Last November, we posted a link to an article in the Intelligencer stating that “Military knew of firefighting foam hazards in 1995”. I was interviewed in connection with the article, which had an immediate impact the Southeastern Pennsylvania area. Now, it appears that the article had reverberated as far away as New Hampshire.
Portsmouth N.H. is the site of the former Pease Air Force Base, where a remarkable citizens group, Testing For Pease, has been able to get the government agencies moving towards a serious study of the health effects of firefighting foam contamination which has affected the drinking water of millions of people.
Pease has a Citizen’s Advisory Panel (CAP) which meets with the authorities periodically . The CAP read the article, and asked that the Department of Defense (“DOD”) answer questions about what it knew, when it knew it, and why it did virtually nothing before 2014 to address this problem.
At the conclusion of the Q and A, Andrea Amico, chair of the CAP, read a statement which you can watch on the link below. She describes how she was only 13 years old in 1995 when the military knew of the dangers of the foam. By the time Andrea’s first child was born in 2011—a full sixteen years later—absolutely nothing had been done to address the problem. When Andrea later put her two children into daycare at Pease, she was confident they would be well taken care of, and entirely ignorant that they would be drinking contaminated water.
When she found out, her life was turned upside down, and changed forever.
And now, she learned for the first time that the DOD knew of the health effects more than twenty years ago. Yet, acting without a moral compass, the DOD took a wait and see approach, ignoring the health impact on military personal and private citizens.
Residents are outraged and are demanding a comprehensive health study and an apology from the DOD.
The complete meeting video can be found here.
The questioning of the Air Force Colonel Constantino starts at 2:18:30
