SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 2016 • DAYTON DAILY NEWS • COMPLETE. IN-DEPTH. DEPENDABLE. A13

FROM PAGE ONE

for more than a decade at Wright-Patterson, was reassigned to administrative duties. But his condition gradually worsened, he said. He’s now been off work for more than three months.

The injury to Strouse comes as concerns over aque-ous film forming foam, or AFFF, have soared in recent years.

AFFF has been used in training by the military since the 1970s and is considered more effective than water to extinguish petroleum-based fires.

But it is suspected of caus-ing groundwater contamina-tion — not just here but in communities near Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado, where some drinking wells were shut down this year.

The Defense Department has launched an investiga-tion to determine how wide-spread the problem is at hun-dreds of military bases. A preliminary list is expected by early next year, Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. James B. Brindle said.

The wells in Colorado had levels of perfluorinated compounds found in AFFF that exceed U.S. EPA lev-els — in one case 20 times the threshold, according to media reports. At issue are the compounds in AFFF known as perfluoroctane sul-fonic acid (PFOS) and per-fluoroctanoic acid (PFOA), which some researchers suggest have been linked to cancer and other health ailments.

At Wright-Patterson the Air Force says the old foam will be incinerated and replaced with an environmentally safer foam as part of an Air Force-wide $29 million effort to rid bases worldwide of the potentially carcinogenic compound. The replacement foam is free of PFOS and has little to no PFOA, according to the military.

The drinking water at Wright-Patterson is now safe to drink, according to base officials.

The Air Force says AFFF will no longer be used in training exercises. If used on an emergency basis it will be treated as a hazard-ous material, according to the Air Force.

The old foam was sprayed for more than two decades in exercises at Wright-Pat-terson, according to base s p o k e s w o m a n M a r i e Vanover.

“There is approximately 14,000 gallons of AFFF in the inventory and we will ensure it is disposed of in a proper and safe manner,” she said in an email.

However, the union that represents Wright-Patt fire-fighters, concerned about its members’ exposure to the chemical, balked at the base’s initial plan to use fire-fighters to remove the foam from trucks and storage.

‘Unnecessary exposure’

Wright-Patterson firefight-ers’ concerns arose when Strouse was injured on the job.

Steven McKee, secretary/treasurer with the Interna-tional Association of Fire Fighters Local F-88, said the

union had expected to “fer-vently battle” initial plans to use firefighters to remove it from trucks and storage.

“Obviously, handling it is an issue,” said McKee, also a firefighter.

Base officials have since said they would use contrac-tors for the foam cleanup at a cost of $4,000. Wright-Patt has more than 75 firefight-ers and about 15 fire trucks.

“It’s unnecessary expo-sure for us,” said Brian L. Grubb, president of the Inter-national Association of Fire Fighters Local F-88, which represents Wright-Patterson firefighters.

The issue of who will remove AFFF is under con-tention at other Air Force Materiel Command bases in Georgia, Oklahoma, Mas-sachusetts and California, union leaders say. The IAFF says it asked to negotiate the removal at those bases but was rebuffed by senior Air Force leaders who said refill-ing AFFF was a long-stand-ing firefighter responsibility.

“We’re concerned about any exposures, especially if we have another catastrophic failure” in a fire truck, said Roy Colbrunn, an IAFF dis-trict field service representa-tive and former Wright-Pat-terson firefighter. The pro-cess would require firefight-ers to drain and rinse trucks three times.

“This is a hazardous mate-rial we feel should be remedi-ated by a specialized trained workforce, not the firefight-ers,” he said.

AFMC spokesman Derek Kaufman said each base has the authority to make its own decision on the issue. Histori-cally, firefighters have refilled AFFF in trucks and equip-ment, he said in an email.

Firefighters are trained to handle AFFF and many are certified hazardous materials technicians “trained and paid to handle the most hazard-ous chemicals the Air Force deals with,” Kaufman wrote.

