Lt. Jason Brockmeyer has worked at Franklin Township Fire Department in Ohio for 20 years. Since he’s been there, his department was often called to fight highly dangerous flammable liquid fires.
“We were considered the experts in this field,” Brockmeyer said.
That’s because the township fire department had over 1,000 gallons of aqueous film forming foam, also called AFFF, given to them by nearby fuel storage facilities years ago. It's a tool that firefighters have relied upon since the 1960s, which smothers flames with a heat resistant film.
The problem is that foam has high concentrations of PFAS, commonly called forever chemicals. PFAS come with health risks if humans are exposed.
Brockmeyer recalled a time when his chief asked him to figure out where to get rid of the foam.
“And no one could really give us a good answer," he said.
He found a place out of state that could burn it off, but it would cost thousands of dollars.
"It was astronomical, and it would've hurt our budget,” Brockmeyer said.
So Franklin Township Fire had stored the foam in barrels, bucket pails and bulk containers inside of the wood lined cargo bed of their foam response unit vehicle and garage..
That all changed in 2024, when Ohio started its AFFF Takeback Program.
The program is using a pioneering technology to destroy the toxic foam and turn it into clean water.
It's part of the state's larger effort to mitigate the spread of PFAS, since research links those chemicals to cancer, immune system suppression and other health problems.
New PFAS drinking water standards
The program was announced shortly before the U.S. EPA made stronger legally enforceable standards for PFAS in drinking water.
By 2029, maximum contaminant levels for six PFAS compounds in drinking water are scheduled to go into effect, although Trump’s EPA may rescind limits on four of these chemicals and extend compliance deadlines for PFOA and PFOS to 2031.
When Ohio started the program, Brockmeyer said fire departments throughout the state jumped at the opportunity to hand over their firefighting foam.
“We took it out to the State Fire Marshal's Office. Chief and I actually took it together and we loaded this thing with everything we had of the cancer causing foam and then another open trailer. They took all that product back,” Brockmeyer said.
The program was initially funded with settlement money the state of Ohio received from Monsanto for contamination of a different hazardous substance, polychlorinated biphenyls.
The Ohio EPA administers the AFFF Takeback Program. Since 2022, Ohio has banned the use of AFFF in firefighting training.
“This looks like clean water because it's exactly what it is. So all these different colors, all these different thicknesses, they're repurposed into clean water that can be processed through an existing sewer system for wastewater treatment, PFAS-free."
Agency director John Logue said the foam was in widespread use before anyone knew how dangerous it was.
“So part of it was getting our arms around how much is out there across Ohio? How much is in storage? Where is it? What kind do they have,” Logue said.
The cost of Ohio taking back AFFF is less than what it would be for Ohio’s public water systems to pay to remove more PFAS, he said.
“We were concerned about accidental usage or spillage or punctures, and then it gets into the ground and potentially into the groundwater,” Logue said.
Turning toxic foam into water
Ohio collected nearly 14,000 gallons of AFFF in the spring of 2024 from 118 Ohio fire departments, Logue said, and sent it to an Ohio-based company that has a way to destroy PFAS in the foam.
Revive Environmental is a spin-off company of the scientific research nonprofit Battelle, which has a contract to carry out the state's takeback program.
“In 2018, Battelle’s scientists and engineers realized that as a country, PFAS was an ever-growing challenge. Contamination sources are continually used, so they set out on a mission to figure out how to detect it through analytical chemistry, destroy it through technology, and then fingerprint it where it is and where it came from,” Revive’s CEO David Trueba said.
Out of that came a device Revive calls the PFAS Annihilator. It’s one of the first technologies known to transform the foam into water with undetectable levels of PFAS, Trueba said.
In a tour of the company’s plant in Columbus, Ohio, Trueba stood next to an annihilator as it made a loud whirring sound. They have five annihilators on-site that work around the clock everyday.
“So what you're hearing right now is the sound of pumps and equipment feeding different chemicals in the system,” Trueba said.
The annihilator uses pressure and heat to break the chemical bonds that make PFAS so strong.
It has to do this with 200 different formulations of AFFF collected from Ohio’s departments that come in all different colors — bright orange, pink, pale yellow.
Trueba held up a small container of what comes out from the annihilator.
“This looks like clean water because it's exactly what it is. So all these different colors, all these different thicknesses, they're repurposed into clean water that can be processed through an existing sewer system for wastewater treatment, PFAS-free,” Trueba said.
Samples from every processed batch are sent to a third-party testing facility to ensure it meets the requirements of the city of Columbus’s wastewater permit — and federal limits on PFAS — before it's sent down the drain.
“So rainwater, stormwater, sink water from your house, we send it down there because it's just as safe to use now from a PFAS standpoint,” Trueba said.
Trueba said they will finish processing Ohio’s foam before the end of June this year.
Now the Ohio EPA is trying to find funds to pay to destroy thousands more gallons of foam still registered in the state.
At least three other states, New Hampshire, North Carolina and New Jersey, have instituted AFFF takeback programs as well to keep a dangerous substance out of the environment.
