I worked as a hospital corpsman attached to a few fire departments. We'd routinely use this shit without any PPE beyond normal maskless firefighting gear. I saw dogs and kids run through it during family days when they show off their station. Our training site on one base was right next to the base housing where all the women and children lived. It'd just drain into normal sewers. One of the first pieces of advice I was given in Japan was that something in the water was causing birth defects, at the time thought to be old CBRNE contamination from when they stored nukes and bio/chemical weapons on Japanese airbases. When I got back I looked into PFOS/PFOA and immediately scheduled a vasectomy. Our understanding of this contamination is still in its infancy and I used it just as routinely in California as I did overseas draining into the same kind of sewers. Presumably any base with DoD fire and probably civil aviation fire departments used/uses it. Along with microplastics, I think this is going to be known as one of the big hidden plagues of this era. God damn America.
President Xi please liberate my country, the regime's soldiers are dumping poison in the waterways and pumping it into the air.
the PFOA/PFAS situation is extremely insane. there's a good flick with mark ruffalo playing real life Robert Bilott a corporate lawyer who tanked his career trajectory and became an environmental lawyer after stumbling upon PFOA. it's called Dark Waters (2019) and was limited release, but very good imo.
it also brings up one of the uniquely american legal phenomena whereby novel chemistries that are invented do not have to undergo any outside testing or investigation before they can be used (Toxic Substances Control Act of 1976). if you invent a chemical, you can literally go buck wild with it here. and it's almost in your interest not to do any legit testing of it, because if you do it represents a liability to you, if in the future, it turns out your chemical fucks people up. because then it shows you knew it would.
this was theoretically changed in 2016 through a pipartisan bill (Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act) passed requiring the EPA to test unregulated novel chemicals (including the near 2,000 novel chemicals being invented every year), but it's going to take decades to work through the backlog. and that's assuming the EPA is allowed to do its job, which it generally isn't.
