This article is the first in a series, A Fire Hose of ‘Forever Chemicals,’ which can be seen in entirety here. It was produced in partnership with the Pulitzer Center’s StoryReach U.S. Fellowship.
During 21 years working as a municipal firefighter, “I had hyper-exposure” to foam, recalled Jim Graves, director of training at the Maine Fire Service Institute. Graves entered the fire service at age 17 and was later sent to “foam firefighting school,” a week-long training in the selection and use of these chemical fire-suppression agents.
Fires are classified by the material ignited, and only Class A fires — involving wood, cloth, rubber and some plastics — respond well to water. Class A foam is typically used on structural fires because it penetrates into materials to quell flames quickly. Class B or aqueous film-forming foam, called “A triple-F,” targets flammable and combustible fuel fires, which water can spread.
A cascading arc of aqueous film-forming foam, made by mixing a small percentage of concentrate with a high volume of water, can slide quickly across the surface of a fuel spill, creating a thin barrier that effectively deprives flames of oxygen and suppresses fuel vapors. The efficiency of the foam relies on per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), a vast class of thousands of synthetic chemicals characterized by nearly unbreakable carbon-fluorine bonds.
First used in World War II, PFAS were subsequently added to hundreds of types of consumer and industrial products due to the chemicals’ ability to repel water and oil, resist heat, and reduce surface tension. Corporate documents reveal that chemical manufacturers like 3M and DuPont knew a half-century ago that fluorinated chemicals posed serious health risks. PFAS persist indefinitely in the environment and accumulate in bodies — potentially disrupting hormonal, immune and reproductive systems, and increasing the risk of various cancers.
Aqueous film-forming foam became a staple on military bases in the 1970s, not long after its development by 3M and the U.S. Navy. By 1988, the federal government mandated its use at commercial airports (an order that held until May 2023).
Some municipal fire departments, particularly those near highways, industry and airports, also kept stocks on hand for vehicular and other fuel fires and for use in periodic trainings. A recent survey of Maine fire departments found that 70 percent used aqueous film-forming foam prior to 2022, at least occasionally, primarily for combustible fuel fires, vehicle fires and routine trainings.
When military bases in Maine closed, they gave some of that foam (made to military specifications, high in PFAS) to municipal departments around the state. “Smaller departments always had access to that ‘mil-spec’ foam,” one fire chief observed.
Aqueous film-forming foam became a staple tool for many departments because it worked remarkably well. “It was a truly amazing chemical engineering accomplishment,” Graves said, “but horrible, as we have now learned.”
Not ‘safe as dish soap’
In 2001, a consultant told a technical committee of the nonprofit National Fire Protection Association that the toxicity and persistence of two PFAS compounds that Class B foams can degrade into — PFOA and PFOS — could be a “death warrant.”
Manufacturers changed methods to produce PFAS formulations with shorter carbon chains, and marketed those aqueous film-forming foam concentrates to fire departments as a “sustainable substitute.” But over time, many of the newer compounds proved to be just as toxic, and more mobile and persistent in ecosystems.
States began to control the foam’s use in 2019, and in 2021 Maine banned its manufacture, sale and distribution (temporarily exempting airports and oil terminals), and mandated containment and reporting of any use. Maine also banned the foam in firefighter training, but through the preceding decades “we trained with foam because it was required,” Graves said, referring to the voluminous standards the National Fire Protection Association sets for fire departments. “If we had known, we would have stopped using [foam] way earlier.”
Firefighters were assured that the foam was safe as dish soap, and the concentrate looked similar — a pale amber liquid stored in sparsely labeled 5-gallon pails, 50-gallon drums or translucent 250- to 330-gallon totes. The concentrate could become viscous at times, congealing around valves. Graves recalls once having to reach into a tank of aqueous film-forming foam concentrate up to his shoulder to release a clog.
Convinced that all firefighting foams were harmless, departments used them — not only at live fires and trainings — but occasionally, when requested, for recreational purposes. Various foams (of unknown class) were spread for birthday parties and at parks for community events so that children could slide and romp in what seemed like a bubble bath run wild.
