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Comment by stephen_g | Hacker News Reader

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).

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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.

source?

People I talked to that did the burning

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

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.

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