Decades of Using PFAS-Based Firefighting Foam Left Behind a Toxic Legacy

For decades, US service members and airport communities were exposed to cancer-causing “forever chemicals” – and the battle for cleanup is just beginning.

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By Sharon Udasin and Andrea K. Gerlak

This article is part of a series exploring the dangers of PFAS, policy developments and how communities around the US are responding to the threat. Check out part 1: Inside the Citizen-Led Battle Against Toxic PFAS Injustice.

For decades, as US service members risked their lives on the frontlines, they also endured a threat beyond the battlefield: the toxic effects of firefighting foam – a substance designed to defend them.

Aqueous film-forming foam (AFFF) has been known since the 1960s for its miraculous abilities to smother otherwise catastrophic jet fuel-based fires. But the key ingredients in that foam, deployed for decades at military bases and civilian airports worldwide, are cancer-causing compounds known as “forever chemicals.” 

Mark Favors, a veteran who has lost multiple relatives to illnesses he links to the chemicals, recalled how “most of them survived either Korea, Vietnam, or Iraq” in a recent book Poisoning the Well: How Forever Chemicals Contaminated America. 

“They’re now in a military cemetery – not for combat wounds but for being poisoned by the military,” said Favors. 

There are thousands of types of these chemicals – also known as per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) – and many are found in household staples like non-stick pans and waterproof apparel. Notorious for their tendency to linger in the environment and the body, some PFAS have been linked to cancers and other illnesses. 

The military’s relationship with PFAS dates back to World War II, when scientists used an anti-corrosive coating called Teflon to manufacture the atom bomb. Further use surged in the late 1960s, after a catastrophic fire struck supercarrier USS Forrestal off the coast of Vietnam. This disaster led the US Navy to partner with the company 3M to develop the PFAS-based AFFF foam. 

AFFF became so ubiquitous in oil-based firefighting that the Department of Defense recently assessed more than 700 active and former military installations for PFAS use or potential release. Those initial assessments indicated that 588 of the sites warranted further investigation under the federal government’s hazardous cleanup protocols.  

As evidence of America’s global AFFF footprint, the Government Accountability Office in 2024 estimated that the military was using the foam “in about 1,500 facilities and over 6,800 mobile assets worldwide to suppress fires.” But the US is by no means alone – the foam is widely used in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and several European countries, among others.

Delayed Reactions

Although AFFF’s creators may not have been aware of the possible risks when they first invented the foam, internal US military reports show that the Department of Defense was investigating its potential toxicity already by the 1970s. A 1971 report from the Air Force Research Laboratory described the foam as a potential threat to fish and as a “serious pollutant” that didn’t break down. In 1980, a review from the Navy advised against using AFFF in training, warning that the foam “may present serious environmental pollution problems.”

While AFFF was on hand for decades at hundreds of installations nationwide, usage and eventual restrictions on the foam varied depending on the location. Sometimes, bases located in the same neighborhood treated it differently. In the Colorado Springs area, Peterson Space Force Base and US Army Fort Carson sit just 15 miles apart, but their relationships with AFFF diverged decades ago. Fort Carson switched to water for training purposes in 1993, two years after the Army Corps of Engineers suggested a transition to “nonhazardous substitutes.” By 2018, the Army installation replaced AFFF entirely. 

Peterson was much slower to budge, despite 1985 findings on site that labeled the foam as “hazardous material,” as well as a 1989 internal analysis that pushed for improvements in AFFF waste management. More recently, in 2016, a report detected PFAS in samples taken at the base, citing “potential, non-carcinogenic risks to human health and the environment” as well as the migration to wells downstream. 

Air Force bases like Peterson are not alone in their prolonged use of AFFF. Following the military’s initial adoption of the foam, civilian airports and certain fire departments also began stocking the substance. Meanwhile, the Federal Aviation Administration required firefighters at airports nationwide to test their AFFF supplies on site until 2019. 

Peterson, like many other Air Force bases, phased out the foam in line with broader Department of Defense decisions in recent years. The Department of Defense banned AFFF for training in its 2020 budget and then pledged to cease using the foam entirely by 2024. On a local level, the Air Force also took responsibility for contamination south of Colorado Springs and funded water treatment in affected communities. 

That assumption of responsibility, however, has varied from base to base. One place that has faced a circuitous path toward cleanup is Tucson, Arizona, where the Morris Air National Guard Base and other facilities have used AFFF since the 1960s. In May 2024, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued an emergency order requiring the Air Force to devise a cleanup plan. Two months later, the Air Force asked the EPA to withdraw its order, arguing that there was no public health threat. 