He said the Air Force School of Aerospace Medi-cine evaluated the health risk and concluded the process

of draining, rising and refill-ing AFFF “presented a low health risk to the workers, who only require limited per-sonal protective clothing.”

Wright-Patt complaint filed

Strouse and the two fire-fighters in the truck cab with him last October have shown “elevated levels” of perfluorinated chemicals in their blood since the inci-dent, Grubb wrote in a com-plaint to the National Insti-tute for Occupational Safety and Health Centers for Dis-ease Control.

A full NIOSH investigation on the union complaint could take a year. The agency sent investigators to Wright-Pat-terson within the past two weeks.

“What I hope will come from it will be changes in the way the Air Force investi-gates accidents,” Grubb said.

The three-decade-old fire truck Strouse was injured in was pulled out of service Sept. 1 immediately after the NIOSH inspectors’ visit and fire chiefs removed the foam out of the vehicle, Grubb said.

Vanover said a safety inves-tigation into the cause of the incident that led to Strou-se’s injury was inconclusive. “There is no history that the truck had any mainte-nance issues,” she said in a statement.

Drinking well shutdown

The city of Dayton quietly shut down seven water pro-duction wells at Huffman Dam near the boundary of the base fence line in June in what a city environmen-tal manager called a “precau-tionary measure,” but the city says it has not detected the suspected compounds in the production wells or the water distribution system that serves 400,000 cus-tomers. The wells remain closed.

The Ohio Environmental Protection Agency extended emergency orders for 90 days shutting down the two water production wells in Area A at Wright-Patterson where water contamina-tion was first detected and required monthly sampling.

Wright-Patterson and other military bases aren’t alone. Highly fluorinated chemicals have contami-nated drinking water sup-plies of more than 6 mil-lion Americans, at military bases, airports, and indus-trial sites, according to esti-

mates of researchers at Har-vard University and the Uni-versity of California at Berke-ley and elsewhere.

In July, the Air Force announced plans to spend $4.3 million to treat wells in Colorado communities near Peterson Air Force Base “at which preliminary indica-tions are that the service may be a potentially respon-sible party for the PFOA/PFOS contamination,” Air Force Civil Engineer Center spokesman Mark D. Kinkade said in a statement to this newspaper.

Health risksStudies have linked highly

fluorinated chemicals with kidney and testicular cancer, high cholesterol, obesity, ulcerative colitis, thyroid dis-ruption, lower birth weight and size, liver malfunction and hormone changes, according to the indepen-dent, nonprofit Green Sci-ence Policy Institute in Berke-ley, Calif.

But a Centers for Disease Control spokesperson said “more research is needed to confirm or rule out possible links between health effects of potential concern and exposure” to perfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS). The sub-stances are found in many products, from pizza boxes to cellphones, researchers say.

Some, but not all studies have shown certain PFAS may increase the risk of cancer, cholesterol, and impact growth, learning and behavior in children and fetuses, decrease fertil-ity and adversely affect the immune system, according to CDC spokesperson Taka L. Allende.

The CDC is in the midst of a study on the potential health impact of “exposure to these compounds from con-taminated drinking water,” Allende said in an email.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency lowered the lifetime exposure guide-lines for humans to 70 parts per trillion, which prompted the shutdown in May of two drinking wells at Wright-Pat-terson and a drinking water advisory — since lifted — for pregnant women and infants.

EPA emergency orders extended

Ohio EPA Director Craig W. Butler extended emergency orders for 90 days in late August to shut down the two drinking water wells in Area A and required Wright-Patter-son officials to sample wells monthly to detect potential

contamination.“While none of the pro-

duction wells are currently above the health advisory level the elevated presence of PFOA/PFOS requires con-tinued monitoring to ensure that drinking water above the health advisory level is not put into distribution,” But-ler said in an Aug. 23 direc-tive to base commander Col. Bradley W. McDonald.

