Anyone here live in Warminster, Warrington, Horsham, Willow Grove area?? It came out about 5 years ago that the fire foam used in the nearby NAS and Airbase had seeped into the ground water. The chemicals are forever, no halflife. So the water is being bought from North Wales and wells are being cleaned up now. But how many of you who knows about that situation??? Has it been totally fixed? Can it??? I mean... decades of foam into the ground,

As one looking at moving to Bucks, you have my attention...

I don't know that particular situation.

I do know a fair bit about PFAS (the chemicals coming out of the fire fighting foam). PFAS is also leaching out of just about every municipal landfill, too.

Every public water supply in the country is doing sampling. I'm pretty sure every system that supplies > 20,000 people has already sampled.

PFAS is treatable, can be removed with activated carbon, even better with certain resins.

You are correct that there is no half-life. In fact, some of the PFAS chemicals break down, but end up as PFOA or PFOS as the terminal end point, which are both the most significant / worst chemicals.

I saw this link to Horsham - https://stateimpact.npr.org/pe...sylvania-data-shows/

Willow Grove has some smoking levels. But it looks like DOD is on the hook, and doing something about it...

Yes, the 4 towns I mentioned are all next to each other and the airbases/NAS were in Willow Grove I believe. Willow Grove was a massive GM plant that converted from cars to B29 (I believe) production during WW2.
I am afraid to buy any property there now. Sad. How long as fire foam been out??? From that point, until about 5 years ago.... no one did anything.

While DOD is doing something about it... it is already too late for all those residents that lived there for so long with higher than normal rates of cancer and other illnesses.
Also, even thought DOD has started to remediate, the stuff has been seeping in for decades? I'm afraid it'a already too late.
And where is the source of PFAS for landfills coming from if not fire foam? Non-stick pans?

There is PFAS in an significant amount of products. Pizza boxes and fast-food wrappers for example. Composite wood and OSB. Wiring insulation. Stain-resistant carpeting and fabrics. Mist suppressants used in industrial plating.

Sewage treatment plants can end up concentrating PFAS in the biosolids. When then used for fertilizer, they end up in the food chain.

A good reference if you are interested...

https://pfas-1.itrcweb.org/2-6...-to-the-environment/

quote:

Originally posted by Dave Bean:
And where is the source of PFAS for landfills coming from if not fire foam? Non-stick pans?

Here in West Michigan, aside from airport fire training, one of them was Wolverines water-proof boot coating waste dumped in various "dump sites".
This goes back 50 yrs. so it's a matter of knowing now what we didn't back then.
But I'm no scientist and would like to place blame. Do we blame the factory or the local gov. that is supposed to monitor such things. Environmentalism was quite young then.

I live close and work right next door to the old NAS facility.

Yes, there have been numerous articles about it...most are aware.

I live nearby (15-20 minutes) but never heard of this issue. I worked out that way back in the late 90's and early 2000's.

I have a friend that lives in Warminster, I'll ask him about it next time I see him.

Unfortunately it is virtually everywhere in the soil and groundwater. As mentioned above it had been used in a variety of products that ended up in landfills. Also, most airportS in the country (and many thought the world) have used these products either in training or actual fire suppression. This of course used to just run off into the ground.

The EPA has been “studying” the issue and was suppose to come out with some regulations at the end of last year but for reasons unknown that has yet to materialize.

The military, for once, was actually ahead of the curve and a couple of years ago started eliminating the product from their air bases and firefighting equipment. The Air Force, as I understand it, has virtually eliminated its use and the Navy is currently in the process of removing it from their bases.

The only process that I am aware of to deal with the product is to burn it at a very high temperature which as you can imagine is quite a difficult process considering it’s suppose to put fires out. There are only a handful of facilities in the US and one in Canada that are capable of thermally destroying the molecular bonds of the compound....