Recent research indicates that some legacy PFAS compounds like PFOA and PFOS may transfer readily into aerosol form. When the state of Michigan tested foam at a highly contaminated lake, it found PFAS levels as high as 220,000 parts per trillion. Yet little research has been done on health effects from inhaled particles of aqueous film-forming foam, according to a spokesperson for the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health at the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“For many firefighters, [the foam] may be the most significant source of exposure to PFAS,” a working group of the International Agency for Research on Cancer (part of the World Health Organization) concluded. In 2023, the agency classified PFOA as carcinogenic and PFOS as possibly carcinogenic to humans.
Cancer has become the leading cause of death among active firefighters. North America’s largest union of first responders, the International Association of Fire Fighters, reports that in 2023 occupational cancer accounted for 72 percent of the line-of-duty deaths among its U.S. members. Firefighters are 9 percent more likely than the general population to develop cancer and 14 percent more likely to die from it, a federal study found.
Through training, appropriate equipment and careful practices, firefighters work to minimize the hazards inherent in fires, smoke and diesel truck fumes. But they were never warned that chemicals in the foam spewing out of firehoses and blowing about them like snow could get into nearly all of their organs and remain there for years.
“It freaks me out so bad that the firefighters of Maine had no clue,” Graves said. “Honestly, I’m scared for a lot of my generation.” He has already lost many firefighter friends to cancer. Colleagues in the fire service share Graves’ sense of being trapped in what he terms a “bad lottery,” expecting not a winning ticket but a devastating illness: “Many of us are sadly waiting for the day that we get a diagnosis.”
Risks of scattered foam stocks
The threats posed by aqueous film-forming foam extend far beyond the fire service. “[The foam] is responsible for some of the largest PFAS releases to the environment,” the state of Washington’s Department of Ecology wrote recently in a 260-page environmental impact statement. “These are also the most complex, costly, and difficult to investigate and remediate.”
The longer the foam concentrate sits at dispersed locations around Maine, Graves said, the greater the likelihood it will get spilled or dumped. Public awareness of that risk rose after a hangar fire suppression system at Brunswick Executive Airport malfunctioned last August, mixing water with roughly 1,450 gallons of PFAS-laden concentrate to fill the massive structure 4 to 5 feet deep in foam.
That spill, which could affect the community and watershed for generations, was far from anomalous. Brunswick Landing, the converted compound of a former U.S. Navy air station, has had at least a dozen other inadvertent aqueous film-forming foam spills recorded during and after its military use, including another hangar spill in 2019 and a 2012 hangar spill of 2,000 gallons of concentrate discovered by the Brunswick Sewer District.
For 30 years ending in 1990, the former station hosted fire trainings (many of which likely involved foam discharge), according to an environmental assessment prepared for the Brunswick Armed Forces Reserve Center. The report also noted that “expired [aqueous film-forming foam] would be discharged to various grassy areas around [the Naval Air Station] from fire vehicles for routine maintenance.”
In an assessment of airport fires at Department of Defense facilities nationwide, the U.S. Air Force found that just one fire had occurred over three decades (extinguished by a water deluge system) while chemical foam had discharged accidentally once every two months on average over 15 years, resulting in one death, 21 injuries and more than $24 million in “mishap” costs. Two months prior to the Brunswick accident, 800 gallons of foam concentrate spilled at an Air National Guard facility in South Burlington, Vermont.
Fire suppression systems used in oil and gas storage and transport, many of which rely on the foam, can also malfunction. Rack systems used to transfer oil and gas from storage tanks to trucks have built-in sprinkler systems that are prone to accidents, according to Philip Selberg, chief of the South Portland Fire Department. Oil terminals are subject to Maine’s aqueous film-forming foam law as of January 1, 2025, but to Selberg’s knowledge only one local terminal has transitioned to a fluorine-free substitute. (That terminal owner, Global Partners, declined Maine Morning Star’s request for an interview.)
Awareness of risks associated with the foam has increased since the state restricted its use in 2021, but deliberate dumping of foam concentrate remains a concern. The Maine Department of Environmental Protection has spent several years overseeing remediation of a site where intentional dumping occurred in 2020.
During routine well monitoring at a closed demolition debris landfill in Gorham, DEP staff learned that the town’s public works staff had dumped 500 gallons of the foam concentrate from the fire station into the landfill several months earlier. That discovery led to a protracted investigation and remediation (with costs borne by the municipality), involving multiple environmental assessments and removal of contaminated soil, according to agency records.
