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Comment by ryaniscool | Hacker News Reader

It’s also a big problem in communities surrounding domestic USA bases. I live in a community with an Air Force base. They tested the groundwater after a cluster of cancer cases appeared in graduates of the local high school. The PFAS levels were off the charts

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I’ve been hearing a lot of those “If you or a loved one have been affected…” style of commercials lately talking about Camp Lejeune some decades ago.

Likewise, but spam email. Am currently getting even more spam about Camp Lejeune than even the "you've been awarded $10 million" messages.

What do military bases do specifically causing this contamination?

They would do firefighting training using foams that contained carcinogenic PFAS compounds. PFAS are extremely persistent, both in the environment and in the body. Apart from the risk from direct contact with the foams, it also would accumulate in the ground and then leech into groundwater, rivers, streams, oceans etc. so gets into local water and food supply. These foams were a problem in civilian airports too but not to the same extent as military.

Also in a lot of ways the military just seems to have safety standards a few decades behind everyone else. Various fuels, solvents and lubricants they use for aircraft etc. also contain carcinogenic compounds, and they just seem to have a history of never disposing of them properly (an example is the burn pits in Afghanistan where they would just dig big holes and burn toxic solvents along with plastic waste etc. in the air, causing huge health problems and many deaths for a lot of veterans).

Isn't ironic that we can clone, copy and made a cheaper replacement of any real product in the planet in a couple of weeks, except those who really would benefit of that treatment?

Why is not the government making a lower quality, cheaper foam to use in those training seasons that does not cause cancer? That would save a lot of money.

Or just buying their training foam from Amazon...

> military just seems to have safety standards a few decades behind everyone else

I suspect they have the same standards as most industry. They just have a ton of exceptions and other get-out clauses in the form of national safety arguements.

These arguements will fall off steadily as new materials/techniques become commonplace, it becomes shown that the risks don't justify the supposed national safety benefits, or (in the case of bases on foreign soil) relevant treatises come into effect, so safety procedures will be seen to "catch up".

Though sometimes on top of "national security" reasons there is also the "who will know until far too late if ever" thinking to contend with…

As a veteran, I can confirm they have the same or standards as industry, or better. However, they also waive a lot of those standards.

So the problem is lack of enforcement, rather than lack of standards? What good does having a standard do if it's not consistently applied?

> So the problem is lack of enforcement, rather than lack of standards?

Essentially, yes.

> What good does having a standard do if it's not consistently applied?

They are quiet standards than the military, having the standard generally is a good thing. A military base in, local it in foreign soil, being able to exempt themselves from the standard doesn't make it a bad standard for everyone else to follow. "If captain Billy put his head in a fire, would you?" and all that.

Also if the standards are eventually applied as the exemptions stop working for one reason or another, they do their job eventually which is more often than not better than never.

If you don't give a shit about some "standards" it doesn't really make sense that you "have these standards".

I'm not saying they are right to do things that way, just that it would appear that they do do things that way.

My first job in 1987 was with the Australian Department of Defence and as I recall in this country, they are explicitly exempted from environmental laws governing everyone else. I wouldn't be surprised if something like this is true in most countries.

They didn't just burn plastic waste and solvents in the burn pits; they burned everything: even hundreds of brand new iPads and other electronics.

They did burn all their rubbish yes (though I hadn’t heard of them burning new electronics! That’s crazy!). I was just highlighting the particularly nasty stuff, but there was also organic and even human waste burned.

Yes, there were so many unnecessary electronics that defense contractors convinced the Army they needed to bring to Afghanistan. Commanders never tied them in to their operating procedures so they went unused. When it came time to close the outpost shipping was not an option so EVERYTHING had to be burned.

source?

Search for "military burn pits" and you'll learn a lot about them. Wikipedia is also a good place to start: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burn_pit

People I talked to that did the burning

I was wondering the same thing. I found this in a guardian article

> The military’s firefighters use aqueous film-forming foam, or AFFF, which contains extremely high levels of PFAS, in training exercises and emergencies. Though AFFF is effective, it has led to widespread contamination around bases and airports, and Congress just mandated the military check for PFAS pollution at 700 facilities while earmarking $571m for cleanup, though observers say the cost will likely be much higher.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jun/06/military-bas...

I used to live on Treasure Island, a former naval base in San Francisco. It turns out my former house contained radioactive from atomic weapons testing in the Pacific. That explains my third arm.

https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/navy-finds-radiation-i...

How is Treasure Island? I wanted to live there, but everyone is SF said “don’t.”

Apparently it’s an ugly, post-industrial sewage pit populated by an extremist anti-male lesbian commune, and Coastguardsmen receiving hazard pay.

I figured it was just local prejudice, but there’s some truth to the myth?

I believe they routinely dump large quantities of PFAS based chemicals onto runways for whatever reason, then let it run down storm drains.

