. That’s — that’s their business and I understand that.
What I want the firefighter to do is realize I’m not gunning for any company. I’m not gunning for — I don’t have my own line of gear to sell I’m afraid. (Laughter) But it’s one of those things that –and I wouldn’t pretend to be textile expert — it’s one of those things that it’s where a little common sense can go a long way. And we have it in droves in the fire service. You got a lot of guys who know right from wrong. When to go into a building, and when not to. So, keep applying it to your gear, and keep applying it to all your equipment and keep applying it to you know — these chemicals we were all told were safe — well who’s telling ya? And- and how safe do we know it is? And you can certainly go overboard and become a germophobe and be frightened of everything. That’s not the average person, um, and I’m not trying to encourage people to hid in a close and stay in the dark.
But I would like them to- I would like them to question- you know, if a sales rep is telling you something, where’s their degree? I don’t know — they’re being told something, and they’ve got a mimeographed sheet saying, ‘look here it says it’s safe’. Ah, that’s nice. Ah, um, and a couple of fire chiefs have already started doing this. They said, ‘but it says here it’s quoting a study from the company that makes the chemical. And they asked for a different study and they got a different one from another company that made the chemical. And I was like — and you know the — it wasn’t the chief, but he’s the procurement officer — he read it and he said, ‘this is your competitors’ sheet’ (Laughter). ‘Oh, it is — so it is — yeah (Laughter). ‘It says it’s safe, right?’ Yeah. All of your competitors say it’s safe. (Laughter). Isn’t that nice.
And so just be confident of what you know and- and learn. There are lots of organizations. And don’t trust me any more than you can throw me and similarly just do your own homework. And read the papers. Read what you can. Ask questions. There are lots of people that’ll answer questions not just me. But I happen to appreciate what the fire services have done, and I like to support them in what they’re doing.
So, I’ll end with that and say thank you- thank you for allowing me to say all this Kevin.
KF: Sounds good. Well you know Doctor Peaslee, I mean this has been an amazing opportunity to hear from you. Um, you know- listeners learn a little bit about your background, your research, what your team has done, and what we consider a significant issue effecting literally millions of firefighters as you said across the globe.
So again, thanks for taking time out of your busy day to speak with me and the Weekend Wrap-up listeners and again we appreciate it!
GP: Thank you.
KF: Well that’s gonna do it this week on AFSO21 The Weekend Wrap-up. You’ve been listening to Doctor Graham Peaslee. A man I admire who is tirelessly working on research to ensure future generations of firefighters around the world are protected from harmful chemicals he and his team recently found in firefighter turnout gear.
So, listeners be safe, and check out our parent company AFSO 21. Until next time folks- I’m outta here.
DC 10.13.2020
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