Aqueous film-forming foam can also be deployed inadvertently, due to confusion among firefighters (many of them volunteers) who face a vast and ever-changing array of foam formulations. In New Hampshire, contractors for the state recently identified about 250 formulations for the foam from roughly 40 manufacturers. Maine fire departments received clear guidance not to use the foam in training and to report its use to the DEP, but they never got instructions on separating the foam’s stocks and storing them carefully until they can be collected — to reduce chances of unintended use.
Some aqueous film-forming foam containers in Maine far exceed the product’s long shelf life, which ranges from 10 to 25 years. Plastic drums of PFAS-laden concentrate stored at the Brunswick Executive Airport (as of November 2023) had production dates in the mid- to late 1980s.
Not a simple switch
A wide range of fluorine-free foams are now available, and two independent entities have tested some of these products to ensure that they are not — unlike earlier PFAS reformulations — “regrettable substitutions.”
Anila Bello, a researcher with the Department of Public Health at the University of Massachusetts Lowell who surveyed fire-training facilities nationally, has observed how that earlier deception left fire professionals skeptical about current marketing claims. Having been told that shorter-chain PFAS were safe during the foam transition that occurred in the mid-2000s, “[firefighters] are very hesitant transitioning to [fluorine-free] foam; they want it to be truly safe for human health and for the environment,” she said. “They’re concerned that they’ll be in the same situation 10 or 20 years from now.”
A toxicological study of six PFAS-free foams concluded that the new formulations, when compared to earlier products with PFAS, “appear to have a lower likelihood of environmental persistence and bioaccumulation and to have lower oral human health toxicity.” However, the Interstate Technology Regulatory Council cautions that all Class B foams (including fluorine-free ones) can be problematic “if the foam reaches drinking water sources, groundwater [or] surface water” with the potential for “acute aquatic toxicity” and “nutrient loading.”
Even fire departments ready to adopt fluorine-free alternatives can be slowed by the costs and the logistical hurdles of selecting appropriate foam, training staff in its use, and purging aqueous film-forming foam from existing equipment so it does not contaminate the new foam.
In South Portland’s case, the needed foam research took considerable time and expense, including sending staff members to different out-of-state product demonstrations to determine which new formulas might work best — knowledge that fire departments can’t derive from “white papers written for chemical engineers,” Selberg said: “It’s a bit of a leap of faith to be sure that what you buy is going to work for you.”
The South Portland Fire Department recently settled on a replacement foam that Selberg has confidence in, but now the department needs to coordinate with seven oil terminals, each of which is mandated to keep a reserve of aqueous film-forming foam on-site but all of which rely on the city for fire services. The foam that terminals select for replacements, he said, “needs to be something we as a department are familiar with so if we respond to a facility, we can all work together.”
Once departments acquire fluorine-free foams, they need to rid foam equipment of residual aqueous film-forming foam. That process, typically involving a series of rinses, is complicated by the need to save rinse water for safe disposal (a process outlined in detail by states like Washington and Connecticut).
Maine has no central clearinghouse for information on the foam transition so departments like South Portland’s have been fielding frequent calls since the August 19 airport hangar spill.
“Brunswick has upped the ante for everybody: I can’t tell you how many calls I’ve gotten from departments wanting to know what to swap, how to swap,” Selberg said. “Suddenly, it’s a big deal. Honestly, it should have been a big deal for us five years ago, right? Until Brunswick happened, we’ve all been sitting around waiting to figure out if someone would take the lead. And sadly, we haven’t.”
A missed opportunity
Five years ago, Graves and two dozen other individuals knowledgeable about Class B foam were invited to serve on an AFFF Working Group of the Governor’s PFAS Task Force, which formed to develop a strategic plan for the state’s PFAS response. The working group drafted recommendations, endorsed by the task force and published in January 2020, that could have set Maine on a path toward gathering and securing all such remaining foam stocks, a step that might have prevented the Brunswick spill.
The task force recommended in part “that all fire departments in the State of Maine be required to disclose the type and quantity of current inventory of Class B [aqueous film-forming foam],” and that protocols be established for safe storage and routine inspection. It called for a state-level funding mechanism that would allow the Maine Emergency Management Agency and the DEP to “develop and execute a Class B [aqueous film-forming foam] takeback and/or replacement program that does not financially burden Maine fire departments or their municipalities.”
