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Novel Fluorinated Compounds Discovered In Firefighters' Blood
ckwu writes: Perfluorinated compounds help firefighting foams rapidly flow over flaming liquids such as gasoline and jet fuel, cooling and quenching fires. But despite environmental scientists' concerns about these possibly toxic compounds, researchers don't know the identity of many of the chemicals in the mixtures on the market. For the first time, a new study borrows a medical research tool to pinpoint fluorochemicals in the blood of firefighters, identifying novel compounds that have never before been publicly reported.
I would have thought that something used by the fireservice in large quantities and knowingly dispersed into the wider environment would have its chemical composition well known.
There are a multitude of environmental, health and liability issues here and I simply don't buy it that the ingredients are a mystery. I'm sure that there are chemicals available which are excellent at fire fighting but also highly toxic and that those chemicals aren't used because of their lethality.
I can just imaging the defence now. "So Mr Government, you're telling me that you gave firefighters this product, to use on fires in public spaces where both trained personnel and the public can be expected to be and you didn't know what was in it?" "Correct" "Prosecution rests its case"
so in an attempt to save property we're subjecting firefighters to increased risk of cancer and thyroid disease.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
...this was found in their blood, implying that the firefighters are just evolving a natural defense against fire.
It's property and lives, and, yes, facing risks on our behalf is pretty much what we ask firefighters to do every single day.
That's not to say, of course, that we should make them guinea pigs for inadequately tested compounds, or stooges for suppliers trying to cut corners on cost and safety.
player.ooyala.com sucks my ass, Slashdot's trying to load video players now even on articles without a video. What's next, embedded links to dice.nsa.gov?
"researchers don't know the identity of many of the chemicals in the mixtures on the market."
Doesn't pass the smell test.
On the plus side there's not been one firefighter death due to spontaneous combustion. Also.. in a pinch the blood of your colleagues can be used to put out gasoline fires.
Don't firefighters have the right to know about the compounds they're using, for example what to do in case of inhalation of certain gases (halons come to mind) or skin contact with certain foams (eg the ones that contain fluorocarbons, that absorb through the SKIN)!?
IANAFF (I am not a firefighter) but if I were I would be REFUSING to use anything that I didn't know about that has the potential to react badly with any part of my anatomy, and that includes fire retardent FC foams, smothering heavy gases, bubble blankets... job be damned, my job is to fight fires not knowingly endanger myself in ignorance of potential AND AVOIDABLE hazards.
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
how about a giraffe with GORD?
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
Firefoam Man?
Perfluoro Carlton?
Teflon Ted?
In all serious, finding novel compounds is interesting and important, but not in your own blood.
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
The story here isn't some novel way to find chemical compounds in a substance by testing humans. That's cool, but the real story here is why the hell don't we know?
We know our politicians in the US are able to be purchased by a high bidder, but are the companies providing firefighting compounds part of the bidders? This is the system that has given us unknown fracking compounds, manufactured doubt about climate change, and attempted coverups for oil and chemical spills. We should ask China how well that's working out for them.
Based on having gone through the firefighter training courses numerous times for my job, talking with the guy who wrote the textbook on firefighting, and generally being around a firefighting school, this article sounds bunk to me. Heck, even the non-firefighter classes for IT security people cover the important risks of halon and some other firefighting materials.
It's claimed that "they" don't know what's in the foam. May be "they", the people who wrote the article, don't know, but I'm pretty sure our instructors know exactly what it is. I was talking to one of the instructors about trying to come up with a "poor man's" sprinkler system you could put it the kitchen or other high-risk areas and it sounds to me like he knows what the different systems use.
We hardly know everything that is in gasoline (about a hundred compounds, mostly C4-C9 isomers). Jet fuel is more complex and diesel (C10-C20) is just too far gone.
Why would you expect to know the exact isomers (and recemization) in a fluorinated organic? The fluorine will go on in various places. And even if you think you know, it will change once thermally cracked at fire temperatures.
Mostly harmless, but there will be the odd one with just the wrong geometry to do somethink nasty, like the way BPA binds estrogen receptors.
It is just like fracking fluids. Proprietary composition, therefore the contents are not required to be disclosed for environmental scrutiny.
