Thousands of AFFF firefighting foam lawsuits have been filed against the chemical manufacturers behind aqueous film forming foam (AFFF), a common type of firefighting foam that is often used for gasoline and fuel fires. This type of foam is filled with per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), a group of synthetic chemicals that do not break down naturally and have been linked to numerous health conditions, including several kinds of cancer. The areas where this toxic firefighting foam has been used to put out fires, particularly on military bases and airports, have been severely contaminated by PFAS chemicals, and the people using AFFF and living nearby these areas have been put at serious risk for lots of exposure to these dangerous chemicals.
In this article, mass tort attorney and founding partner of the national law firm, Oberheiden P.C., Dr. Nick Oberheiden, explains everything that you need to know about these AFFF lawsuits.
How AFFF Works
While many people think that they only use water, firefighters use different substances to put out different types of fires. One common substance that they use is firefighting foam, which comes in two different classes:
- Class A, which is used to extinguish fires involving wood or paper
- Class B, which is used on fires involving jet fuel, petroleum, oil, or gasoline
Class B foams are further divided into two categories: Fluorinated and fluorine-free.
AFFF is a type of Class B, fluorinated firefighting foam. This type of firefighting foam coats flammable liquids. If the liquid has not caught fire yet, the foam coating prevents the flames from lighting it up, and if the liquid is already burning, the foam coats it and suffocates the fire by depriving it of the oxygen that it needs in order to keep burning.
This makes AFFF an extremely important thing to use, as these types of fires spread extremely quickly and need to be managed immediately. As a result, AFFF is widely used anywhere these fires are foreseeable, such as on airfields and airports, military bases, and Navy vessels.
The Companies Behind AFFF
The current chemical composition of AFFF was invented in 1966 out of a collaboration between the U.S. Navy and the massive chemical corporation 3M. The Navy had been extremely concerned with the possibility of losing men and equipment to fuel-based fires on board its ships, and worked with 3M to devise a solution. Since then, other companies have developed their own iterations of the firefighting foam. Now, the following companies manufacture it:
- 3M
- AGC Chemicals Americas Inc.
- Amerex Corp.
- Archrona U.S., Inc.
- Arkema Inc.
- BASF Corp.
- Buckeye Fire Equipment Co.
- Carrier Global Corp.
- Chemguard Inc.
- Chemicals Inc.
- The Chemours Co.
- Clariant Corp.
- Dynax Corp.
- Fire Service Plus
- Kidde
- National Foam Inc.
- PBI Performance Products, Inc.
- Raytheon Technologies Corp.
- Sentinel Emergency Solutions LLC
- Tyco Fire Products
- Williams Fire & Hazard Control
Some of these and other AFFF manufacturers, including the chemical giant DuPont, have stopped making this type of firefighting foam while others, like 3M, are phasing out production and will stop manufacturing it in the near future.
PFAS, or “Forever Chemicals”
The reason these major AFFF companies are getting out of the industry is that it has been discovered that one of the fundamental compounds used in the foam, PFAS chemicals, have contaminated the soil and waterways where AFFF has been used, and that these chemicals also pose a severe health risk to anyone exposed to them.
PFAS compounds are synthetic, manmade chemicals that are based on the chemical bond between fluorine and carbon, which is one of the strongest in organic chemistry. That bond does not break down naturally, leading researchers to call the thousands of distinct forms of PFAS “forever chemicals.”
These chemicals are not just used in AFFF firefighting foam. They are nearly ubiquitous, and are used in a huge variety of applications, from heat resistance to stain prevention and removal to waterproofing.
That strong chemical foundation and ubiquity, however, have become serious problems. Because PFAS does not break down into other chemical compounds, once it is made it persists in its original state. For AFFF firefighting foam, that means that the PFAS chemicals sprayed onto fires continue to be PFAS chemicals, even after the heat of the flames have burned it into the air, and even after the rest of the foam has dissolved away. Instead of breaking down, the PFAS chemicals disperse into the air and soil. Because they do not break down, they continue to accumulate – a serious issue for AFFF in particular, as firefighters use foam in training exercises, so their training grounds have become especially saturated with PFAS chemicals.
Once in the soil, PFAS readily gets into groundwater, and from there into waterways and drinking water. The contamination then runs all the way up the food chain, as anything that grows in the contaminated soil will have PFAS in it, and anything that eats PFAS-contaminated plants or drinks contaminated water will become contaminated as well.
This is a serious problem, because PFAS contamination and exposure has become a severe threat to not just wildlife and fish, but also to people.
PFAS Exposure Linked to Numerous Health Problems
One of the earliest PFAS lawsuits led to the creation of the C8 Science Panel, named after two specific types of PFAS chemicals – PFOA and PFOS – which have strings of 8 carbon atoms. This Panel studied the effects that PFAS contamination had on wildlife and on people. Its findings in the late 2000s turned what had been a $71 million settlement into a $671 million settlement, and spurred numerous other lawsuits against the chemical companies behind PFAS products, including AFFF, as well as numerous other medical studies into the effects of PFAS chemicals on people and the environment.
