Fireys in fight for blood test

FIREFIGHTERS at Darwin Airport are fighting to have their employer Airservices Australia provide blood testing for potentially carcinogenic PFAS chemicals.

One Airservices Australia employee, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the Airservices training sites were among the most contaminated in the world.

PFAS foams were phased out at all civilian airports in 2010 but are still in use at Darwin and Townsville airports, which are joint defence- civilian facilities, at the insistence of the Defence Department.

The chemicals are no longer used for training at those airports, but the Darwin firefighter said the damage was already done. PFAS chemicals do not break down and are ex- pected to linger in the environment for centuries.

An investigation is under way into possible contamination at RAAF Base Townsville with a report last November revealing high levels of the toxic chemicals in groundwater samples.

Testing would allow firefighters to know if they were still coming into contact with chemicals, and if so, at what levels, the Darwin firefighter said.

He said the impact on firefighters who came into direct contact with the foam was being lost amid national attention on the contamination of civilian populations in Katherine, Oakey and Williamtown.

“When you’ve got whole communities that have trace elements of this in their drinking water and their soil, it’s a horrible, horrible situation and of course we’re going to be pushed to the back of the queue, because there is only a handful of us,” he said.

He said firefighters felt a responsibility to speak out.

“My heart goes out to the communities that are affected because we were part of the problem,” he said.

“Me and my colleagues, we’re the ones who poured this s--- into the environment. Our job is to protect life, the environment and property. Inadvertently, we’ve done the opposite. The best thing we can do now is make sure this gets cleaned up.”

Before the risks of the chemicals were publicly known, firefighters were told the foams were biodegradable and safe to use.

“We used it like it was safe as houses. It was sprayed around like putting water on the garden,” the firefighter said.