"While the controversy over the Environmental Protection Agency’s recent “leadership summit” on PFAS chemicals held in Washington earlier this week brought attention to the cancer-causing contaminants in the drinking water of millions of Americans, Congress has quietly made an important step toward getting rid of one of the products responsible for this widespread water pollution. On April 27, the House of Representatives passed legislation that would free the Federal Aviation Administration from longstanding requirements that commercial airports use firefighting foam that contains the chemicals.
For decades, FAA policy has been to require airports to use firefighting foam that meets specifications developed by the Navy. Those standards mandate the use of fluorinated chemicals, a term that includes PFAS, all of which persist indefinitely in nature. While most of the thousands of chemicals in this class have yet to be studied, research on several of them has shown that they accumulate in the human body and are linked to a long list of health conditions, including decreased immune response, reproductive problems, and cancers."