The Ohio EPA pressed Wright-Patterson officials to expand a groundwater moni-toring network to fill in “data gaps” to determine where a plume of contamination could head. Wright-Patter-son plans to add 50 ground-water monitoring wells in coming weeks and, for the first time, sample the Mad River to find how far con-tamination has spread.

The Air Force expects to investigate nearly 200 active duty, Air National Guard and closed bases where the foam may have been sprayed. The foam was used widely in training exercises in the mil-itary since the 1970s.

In a statement, a Penta-gon spokesman said the U.S. military “is committed to working closely with reg-ulators, communities, and other stakeholders to pro-tect human health and take action so that DoD contin-ues to provide safe drink-ing water to its servicemen and their families.”

No federal enforceable standards

Cincinnati attorney Robert Bilott said he contacted the U.S. EPA in 2001 to tell the agency of the health threats the compounds posed in drinking water. He said he learned of the risks while involved in litigation against chemical manufacturer DuPont in West Virginia.

“There is still no federal enforceable standard for these chemicals in drink-ing water,” he said.

U.S. EPA set threshold guidelines — but not enforce-able standards — in May 2016, he added.

He questioned if any threshold level was safe.

“This chemical will build up in human blood when you’re exposed to even the tiniest amounts over time,” he said.

When contacted for a response, an agency spokes-woman said U.S. EPA’s review into the potential risks asso-ciated with PFOA began in the 1990s.

A n e n v i r o n m e n t a l

researcher said the “regret-table substitutes” to replace AFFF are “equally persistent and can be more difficult to filter out of drinking water.”

“There are non-fluori-nated firefighting foams that should be considered for use instead,” Arlene Blum, a study co-author and exec-utive director of the inde-pendent, nonprofit Green Sciences Policy Institute in Berkeley, Calif., said in an email.

Firefighter speaks outStrouse said he wants to

spread the message of what happened to him to avoid it happening to another fire-fighter.

Since the incident, his eyes burn painfully frequently, leaving him unable to drive, he said.

“I no longer drive a car anymore,” said Strouse, who once drove fire trucks. “My wife carts me around.”

Inside and outdoors, he wears sunglasses to shield his eyes from light.

Doctors diagnosed him with dry eye disease, and rosacea, a skin inflammation condition, and pingueculae, or small yellow bumps on his eyes, he said and medi-cal documents show.

A physician’s evaluation showed Strouse experienced exposure to AFFF to his eyes, ears and mucus membranes. The health record also said lab tests showed the “core chemicals contained in AFFF were elevated within his serum.”

A July 2016 medical report, signed by a doctor, said Strouse was “unable to per-form the duties of the job” because of his medical con-dition.

Three months prior to the incident, Strouse said he passed a job-related health exam “with flying colors.”

A medical doctor has not conclusively linked the health issues to the exposure to foam, but medical authori-ties have tied the health prob-lems to the incident in the fire truck cab, Strouse said.

“Basically, what happened was when the chemical shot in my eyes ... it damaged the ability of my eyes to tear and keep lubricated,” he said.

Strouse’s wife, Terri, has watched his health worsen.

“I’m very angry about this,” she said. “This could have been avoided.”

“I just wish his quality of life could be better instead of always suffering,” she said.

Foamcontinued from A1

Members of the Wright-Patterson Fire Department spray foam on vehicles after a head-on collision and fire April 14, 2015, on eastbound I-70 near Enon Road. Aqueous film forming foam is considered more effective than water to extinguish petroleum-based fires. BILL LACKEY / STAFF

Wright-Patterson firefighter Michael R. Strouse, 38, was injured during a training incident in the fall of 2015.

Ohio EPA Director Craig Butler extended orders to shut down some water wells at Wright-Patt and required monthly testing.

‘I just wish his quality of life could be better instead of always suffering.’Terri StrouseWife of injured firefighter

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