Ultimately, the parties settled on collaborative action in October 2024, with the Air Force producing a PFAS Water Treatment Plan and the EPA providing oversight. University of Arizona researchers have chronicled the case of PFAS contamination and clean-up in Tucson to reveal how challenges are encountered at the local level, and shaped by a community’s unique history, relationships, and geography.

At Peterson in Colorado Springs, remedial investigations for PFAS contamination are expected to be complete in 2032, while similar efforts at Morris could last until 2047 – a 15-year delay from original projections, as Arizona Senator Mark Kelly noted. 

How Have States Responded?

Just as the handling of AFFF has varied at individual bases, so too has state oversight on this issue. One common thread, however, has been the timing of AFFF restrictions relative to other PFAS-related rules. Limits on the foam tend to be among the earliest and most comprehensive kinds of PFAS legislation in states pursuing such laws. 

Nationwide, there are currently 26 states with bans on the manufacture, sale, and/or use of AFFF, while 11 states have adopted bills that require the disclosure of PFAS in firefighting foams, researchers at the University of Arizona’s Udall Center for Studies in Public Policy found in an ongoing data analysis. 

Among the first states to pass a law directly linked to AFFF was Washington, which banned the manufacture, sale, and distribution of the foam by individual people and by local and state agencies in 2018. By September 2025, the state also required its major airports to stop using AFFF. Colorado also moved quickly on AFFF, approving a ban on the manufacture, sale, and use of the substance in 2019. 

Maryland has taken incremental steps, by eliminating AFFF from training exercises in 2020 and by instituting a full-fledged ban two years later. Some states were much slower to take conclusive action. Arizona, for instance, prohibited the foam’s use in training and testing in 2019 but only enacted a complete ban this year. Although laws surrounding AFFF have not been uniform, the foam’s widespread use may have been a driver for the earliest state drinking water standards for PFAS. 

As far as federal AFFF protocols are concerned, the Fiscal Year 2026 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) extended the Department of Defense’s ability to purchase AFFF till the end of 2026, despite the previous pledge to cease usage by 2024. It is not clear whether any sites that had phased out the foam reverted to acquiring it.

Meanwhile, Fiscal Year 2027 NDAA is already moving through committee markups in the House of Representatives. As part of this process, the Department of Defense has submitted eight accompanying legislative proposal packages, one of which seeks to eliminate multiple PFAS reporting requirements at military sites. 

Are Available Alternatives Any Better?

Regardless of AFFF’s status at US military sites, the Department of Defense has approved a range of “fluorine-free foams” (F3s) as safer alternatives to the 1960s innovation. Yet scientists are still reviewing the potential ecotoxicity of the F3s. Though researchers agree that F3s are more biodegradable than AFFF, a 2024 study warned that “some alternatives may still pose similar environmental impacts,” adding that “limited ecotoxicity studies suggest that some F3 may exhibit equal or even higher toxicity to aquatic species than” certain PFAS-based foams. 

“There is a major research gap regarding the effect of chronic exposure to PFAS-free foams on human and wildlife health,” the authors noted. 

Despite the shift away from AFFF, the science on its replacements remains incomplete. Public health experts in 2021 voiced concern about “inappropriately vetting chemicals,” noting that authorities sometimes “inadvertently encourage” substitutes without sufficient due diligence. While the authors did not refer to AFFF specifically and recognized that certain risks are “unknowable,” they warned that such swaps could lead to “different chemicals of equally unknown risk.”  

Even if the fluorine-free replacements turn out to be safe alternatives, questions remain about how to clean up and dispose of all the AFFF still in circulation or entrenched in groundwater and soil around the world. While technological innovation shows some promise, the sheer amount of foam used over the past six decades poses significant financial and capacity challenges for communities around the world.

Featured image: US Department of Defense via rawpixel.com.

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About the authors:

Sharon Udasin is a Colorado-based journalist and author of “Poisoning the Well: How Forever Chemicals Contaminated America.” She was a Ted Scripps Fellow in Environmental Journalism at the University of Colorado Boulder in 2019-2020 and received a SEAL Environmental Journalism Award in 2023. A graduate of both the University of Pennsylvania and Columbia Journalism School, Sharon has reported for numerous publications over the past two decades – most recently for The Hill.

Andrea K. Gerlak is director of the Udall Center for Studies in Public Policy and a professor in the School of Geography, Development and Environment at the University of Arizona. Her research agenda focuses on cooperation and conflict in water governance, including questions of equity and access, institutional change, learning and adaptation. She is a Tucson Public Voices fellow with the OpEd Project.