3 days Ago By Mara Hoplamazian
How do you get rid of something that’s known for lasting forever? That’s a question New Hampshire officials have been trying to answer for years, as they looked to dispose of thousands of gallons of old firefighting foam filled with PFAS – so-called “forever chemicals” that are linked to a variety of health problems, like certain kinds of cancer. Instead of putting the foam in a landfill or incinerating it, the state decided to use a new technology that can destroy PFAS – a “PFAS Annihilator,” made by the nonprofit science and technology company Battelle. The Annihilator, housed in Ohio, uses supercritical water oxidation – essentially, heating water up well past its boiling point, under high pressure and dissolving the chemicals.
In December, the first batches of foam were treated with the technology and then shipped to Norwell, Massachusetts to go through testing to make sure the chemicals were gone. The treatment and testing process revealed what it takes to destroy those chemicals – and the challenges the state may face with other kinds of PFAS contamination. Checking for destruction On a chilly Thursday, samples of the treated firefighting foam arrived at Battelle’s lab in coolers, like the kind you might see at a picnic.
To test whether the Annihilator effectively removed the PFAS, lab technicians first concentrated the samples into a vial and ran that liquid through an instrument about the size of a suitcase. “The PFAS are now being separated,” explained Franco Pala, the laboratory director, over the loud hum of the machine. Once the chemicals are separated, the technicians move the samples into a mass spectrometer, where they’re sprayed at a detector.
“They will hit the detector differently based on their mass to charge ratio. And that’s how we count those,” he said. The instrument can show which of 40 different PFAS chemicals are in the sample and at what levels, if they’re present in high enough levels to detect.
The company hasn’t released the results for New Hampshire’s samples yet. But they’re expecting the levels will be low enough to meet the Environmental Protection Agency’s drinking water standards for PFAS chemicals . If they are, the treated firefighting foam can be discharged into wastewater treatment systems in Ohio.
That would be a significant change. Before treatment, the firefighting foam, known as Aqueous Film-Forming Foam or AFFF, was great at fighting tough fires, like those ignited by gasoline or jet fuel. But it also had extremely high levels of PFAS chemicals – the highest of anything the Battelle lab handles, technicians said.
A 2019 state law prohibited departments from using AFFF foam for training or testing. This summer, state officials collected almost all of the old foam from across the state in a take-back program and sent it to Ohio to go through the PFAS Annihilator. Before that, the foam was stockpiled at fire departments throughout the state – a concern for many, given the number of AFFF spills that have happened across the country in recent years, including in Maine and Vermont this summer.
When that foam is spilled, it poses a threat not only because PFAS are dangerous, but also because they don’t break down easily in the environment. Pala says there’s no known natural process to destroy the chemicals. "We made it, we must clean it up,” he said.
A difficult clean up There aren’t a lot of options for cleaning up, according to New Hampshire officials. Mike Wimsatt, the head of the waste management division of the Department of Environmental Services, says the state could have sent the 11,000 gallons of AFFF it collected to a hazardous waste landfill or to an incinerator. But both of those options would just move the PFAS to other places, where they could still eventually get into the environment.
“We were really hoping to identify a destruction technology that could take the waste and actually destroy it, so that there wouldn't be that long term concerns on the part of our fire departments about liability,” he said. Destroying the PFAS in that firefighting foam was a big undertaking. Final numbers aren’t in yet, but it’s expected to cost more than half a million dollars.
With some tweaks, the system the state used to destroy its AFFF foam can also work for other highly concentrated sources of PFAS pollution, like the liquid that comes out of landfills. But Wimsatt is not sure the annihilator technology on its own can meet the full scale of the PFAS problem. The chemicals have been used in consumer products for decades.
Every day, they move in and out of our drains and our environment. “It's probably not going to be necessarily practicable to treat the millions of gallons of wastewater that come into a given wastewater plant in a given day,” he said. A recent New Hampshire law is trying to stop some of the pollution at its source, banning intentionally added PFAS in a variety of consumer products.
But in places where those chemicals are playing an important role, like protecting people from fires, they may be harder to get rid of. Phasing out PFAS Peter Lennon, the former Fire Marshall for the city of Manchester, said he encountered the chemicals everywhere. “I kind of lived in PFAS stuff for the majority of my career,” he said.
Lennon has been open about his experience getting cancer from his job. He says AFFF foam wasn’t used for the kinds of fires he was putting out, but he was exposed to PFAS chemicals through his uniform and by being around homes on fire, where rugs and furniture were treated with the chemicals. “We didn’t wear masks when we went to this stuff.
We'd be standing in burned out buildings and just inhaling God knows what,” he said. Lennon has tried to protect others from having the same exposure, encouraging the department to buy better breathing apparatuses and provide extra sets of uniforms, so firefighters can change between jobs. But he’s also learned to appreciate small victories, while larger goals seem out of reach.
He wanted Manchester to start using PFAS-free uniforms. That’s been a tough sell – there’s some fear that those may wear out more easily, Lennon said, and the transition can be expensive. Concord is the only city in New Hampshire that’s announced a switch so far – and one of the first in the nation.
But in the same law that started the process to destroy the AFFF, state officials directed towns and cities to prioritize purchasing uniforms that don’t contain the chemicals. Part of what makes the transition difficult, Lennon said, is that PFAS are useful. His first reaction when he heard talk of banning them was concern.
“I'm like, that's an important chemical that we use to keep people safe,” he said. “Yes, the stuff needs to go away. There's no question in my mind that the forever chemical stuff's got to go away.
But we're going to leave a timeframe there when there's nothing to put in its place.” There are alternatives to using PFAS in firefighting, but many are still in development . In some cases, like with firefighting foam , they’re expensive or require extra training.
So the chemicals are still used and show up in unexpected places. In the Battelle lab, Pala showed off all the items his team is starting to test for PFAS: cow liver, cookies, pasta, cat food, fabric. A whole bucket of frozen fish.
PFAS are so diffuse in the environment, Pala’s team says often manufacturers send things in for testing because they don’t know if their products contain the chemicals. Companies could use the results to check their supply chains and change what they’re using. Pala says PFAS are unique, different from other contaminants he’s worked with in many ways.
But he sees them as part of an old story. “We as human beings, we never learn the lesson,” he said. “We always create great products and then we put in the environment, and sometimes later say, ‘oh man, what did you do?’ ” he said.
He’s hoping there’s a lesson in there for the chemical manufacturers of the future: figure out the consequences first..
