[CPEO-MEF] PFAS: "Forever chemicals’ toxic legacy at Chicago’s airports"

[Lenny Siegel <LSiegel@cpeo.org>]

Forever chemicals’ toxic legacy at Chicago’s airports
Firefighting foam contaminated groundwater beneath O’Hare and Midway airports with PFAS chemicals, military investigators have found. It’s unclear how far it has spread.

By  Brett Chase   
Chicago Sun-Times (IL)
November 10, 2023

When an American Airlines jetliner caught fire on an O’Hare Airport runway in October 2016, firefighters rushed to the scene.

Within three minutes, they’d blanketed the flames with a suffocating foam, a product used at airports for half a century. 

Known as AFFF, it has been used by Chicago and military firefighters because it can extinguish intense jet fuel fires.

The foam, now being phased out, also contains toxic substances known as forever chemicals that have been linked to cancers, liver damage, low birth weights, high cholesterol and other health threats. 

Those chemicals contaminated groundwater beneath city of Chicago-run O’Hare and Midway airports, military investigators have found. As part of a Department of Defense-initiated cleanup nationwide, they plan another round of testing as soon as next year. The department estimates that national cleanup costs will come to $39 billion.

…

For the entire article, see
https://chicago.suntimes.com/2023/11/10/23952732/forever-chemicals-ohare-midway-airports-pfas

—

Lenny Siegel
Executive Director
Center for Public Environmental Oversight
A project of the Pacific Studies Center
LSiegel@cpeo.org
P.O. Box 998, Mountain View, CA 94042
Voice/Fax: 650-961-8918
http://www.cpeo.org
Author: DISTURBING THE WAR: The Inside Story of the Movement to Get Stanford University out of Southeast Asia - 1965–1975 (See http://a3mreunion.org)

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