Bennington College professors say that the incineration of toxic firefighting foam at a plant near Albany, New York, appears to have contaminated nearby communities with PFAS.
The federal Department of Defense and 25 states, including Vermont, shipped old foam to the Norlite Incinerator in an effort to get the hazardous material off the shelves of military bases and local fire departments.
But the traces of PFAS chemicals found in soil and water samples downwind of the plant – about a 45-minute drive from Bennington – indicate that incineration did not fully break down toxins in the foam, said David Bond, associate director of the college’s Center for the Advancement of Public Action.
Exposure over time to certain per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances has been linked to cancer, thyroid disease, immune system damages, developmental problems in children and low birth weight. Many unknowns remain about the health effects of the thousands of fluorinated chemicals used in everything from rain jackets to non-stick pans.
“Norlite appears to be raking in millions to rid the world of these toxic compounds, only to then emit them into poor and working class neighborhoods in the Capital District,” Bond said at a press conference last week about the “preliminary research.”
Norlite uses two recycled fuel-fired kilns to turn shale into a ceramic aggregate used in construction and horticulture. The company says using waste fuels reduces its dependence on fossil fuels, but local activists have raised concerns for years about potential air quality impacts from burning hazardous waste in densely populated Albany County.
New York and Vermont environmental officials say initial reviews of the lab results appear to show PFAS levels in line with those found in urban areas. A spokesperson for the company said that while Norlite “voluntarily” stopped incinerating the foam last December, the company had complied with its state and federal permits.
Bill Keeler, the mayor of Cohoes, expressed frustration with the New York Department of Environmental Conservation for not notifying the public about the incineration. He has called on state and federal regulators to conduct more environmental testing around the site.
A coalition of environmental and community justice groups sued the Department of Defense earlier this year over Norlight’s incineration practices, claiming that the military should have conducted more environmental review before entering into contracts to incinerate millions of gallons of foam.
PFAS gained notoriety in Vermont in 2016 after the state discovered that emissions from two former ChemFab Corp. plants had contaminated hundreds of wells in Bennington with one particularly toxic member of that group, PFOA. Bennington College professors and students have worked on community-focused PFAS research since then.
Bond and some Bennington College students took soil and water samples in March at four different sites around Norlite. EuroFins, a commercial lab, analyzed the samples for a wide range of PFAS compounds.
While Bond is not aware of previous studies of potential air and water contamination linked to AFFF incineration, the type and relative amounts of PFAS compounds found in the samples near the plant mirror reports of groundwater contamination from the foam.
Judith Enck, a former EPA administrator and visiting professor at Bennington College, said the state of New York should have required Norlite to conduct a test burn before allowing the facility to incinerate the fire suppressing foam.
“You don’t do that after the fact,” she said, adding that even doing a test burn in a densely populated area like Cohoes could be problematic.
Norlite has been fined for air pollution in the past, according to WAMC. The hazardous waste incinerator sits right next to Saratoga Sites – a 70-unit affordable housing project. Bond said Saratoga Sites residents described being “tear gassed” in their apartments from the incinerator’s fumes.
AFFF, first produced in the 1960s, blankets flammable liquids like petroleum and natural gas, preventing the spread of oxygen and smothering a fire. But the same compounds — PFOA and PFOS — that made AFFF such an effective fire suppressant are now also known to be toxic.
Because of the human health impacts, manufacturing AFFF with PFOA or PFOS became illegal in the U.S. in the early 2000s, leaving fire departments around the county with stockpiles of so-called “legacy foams.” PFAS, the chemical family that PFOA and PFOS belong to, are also called “forever chemicals” as they do not easily break down, accumulating in soil, water and the human body.
Vermont and other states launched firefighting foam take-back programs in recent years to help local fire departments safely dispose of the unwanted material. Vermont sent 2,500 gallons of AFFF from 29 departments to Norlite in 2018, said Chuck Schwer, head of the state Department of Environmental Conservation’s waste management and prevention division.
The DEC was initially going to send the foam to a plant in Ohio selected by a contractor, but decided not to after learning the incinerator had “significant violations” of federal environmental laws. Schwer said his division reached out to counterparts in New York to ensure the Norlite Incinerator had the proper permits before sending AFFF there.
“From all the science that we looked at, incineration really seemed to be the best option of a bunch of lousy options of what to do with this material,” he said.
Schwer said that he had not yet looked at the Bennington College data in-depth, but that “without reaching any conclusions,” the numbers look similar to what the state found in a study about background levels of PFAS in the environment.
The New York DEC is still reviewing the data, but said in a prepared statement that the PFAS levels appear “to be consistent with low background levels observed in urban areas and contradicts the report’s conclusion that the incineration process failed to destroy this material.” The department also said it directed Norlite to stop incinerating the foam last year, but a spokesperson did not respond to follow-up inquiries.
The EPA, which has come under scrutiny for not moving swiftly enough to regulate PFAS compounds, wrote in a brief last year that the effectiveness of using incineration to destroy PFAS compounds is “not well understood.”
The federal agency also says that it does not have a good handle on how much PFAS-containing waste is being incinerated around the country because the compounds are not regulated as hazardous waste or as air pollutants.
