Here’s how the Pentagon escapes lawsuits related to PFAS chemicals
According to US media, the US government has requested immunity from 27 lawsuits relating to a toxic firefighting foam produced by US chemical giant 3M and used on military bases. All the details
The Pentagon seeks to evade PFAS-related lawsuits over a product it helped invent.
The U.S. government has declared itself immune from 27 lawsuits filed by local and state governments, businesses and property owners over the military's role in contaminating the country with PFAS . chemicals forever”, i.e. compounds that do not degrade in the environment. This is what the environmentalist newspaper Grist reports, reported by Quartz .
The lawsuits are just a small portion of thousands of cases filed by plaintiffs across the country against a large number of entities that manufactured, sold and used a product called aqueous film-forming foam, or AFFF, an ultra-effective fire retardant that leached into reservoirs. drinking water and soil in the United States over decades.
Pentagon documents show that at least 385 military bases nationwide are contaminated with PFAS, mostly from firefighting foam used during training, Defense News reported earlier this year.
Meanwhile, people living near military bases – and members of the military – have gotten sick, Grist notes. Lawsuits filed by farmers and several states in U.S. District Court in South Carolina seek to make the government pay for water and property contamination allegedly caused by the DoD.
All the details.
THE DEVELOPMENT OF PFAS SUPPORTED BY THE PENTAGON
As the American newspaper reconstructs, “the Department of Defense was involved in the development of the PFAS in question in the 1960s. In response to a series of deadly fires on naval ship decks, the Navy's research arm, the Naval Research Laboratory, collaborated with 3M on a new type of firefighting foam that can put out high-temperature fires. The active ingredient in the foam was a fluorinated surfactant, otherwise known as perfluorooctane sulfonic acid, or PFOS, one of thousands of chemicals under the PFAS umbrella.”
Starting in the 1970s, every Navy ship – and, soon, almost every American military base, civilian airport, local fire training facility and fire station – had Aqueous Film Forming Foam (AFFF) on site in case of fire and to be used for training.
The chemicals, which do not break down naturally in the environment, are still present today, Grist points out. According to the Environmental Working Group, a nonprofit that tracks military PFAS pollution, there are 710 military sites with known or suspected PFAS contamination in the United States and its territories, including Guam, Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands.
3M'S MOVES
Just last year, US chemical giant 3M agreed to pay a massive $10.3 billion fine to resolve existing and future claims from US municipal water authorities over allegations it had discharged Pfas , contaminating drinking water. The company, which was facing 4,000 lawsuits, made clear that the settlement is not an admission of liability and that the money will go toward cleaning up public water systems where PFAS have been detected.
THE PENTAGON'S SURVEYING
Meanwhile, US Department of Defense records released in 2021 showed that Pfas had been detected in groundwater around Wurtsmith at levels of up to 213,000 parts per trillion. Last March, federal regulators proposed limits of 4 parts per trillion in drinking water, Defense News reported in January. State officials warned people not to eat fish, deer meat or small game caught in and around Clarks March and parts of Au Sable and to avoid contact with all surface water and foam on the Oscoda shoreline.
Last August the Pentagon announced it would install two groundwater treatment systems near the base. The two new systems will be added to those previously announced, for a total of four treatment systems.
RISING COSTS FOR CLEANING
But cleanup comes at a high price.
The cost of cleaning up toxic PFAS contamination around hundreds of U.S. military installations is rising, and Congress and the Pentagon can't keep up.
The total estimated cost of cleaning up about 50 contaminated military sites rose to $31 billion, up $3.7 billion from 2016 to 2021, the latest year the Defense Department provided estimates. But the budget required for the cleanup increased by just $400 million over the same period, according to a new report from the Environmental Working Group, the Guardian reported last year.
THE LEGAL CASES
And now the U.S. government has said it is immune from 27 lawsuits filed by local and state governments, businesses and property owners over the military's role in contaminating the country with Pfas, Grist reports.
Even if these lawsuits are allowed to proceed, experts Grist consulted noted that they are unlikely to succeed. That's because they rely on the Federal Tort Claims Act of 1946, a law that allows individuals to sue the federal government for wrongful acts committed by people working on behalf of the United States if the government has violated specific, mandatory policies.
THE IMMUNITY OF THE AMERICAN GOVERNMENT
Finally, in its immunity motion, the government made another argument that, according to experts at Grist , is likely to succeed.
The Pentagon has the authority under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act of 1980 – better known as the Superfund Act – to clean up its contaminated sites. The Environmental Protection Agency has not yet classified PFAS contamination as “hazardous contamination,” but the Department of Defense says it is already spending billions to investigate and monitor PFAS at some of its bases.
Since the Pentagon is voluntarily exercising its cleanup authority under the Superfund Act, the lawyers argue in the motion, it should not be held responsible for the Pfas contamination.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/innovazione/ecco-come-il-pentagono-svicola-dalle-cause-legali-legate-alle-sostanze-chimiche-pfas/ on Tue, 19 Mar 2024 07:01:59 +0000.