The state-level funding mechanism, a prerequisite for many of the other working group recommendations, was never established. In response to inquiries from Maine Morning Star, spokespersons for MEMA and the DEP indicated that any progress toward an aqueous film-forming foam inventory and takeback (or buyback) program await funding. Even the mandated reporting of such foam’s use is in essence “voluntary,” according to DEP spokesperson David Madore, because it was an unfunded initiative. “We do not have the financial resources or staff required to implement the program,” he wrote.
Fourteen states have now taken action to limit uses of the foam, according to the nonprofit Safer States, but few states have created the sort of dedicated revenue source that the Maine task force envisioned. Funded by a tax on tanker fuel transport, Colorado helps fire departments cover foam replacement costs by buying back aqueous film-forming foam at $40/gallon. The tax also supports a grant program that helps public water systems, private well owners and local governments sample waters for PFAS contamination, including those affected by the foam’s past use. Connecticut appropriated $3 million to help fire departments transition off fluorinated foams, providing grants for disposal of the foam’s concentrate and rinsate from decontaminating trucks and equipment.
Without a provision to cover municipal costs for foam replacement, budgetary pressures or the Yankee penchant to use things up before acquiring replacements could drive fire departments to retain their remaining aqueous film-forming foam stock. As South Portland has learned, the foam transition entails extensive labor and costs — in research, retraining and equipment cleaning — that extend beyond replacement foam purchases. Asked what the fire department would like going forward, Selberg replied: “The best-case scenario is the State comes in tomorrow and says ‘Inventory what you have, we’ll come down and get it, and we’ll credit you so you can buy what you need. Right now, that burden is going to be on our city to do all those things.”
Determining how much of the foam is in Maine
The AFFF Working Group discovered during its 2019 research that completing a statewide inventory would prove challenging. An initial survey sent to 305 fire departments by the Office of the State Fire Marshal garnered just 61 responses. Among 20 “industry partners” with potential aqueous film-forming foam (like paper mills and oil terminals), eight responded.
Incomplete state-level data complicates the work of undertaking an inventory. Maine currently lacks a comprehensive database of all the state’s fire departments, and only 259 out of an estimated 378 departments report to the state. MEMA and staff of the fire marshal both informed Maine Morning Star that they have no current contact information for industry partners.
As of 2022, the Maine Marine Oil Spill Contingency Plan documented more than 19,000 gallons of the foam stored in just four communities. Former military bases represent another significant source, with an estimated 6,000 gallons of such concentrate at Brunswick Landing alone (although numbers are still in dispute).
Factoring in other military sites, airports, helipads, paper mills and fire departments, accounting for the foam becomes speculative. The DEP estimated the total volume statewide in 2022 at 48,000 gallons but that was simply an extrapolation from the limited responses to the AFFF Working Group survey. A recent survey completed by Maine Morning Star, which like the state’s 2019 survey had only a 20 percent response rate, reported roughly 4,000 additional gallons at municipal departments beyond those counted in the oil spill plan. A similar extrapolation, adding in the 25,000 gallons from industry and military sources, would total 45,000 gallons—close to the DEP’s original estimate.
Laying the groundwork for success in collection
For Maine to successfully gather back most of the remaining aqueous film-forming foam, it will need an accurate inventory of where the foam concentrate is stored. Achieving a high response rate on an inventory is clearly challenging — but not impossible. North Carolina undertook such an inventory with roughly three times the number of fire departments Maine has (1,217 departments spanning 2,119 sites, when counting multiple stations) and achieved a 100 percent participation rate. Brian Taylor, the State Fire Marshal, said he knows what Maine is up against, given that his office typically gets a 10 percent return rate on surveys and both states have a high proportion of departments staffed entirely or mostly by volunteers.
In North Carolina, Taylor said, the inventory was mandated and strongly supported with “boots on the ground” — regional resource people (affiliated with the North Carolina Collaboratory) who could help local departments compile the needed information. The state also has three “foam research analysts” to help gather and manage data, at an annual cost of roughly $300,000, according to Taylor.
North Carolina plans to conduct an annual inventory until all remaining stocks are collected, with about 11 percent gathered and stored by the State to date. Its foam analysts are also helping gather data for a state investigation of water quality at wells located near fire departments and training areas.