Among the health issues that have since been linked to PFAS chemicals and exposure to these toxic chemicals are:
- Cancer, particularly:
- Liver Cancer
- Kidney Cancer
- Prostate Cancer
- Testicular Cancer
- Thyroid Cancer
- Pregnancy and birth problems, such as:
- Fetal death
- Low birth weight
- Preeclampsia
- Hypertension
- Developmental delays
- Liver damage
- Fertility issues
- Immune system dysfunction, including reduced vaccine effectiveness
- Obesity
- Thyroid Disease
- High cholesterol
- Hormone issues, including abnormal puberty
However, research is still being done, so other medical problems may get linked to PFAS exposure in the future.
Chemical Companies Covered Up the Dangers for Years
As the firefighting foam lawsuits have gotten filed over PFAS contamination, it has become clear that the companies that manufacture these chemicals have known about the danger of contamination for years. As early as 1961, PFAS manufacturer DuPont was warning employees to handle the chemicals with extreme care. In the 1970s, researchers at 3M were finding PFAS municipal water contamination cases near production facilities and in the fish that swam there. And in the 1980s, DuPont moved female employees away from areas of the factory that produced PFAS chemicals after several of their coworkers had given birth to children with significant deformities.
Nevertheless, these companies continued to produce PFAS chemicals, and continued to dispose of them by burning them and sending them into the air, or by burying them in the soil, or by dumping them into the water. They also continued to produce AFFF, which is laced with PFAS chemicals and which, through its intended use, contaminated large areas with the dangerous chemical compound.
By the time the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) first learned of the potential for PFAS chemicals to be a danger, it was 1998 and they had been used in products for decades.
Lawsuits Related to AFFF Exposure
PFAS companies have been facing lawsuits over their products since 1998. These claims, however, have focused on PFAS contamination in general, not to AFFF-specific contamination.
Those generalized PFAS lawsuits, however, are indicative of how severe things are.
The first class action was brought against PFAS manufacturer DuPont and its related companies, including Chemours, by water districts in West Virginia that claimed to have suffered from PFAS contamination. This was the lawsuit that was temporarily settled for $71 million and the creation of the C8 Science Panel, but then permanently settled for $671 million when the Panel started to publish its findings.
After the settlement, other major lawsuits were filed by water districts against PFAS companies. All told, these claims settled out of the courtroom for a staggering $11 billion. However, these claims were just the beginning of the legal trouble for PFAS manufacturers, as these settlements only covered the costs of upgrading water treatment facilities and cleaning up contaminated groundwater and soil.
The first lawsuit to contain actual victims who have suffered from PFAS contamination was consolidated in the United States District Court of South Carolina in a multidistrict litigation (MDL) in early 2019. This is also the only claim to specifically target PFAS contamination from the use of AFFF firefighting foam.
In the MDL, which had over 9,000 claims in it as of July, 2024, and was expanding rapidly in the months prior to that, are individual plaintiffs who are claiming that they were personally or financially harmed by PFAS exposure caused by AFFF. This makes it very different from the class actions and MDLs that settled for over $11 billion. Those lawsuits had been consolidated claims brought by water districts, not individual people who had suffered concrete injuries and losses.
Many of the victims in this new AFFF firefighting foam MDL are firefighters and members of the military who were exposed to AFFF on a regular basis, and on an industrial scale. Military and civilian firefighters who used AFFF firefighting foam would have gotten extremely high levels of exposure to PFAS chemicals, with contamination happening as they inhaled the PFAS-laden air and as the chemicals got through their skin pores.
In addition to firefighters, though, there are numerous potential victims who suffered PFAS exposure through AFFF. These include homeowners and renters who live in houses or on property that caught fire and were doused in AFFF, as well as property owners who live near airports or military bases where AFFF was routinely used.
All of these plaintiffs will have suffered from PFAS exposure in a variety of ways, including:
- Developing one of the medical conditions that have become associated with PFAS exposure and contamination
- Requiring ongoing medical monitoring to see if one of these conditions does develop
- Financial harm from having real estate that needs to be decontaminated or that has lost value due to its contamination or perceived risk of contamination
Likely Developments in the AFFF Firefighting Foam Lawsuit
While the MDL over AFFF contamination was consolidated on January 2, 2019, it is still in its early stages. Evidence from prior PFAS claims will be relevant, but the defendant corporations will surely argue that AFFF contamination is different and less severe. As things move forward, they are almost certain to point the finger of blame at each other in an attempt to mitigate their own liability in particular AFFF litigation, arguing that it was some other company’s AFFF that caused the harm to a particular group of victims. They will also stress that any medical conditions that cropped up could have been caused by something other than the PFAS chemicals that they put into the ground. If there are any variations in how much PFAS chemicals were used in one company’s iteration of AFFF, we will also hear all about that, as well.
From the plaintiffs’ perspective, this MDL is likely going to be open for a long time. There are lots of people whose exposure to PFAS and AFFF has not caused them any injuries, but will in the future. So there is time to file an AFFF lawsuit. According to Dr. Nick Oberheiden, the founding partner and leading mass tort lawyer at Oberheiden P.C., who is currently taking PFAS lawsuits, “PFAS-related litigation has already been called the next Big Tobacco situation, and that includes AFFF lawsuits. We have massive corporations who knew that their products posed a serious risk of harm to people, but who covered it up so that they could continue to make millions of dollars. A major concern going forward is whether the AFFF manufacturers will remain solvent to compensate their victims. If they do not, we will likely see a highly-contested bankruptcy case that leads to the creation of a trust fund for victims, much the same way that we saw in the cases of asbestos-caused mesothelioma.”
