Understanding Firefighting Foam (AFFF) Lawsuits

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After an accident, minutes matter. Your words and actions matter even more. You need help and you need it now. This is David Versus Goliath, brought to you by Dolman Law Group Accident Injury Lawyers, a boutique firm with a reputation for going head to head with the insurance company giants and putting people over profits. Thanks for joining us. This is an episode from our back catalog so the episode numbers and firm name may have changed, but this is quality information, so instead of scrapping them, we decided it was more important to make sure you still had access. Enjoy the episode and listen to new episodes of David Versus Goliath at dolmanlaw.com.

Matt Dolman:

Welcome to another episode of the Dolman Law Group podcast. I'm Matt Dolman, managing partner at Dolman Law Group, here with my special guest who's been here many times, Stan Gipe.

Stan Gipe:

Hey. Always a pleasure to be here.

Matt Dolman:

So tell us what we're going to be talking about today.

Stan Gipe:

Today we're talking about something called AFFF and I think we refer to it as AFFF because it's called aqueous film forming foam.

Matt Dolman:

And we just had a series of bloopers where I kept mispronouncing film forming foam and saying it over and over again, the wrong way. But AFFF is a firefighting retardant that we've been working on and it poses significant dangers to those who are in the firefighting industry, commercial volunteer firefighters, as well as firefighters that are on commercial airports, and there's plenty of them, along with both naval and air force firefighters. And finally, those who live in the properties that are adjacent or nearby airports, military bases. What we're worrying about now is that this AFFF, which has known carcinogens, they're known as forever chemicals, and we'll get into that in a moment. They can contaminate the local water supply through the aquifers, and we're still learning about the dangers and the studies are ongoing and it's a very fluid area of science and the law, but make no mistake about this might be the next frontier that could be almost as big as asbestos. You want to talk a little more about AFFF?

Stan Gipe:

Yeah. Okay. Kind of back up to, AFFF, in and of itself, it's a fantastic product. Okay. It is very effective at putting out fires that are based on fuels, aviation fuels, oil based fires, and what it does, just picture, it tries to put a foam blanket over the chemical that's burning. You spray it on the chemical, it creates a foam blanket and it blocks out all the oxygen.

Matt Dolman:

Sure.

Stan Gipe:

Putting the fire out. And for this, it's fantastic. It works great. It's one of the best products for doing this. So you see what happens. People are looking for a product, they find something that works, they begin embracing it and rolling it out. Then they start look, okay, well, hey, something's happening? What's going on here? And you start looking deeper. And the more stuff gets used, they look deeper and deeper and realize, oh man, some of the chemicals in this aqueous film forming foam, or AFFF, they're carcinogens. Okay? Some of this can really hurt people and they start looking and looking and suddenly realise, oh my gosh, the level of these chemicals in this foam is unreal. It's got a real potential to cause injury. And then, like you brought up, the second step, they look at the chemicals and go, my gosh, these are forever chemicals. They're called forever chemicals because their half life is so long they don't really break down.

Matt Dolman:

Yeah. They don't break down in the body. They don't break down in the environment. And they last for many, many, many years, and God knows what they're going to do to you.

Stan Gipe:

sed, I mean, the FAA up until: 2018

Matt Dolman:

Sure.

Stan Gipe:

And in: 2018

Matt Dolman:

You train with it.

Stan Gipe:

Yeah. That's exactly it. If you're a firefighter in an airport, your first rodeo's not going to be the 747 rolling down the runway on fire. You're going to have practice once a week for months and years on end using this foam on stuff. It's the same way at military basis.

Matt Dolman:

Yes.

Stan Gipe:

So you've got two different aspects of this one. Okay. During that process, you were exposed to the chemical.

Matt Dolman:

Yeah.

Stan Gipe:

While you were out there as a firefighter, you're doing this, you're spraying the foam, you're getting exposed to the chemical.

Matt Dolman:

Over and over again.

Stan Gipe:

You're ingesting over and over. But here's a second problem, this is a forever chemical. Okay. Where you sprayed it, wherever you practice, is now an area that's also contaminated with this product.

Matt Dolman:

No question about it.

Stan Gipe:

Okay.

Matt Dolman:

And the workers.

Stan Gipe:

The workers, the people who cleaned it up. Now, let's take it one step further. It rains. What happens? Well, this stuff kind of moves, it contaminates the ground. Then it contaminates the groundwater. And you sort of got a huge domino effect of this chemical that never goes away.

Matt Dolman:

Exactly.

Stan Gipe:

And it continues to move throughout the system so now what we're finding is this is causing massive problems. Okay. It's causing a ton of problems. One, if you own an airport, which is only municipalities for the most part-

Matt Dolman:

Well, we're seeing them. They're actually filing lawsuits against-

Stan Gipe:

One just recently about Tampa Airport. If you look, it was in the St. Pete Times, I believe, last week or two weeks ago, I read Tampa Airport's filing their lawsuit because now they've used this foam, they got to clean it up. They've got to clean up the ground. They got to clean up the area that was used. And this, if you've never dealt with that, this is millions of dollars.

Matt Dolman:

Oh, remediation efforts. Of course.

Stan Gipe:

I mean, it's not just, "Hey, we rinse it off." It's, if you're cleaning this soil, if you've got contaminated soil, you've actually got to take the soil out of there in drums.

Matt Dolman:

Yeah.

Stan Gipe:

Okay. Well, what do you do with the drums? You can't dump them somewhere because they're contaminated, then you're just contaminating other soils. You got to find somewhere to store all these drums of dirt. Okay. Because there's no way to clean it, it's a forever chemical. And you've got the same thing going on with groundwater. Okay.

