julieturkewitzVerified account

In recent years, companies like DuPont have come under fire for leaching PFAS into water systems in places across the country: West Virginia, North Carolina, and more.

But the military has used PFAS extensively at bases around the nation and globe. For decades. Specifically, the chemicals are present in a firefighting foam it uses to extinguish fuel-based fires.

Servicemen and women would spray the toxic foam in copious amounts during trainings, year after year, sometimes into unlined pits.

It's not difficult to see how the toxic chemicals made their way into the drinking water systems by the bases.

For decades, the military had signs that the chemicals in its firefighting foam were dangerous.

The Army Corps of Engineers told Fort Carson to stop using the foam in 1991, calling it “harmful to the environment.”

In 2000, under pressure from the E.P.A., 3M phased out production of some of the PFAS compounds, announcing that they could “could potentially pose a risk to human health.” Five years later, the E.P.A. declared that another compound was “likely to be carcinogenic to humans.”