Got any toxic waste you need disposed? No problem! Presto! It's now a "proprietary" mixture! We can get rid of it real cheap for you! No need to heed any of those fancy government environmental or occupational health and safety regulations!
This is a serious loophole in environmental and occupational health and safety regulations.
But it's OK, because we're protecting the entrepreneur, right?
Knowing what is in something and knowing what it does are not the same thing. The toxicity and environmental impact of the substances are known and reported. The exact chemical composition is actually very irrelevant.
Also firefighters don't have much to fear from foam. Most of them would die from cancer caused by inhaling decomposition components of dangerous chemicals anyway. There's a reason firefighters can no barely go near a fire without donning a self contained breathing apparatus. I'm not talking about fires at chemical plants either. Our houses are full of truly nasty stuff if it heated to high temperatures and inhaled.
AFFF-uck.
Had to post this anonymously due to /.'s mobile site being broken... Fun times
The summary and the linked article are both wildly incorrect about the state of the metabolomics research field.
They state:
For the first time, a new study borrows a medical research tool to pinpoint fluorochemicals in the blood of firefighters, identifying novel compounds that have never before been publicly reported.
This is patently false. Metabolomics has a history that can now be measured in decades (called metabonomics originally), and it does not come from the medical community. In the current form, metabolomics is the next step of pure research which has progressed beyond the genomics and proteomics, and now wants to see what small molecules are shuttling around between these expressed proteins (and the environment). In fact, mass-spectrometry-based metabolomics is only now going back into the clinical setting (there is only one FDA-approved mass spec / system, for a very specific assay). Although they have been used as a clinical tool, it has been under a loophole which is likely to be tightened soon. Regardless, MS instruments WILL be used in the clinic in the future, and the major manufacturers are investing heavily to move that direction.
The second thing that's a little deceptive, depending on how you look at it, is that they are finding novel compounds via this study. That is something I completely believe, but not for the reasons you'd expect. The reality is the MS studies produce about 3000 compounds or so per study (the fact that they got so many from such a simple separation device and so short a run is a bit sketchy, but that's an aside), and it is very difficult to assign reasonable identify to more than 50% of them. Our databases aren't that good, and the methods aren't standardized enough to match results between studies. There are also just too many possible small metabolites: we can't make a purified standard to check against every experimental observation. So the consequence of all of this is that it would be completely bizarre to NOT find "novel" (unidentified) compounds in any given study. The trick is to be rigorous enough in the experimental design, sample handling, and processing to be certain that the novel compounds are actually real biomarkers or otherwise interesting.
Those firefighters need to be isolated and studied so it can be determined what other compounds they may have in their blood that might be extracted for our personal use.
Novel compounds found in writers' blood.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
It's claimed that "they" don't know what's in the foam. May be "they", the people who wrote the article, don't know, but I'm pretty sure our instructors know exactly what it is.
What. Fucking. Year. Is. It. Go check the MSDS for yourself, and you can see precisely what your instructors know about these compounds. Anything else they think they know is probably wrong.
I was talking to one of the instructors about trying to come up with a "poor man's" sprinkler system you could put it the kitchen or other high-risk areas and it sounds to me like he knows what the different systems use.
So because it sounded like he knew what he was talking about, you believe he knew what he was talking about? That's ignorant at best.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
What we use is a mix of soap and anti-freeze. The soap helps the water penetrate surfaces, and the anti-freeze helps raise the boiling point of water, to increase the amount of heat it can extract from the fire. The foam used by airport fire teams is different, and I don't know what's in it. In general, if you are on a hydrant, and don't have flammable liquids, you'll never use the foam anyway.
Learn to love Alaska
So you're a firefighter? If you ever come out to TEEX for training I'd like to buy you lunch.
Very interesting and the first time in the new /dot that I have not read a story elsewhere first.
I feel for anyone who puts their life on the line for others and has something like this happen to them. They deserve better.
I hung out at TEEX all the time, when I went to A&M. But that was back in the '90s. I've moved out of the US now, and haven't been to Texas in many years. And when I hung out there, it was mainly for the TTI or other transportation-related things over at Riverside. The cool fire-fighting stuff was at Easterwood, where they'd make huge plumes of smoke every few months.
Learn to love Alaska