The article mentions that "health activists" have been denied access to the bases, I don't think it's too much to imagine that Japanese authorities could also be facing significant bureaucratic hurdles to gain access and actually determine the source of pollution.

They give an example of both military and civilian firefighters doing training that involve using a lot of fire-suppressing foam. These foams contain carcinogenic compounds that can be washed into the groundwater by rain.

In Denmark we have recently had just that happen to people living near firefighter training grounds [link]

link (machine translated since I couldn't find anything in english): https://www-dr-dk.translate.goog/nyheder/indland/store-maeng...

No idea specifically with PFAS, but in general, military installations are used for military training, which has many of the same pollution properties of an actual war. Spent rounds, links, casings for missiles, rockets, tank rounds, exploded C4, spilled fuel and lubricants. A great deal of effort goes into cleaning up after exercises, but you're never going to get it all. This is at least part of the reason training areas tend to be fairly isolated and remote and ideally nowhere near the water source for a human population. But also why the military has a pretty consistent history of settlement awards for raising cancer rates in at least the families of the personnel themselves who have no choice but to live there.

Fuels and other petroleum fluids, which military bases use a lot of. Munitions, munition byproducts, biowaste, various other fluids such as carcinogenic firefighter fluids, aircraft engines, tank engines, we would run internal combustion engines (generators, HVAC, misc) like there was no tomorrow because fuel was effectively free. Those are just the stuff I can think of off the top of my head, but I keep coming up with more so I’ll stop writing now.

Don’t ever live on or near a decommissioned military base.

I would hope that the Standard Operating Practise is adapted to local conditions, and that this sort of thing would not happen next to urban areas, but a good example of the typical mindset:

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKNfFm0QDXQ

Btw, this is from a Youtube channel of an Emergency medic. It's sort of Doctor House, but with real cases. He makes his videos to attract attention to certain things, so that people don't end up in the emergency ward. Highly recommend.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/mar/25/us-mil...

David Bond has a series of articles about things like this.

And moreover why does America have to poke its nose into other countries and establish military bases there?

It goes all the way back to WW2. Japan was playing for the wrong team and that team lost. Since then Japan is effectively a vassal of the US.

But don't Americans have any shame for wiping out so many innocent lives in the nuclear bombings, yet still have the audacity to make Japan their vassal state?

It was not particularly to empathize with Imperial Japan of all places. Saying they didn't treat people kindly was the understatement of the (20th) century.

Firefighting foams

What's wrong with water?

I though this was "common knowledge" but here goes.

There are different class fire extinguishers depending on what is on fire.

https://vanguard-fire.com/what-are-the-5-different-classes-o...

You cant use water on any sort of "gas" fire because the gas (airplane fuel, etc) will simply float on top of the water and remain on fire. Throwing water on it can actually help it spread as well.

In recent fire truck vs airplane crash on the airport they used water and it seem to worked well.

We're talking about open air fire treated with carcinogenic foam in large quantities where 1m+ large flakes land in somebody's private garden.

Water alone:

https://youtu.be/3ZKBBtwNaRI

Water with foaming agent:

https://youtu.be/WVOmm4Fw6hc

Same reason you're not supposed to extinguish an oil fire in your frying pan by splashing water on it.

it doesn't foam

Part of why the US now fully acknowledges Area 51 (more or less) is lawsuits by former workers over cancers and other conditions caused by exposure to toxic materials.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/area-51-secre...

How did the community respond? And did the base start cleaning up its operations?

Do you think only "USA" bases have problems?

Like why would only US air force bases have this problem? Do other countries use eco-friendly / biodegradable materials on their bases?

Edit: This is not to say I think it's "OK" that this is happening, I feel the USA should strive to be way better than this, I just doubt this happens on American bases only.

Edit 2: Little bit surprised and disappointed about the down votes, I'm not trying to discount this is an American base, but if the issue is these use of toxic chemicals used in things likefirefighting exercises, it's happening everywhere in the world and should be stopped?

It might be a common problem to all air forces around the world but how many other countries have so many air bases around the world? I guess that no Japanese ever complained about the environmental impact of an Italian or French air force base in Okinawa.

Don’t be surprised by the downvotes. There seems to be a little bit of the “USA BAD” vibe here right now ~ especially in terms of the military. The US does seem to emphasize training and preparedness over simply having equipment which could lead to higher relative levels of contamination when compared to other militaries. I’m not sure if that is the case, but I recall the training differences being considered a factor when evaluating operational challenges (for example Saddam’s iraqi troops vs Cold War Soviets in the same equipment and situation ~ the Soviets would be expected to present a significantly harder challenge just by virtue of better training ~ at least in theory)

I guess if what you're saying is true, they can replace the foam with water or similar for the majority of training.

But that is the point of training - water is not foam. You have never used foam before if you used water for your foam training. You have no experience.

Maybe a substance with similar foamy propertoes but no pfas? Idk the answer

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