Matt Dolman:

It's ridiculous.

Stan Gipe:

They're pulling the groundwater out in these wells, it's all contaminated. What can you do with it? You can't pour it back on the ground. You can't pour it anywhere because it's going to get into other groundwater. So you got one, there's a huge cost of removing this stuff, and then two, because it's so contaminated, the storage cost associated with these things is off the charge.

Matt Dolman:

Yes. Not to mention the individual effect, the firefighters, but also the workers, the individuals in airports, for instance, those who are servicing the planes, those who may have been actually exposed to the elements itself. But not to mention the domino effect, the slippery slope of, it enters the aquifers, enters the drinking water, it's contaminated nearby areas. How far does this actually reach? How many individuals have been exposed to these forever chemicals? And I think we're still learning about that.

Stan Gipe:

We're still learning, but I can tell you, the Tampa Bay area is one of the hotbeds for this.

Matt Dolman:

Sure.

Stan Gipe:

Because we've got MacDill.

Matt Dolman:

Got MacDill and you got the commercial airport of Tampa.

Stan Gipe:

Right above MacDill in particular, they've used a lot of AFFF down there, and there's really no civilians. Okay. This is all military personnel when you're down there. So they're all getting involved. There's clean up, there's practice. It's not just, "Hey, there's 20 firefighters for the airport." No, we're training all kinds of military personnel on how to do this.

Matt Dolman:

Sure.

Stan Gipe:

They rotate through the base. Someone's there for six months and someone else comes in, they got to be trained on it. So the volume you're getting at these military institutions is massive. And look at the planes they bring in, if you've seen the air fest, the amount of planes that come in.

Matt Dolman:

Sure.

Stan Gipe:

The amount of practice and testing they're doing there is off the chart. And it's not their fault, I mean, they got to be ready. If a plane goes down, you got to be ready to deal with it.

Matt Dolman:

At any moment. Yeah.

Stan Gipe:

But we've got thousands upon thousands upon thousands of people in our local community that have been exposed to these foams, have got carcinogenic chemicals in their body that they don't even know about. That they-

Matt Dolman:

[inaudible: 00:08:17

Stan Gipe:

Yeah. And I'm going to tell you, there's certain types of cancers, but if you're someone who's been diagnosed with a cancer. Okay. And you worked anywhere on the exterior part of an airport, whether it be baggage handling, wherever, you need to look into it. Okay.

Matt Dolman:

100%.

Stan Gipe:

If you're anyone who's been on MacDill Air Force Base, you're anyone who's worked in that establishment, been around the airports, been around where the planes are landing and you get cancer, you need to look into it because they're starting to say the link between these chemicals and cancer looks strong. Okay. And as research continues, it's starting to show more and more of a link and the more we know about these chemicals and the more we're finding out, the more dangerous they seem.

Matt Dolman:

t. Be the cause of [inaudible: 00:09:27

Matt Dolman:

or the victims and [inaudible: 00:10:33

Stan Gipe:

Right. And then what you bring, you've got a very different sort of corporate reaction. When you've got a corporation that's losing money. Okay. That's one thing, they can deal with it however they want. When you got a corporation, a publicly traded company, someone, and they've said, "Look, your product's out there killing people."

Matt Dolman:

Yeah.

Stan Gipe:

Okay. You got to get on the front end of that because that is bad. Okay. It's not, "I made a business mistake." It's not, "Hey, I made a bad investment," which is, "Hey, that's a risk of business. You invest in something. That's what you're assuming, a risk of loss." Okay. This is, "I've created a product that's killing people."

Matt Dolman:

And creating environmental disaster.

Stan Gipe:

Well, yeah. And that, okay, no one's happy about. I don't care what business you're in, you're allowed to do what you want, you're allowed to make money, you're allowed to lose money.

Matt Dolman:

Yeah. They're not going to look it as the cost of doing business or a business loss.

Stan Gipe:

But if I find out you're doing something that's hurting me, that's hurting our community, that's hurting my environment, you better fix it. And that's the sort of attitude you see on these, is the public as a whole holds companies much more accountable when they do harm to the public, do harm to individuals, do harm to our environment, than they do when they do harm to themselves. No one cares if they go bankrupt.

Matt Dolman:

No. It's a reptilian theory.

Stan Gipe:

Right. No one cares if they go bankrupt. I don't care if you lose money, just don't pollute my community. Okay? I don't want you putting a chemical somewhere my kid's going to be.

Matt Dolman:

Said it. I can't say any better than that. Anything else in closing thoughts?

Stan Gipe:

No. One thing I'll say, this is still a developing area. Okay. I can tell you, you want to get in on the front end of it, if you are experiencing any of this, you can feel free to call us at the Dolman Law Group. We're looking into these claims. We're exploring these claims. We're pursuing these claims. And I can tell you, there is no one firm that's going to be doing this stuff alone. When you're dealing with these sort of big issues, these massive claims, it's a conglomerate of people that work together to bring these cases forward.

Matt Dolman:

Yep.

Stan Gipe:

And you just want to make sure you're getting with someone who knows what's going on, who's aware of the issues moving forward, and can get you with the right group of people to get you compensation for this claim. Because unlike your individual auto claim where it's a mono, we mono, I'll see you in the courtroom, there are huge support groups behind each of these-

Matt Dolman:

No question.

Stan Gipe:

Groups making cases, so...

Matt Dolman:

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Stan Gipe:

Yeah, it's been a pleasure. Always a pleasure.

Matt Dolman:

Thank you, Stan. Always.

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