To make aqueous film-forming foam reporting easier, Taylor’s office encouraged the development of a new application within a software system already used to report fire incidents by many fire departments nationally. That management application is now available to any state at no added cost. Use of that reporting software is mandated in North Carolina but remains optional in Maine, according to State Fire Marshal Shawn Esler. It was given to departments in 2014 and 91 percent of reporting departments in the state now use that software, according to the fire marshal’s office.
Getting rid of aqueous film-forming foam
Following up on Maine’s foam law, the DEP delivered a progress report to the Legislature in March 2022 that identified obstacles to disposing of the foam concentrate stocks. The primary options at that time involved incineration or transport to a hazardous waste dump.
Incineration of surplus foam by the Department of Defense had already generated PFAS contamination downwind of incinerators, indicating that temperatures in a typical incinerator do not fully break down PFAS (a concern confirmed by a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency guidance document last spring).
Transporting PFAS out of state to hazardous waste facilities in fenceline communities runs counter to the environmental justice provision Maine must apply in its own siting decisions regarding solid waste facilities. Landfills can contaminate groundwater and surface waters with PFAS from leachate and can emit PFAS in a gaseous form.
Since 2022, experimental approaches to break down the foam into relatively benign elements have advanced, with some methods now being piloted at a commercial scale. Two states, Ohio and New Hampshire, have sent their foam stocks to a new plant in Columbus, Ohio, that uses superheated water to break apart the strong fluorine-carbon bonds in PFAS, a process known as supercritical water oxidation.
This highly energy-intensive process is still new and while it doesn’t appear to generate problematic PFAS byproducts, it does produce hydrofluoric acid, which the EPA notes “may require protections for worker health, emission controls, and reactor care.” A 2022 U.S. Government Accountability Office report noted that “maintenance can also be difficult and costly because of the intense heat, pressure and corrosive by-products generated during treatment.”
New Hampshire’s contract to dispose of 9,924 gallons of aqueous film-forming foam using the oxidation process is costing roughly $500,000, according to Andrew Gould of the state’s Department of Environmental Services. Once the material is processed, the state will be provided per-batch confirmation of destruction to help protect the participating fire departments and airports from liability. ( PFOS and PFOA are now listed as hazardous waste under the federal “Superfund” law, but the EPA has issued a policy explicitly stating that it does not intend to pursue entities such as fire departments, local airports and water utilities.)
In its 2022 report to the Legislature, the DEP indicated that it “does not recommend pursuing long-term consolidated storage of waste [aqueous film-forming foam] at this time. Until the U.S. EPA provides final guidance on management of this waste stream, the Department recommends ensuring that existing stocks of [the foam] are stored safely in place.” Nearly three years later, the EPA appears no closer to issuing final guidance, having just updated its “interim” guidance in April 2024.
The August foam spill at Brunswick Landing undercut public confidence that remaining foam stocks can or will be “stored safely in place.” By mid-September, Maine Rep. Dan Ankeles (D-Brunswick) had submitted three bill titles to the Legislature, including ones that would mandate and fund both an aqueous film-forming foam inventory and a takeback program. Details are still being finalized in concert with the DEP and the Office of the State Fire Marshal.
Maine could collect the foam and store it until a thorough analysis of emerging technologies is completed. Now that oil terminals in Maine are becoming subject to the law, they will be transitioning off fluorinated foams. Staff of the South Portland Fire Department have been meeting with oil terminal representatives and are considering disposal options for the City’s remaining stocks of the foam.
“We don’t have the facilities to keep it other than how we keep it,” Selberg said. The department’s aqueous film-forming foam containers are stored in climate-controlled settings, but they’re not bermed off or protected with secondary containment to catch leaks. Planning for the removal and replacement of 3,000 or so gallons of foam concentrate, he adds, “the logistics and cost of that are pretty burdensome.” The city recently allocated $125,000 in federal American Rescue Plan funds to begin that transition.
“I’ve been approached by some of the terminals here about going in with them and getting rid of [the foam stocks] through one of the waste contractors,” Selberg said, “but I don’t really know where it’s going. So am I just sending it to some poor county in the middle of nowhere and making it their problem?”
