[memkit]

Fire retardant itself is much more harmful than heavy metals in this context.

It essentially causes neurodegenerative diseases, especially if you inhale it.

This applies to unintuitive routes of exposure, like taking a hot shower on an Air Force base that used flame retardant in fire drills decades prior and breathing in the water suspended in air.

[mike_d]

> It essentially causes neurodegenerative diseases, especially if you inhale it.

Good thing they do mandatory evacuations before using it and don't let people back in until clean up has happened.

[AnthonyMouse]

How are you supposed to clean up fire retardant dropped from a plane over a large area?

[consp]

With water? Like, hose it down? It's mostly ammonium phosphate anyway and afaik it's water soluble.

Edit: yes it moves it around, and just like the cleaning person at the office does you move it into the water table or drainage system. Or do you separate your dirt when you mop a floor or wash your clothes?

[AnthonyMouse]

That isn't actually removing anything, it's just spreading it around.

Removing dirt from the carpet and washing it down the drain is fine because ordinary "dirt" (i.e. soil) is made of non-toxic or biodegradable stuff. By contrast, washing toxic materials or heavy metals into the water table is the place you don't want them. There's a reason it's illegal to pour used motor oil down the drain.

[wizzwizz4]

And there are plenty of things it's legal to pour down the drain, but illegal to put in rivers, because it (grey water) needs treatment before release into the environment.

[niij]

Editing a comment is not the way to reply.

[BiteCode_dev]

So the alternative is to let uninformed civilians clean it with their hose and bare hands?

[AnthonyMouse]

Presumably some of the alternatives include informing them of what to do and devising less toxic means of fire suppression.

[cyberax]

> Fire retardant itself is much more harmful than heavy metals in this context.

I haven't found any studies about that, can you link them? It doesn't look like ammonium phosphate is dangerous.

[KennyBlanken]

They are talking about PFAS, which was (is?) in aqueous foam firefighting chemicals that were (are?) in widespread use.

At air force bases, airports (both the trucks and hangar suppression systems), firefighter training facilities. Municipal fire departments have metering devices on their trucks and can mix in the foam additive if it's warranted. Foam is incredibly effective on a lot of fires.

It gets into the groundwater from stuff like accidental hangar fire suppression system triggering, training exercises (at an airport near me, they have a dedicated steel structure that vaguely resembles a jetliner which they use for training, and yes, they use foam every time.) There are a lot of videos on youtube of the systems going off, intentionally (certification after installation - the system has to fill the hangar to X feet of foam within Y time), or accidentally being triggered because someone didn't respond to the prealarm fast enough to get to the control panel and stop it before the system started discharging.

At AF bases, FF training facilities, and airports it gets into the groundwater and it's game over - everyone who gets water from that water table has to install an expensive filtration system. And that's assuming it doesn't get into a nearby river or stream. The stuff gets used on a lot of vehicle fires on highways, those are often near riviers, streams, lakes, reservoirs....

I hadn't heard that PFAS or related chemicals were in the colored flame retardant used in forest fire fighting, though.

[Tildey]

AFFF is being/has been phased out pretty much everywhere in the first world. There is still plenty of it around though - disposing of, and then filling with fluorine free foam can be an expensive process.

Personally, it’s about $10/litre to dispose of. Regardless of concentration. So properly rinsing out old equipment is expensive. But I know the situation differs by country, and what’s deemed “acceptable” varies too.

Powder doesn’t contain fluorinated compounds, at least to my knowledge. The role of fluorosurfactants is in increased wetting and emulsifying with hydrocarbons. Not really applicable to a dry agent.

Phos-check doesn’t contain fluorinated compounds.

[Skunkleton]

https://nyulangone.org/news/flame-retardants-pesticides-over...

I don’t think it is shown that the flame retardants used by cal fire are the same as those in the article from nyu.

[droopyEyelids]

It's a doomscroller-brained comment, confusing the PFAS fire retardant foams used on military bases with this ammonium phosphate made from mined Phosphorite rock.

[Tildey]

AFFF is used in far more than just military bases. Outside of the USA, AFFF extinguishers, small vehicle/building hazard suppression systems, etc. are much more common.

But yes Phos-check isn’t that

[phantomathkg]

Source Please?