Where humans are interacting with substances as part of their job, there’s a huge responsibility for chemical analysis in the UK to ensure that their health and safety is being safeguarded. However, when this isn’t being clearly met, or there is some controversy surrounding exposure to chemicals, workers may have to take matters into their own hands.

For example, last week, firefighters and safety experts from around the world met in Geneva as part of the UN’s annual meeting on persistent organic pollutants (POPs) to call for a ban on certain chemicals present in firefighting foam, which may have affected the health of firefighters during their use over the last 50 years.

The chemicals on the agenda, PFOA and PFOS, are both fluoride based and are used in foam for their property of being resistant to water and oil, however, the chemicals have also been discovered to have three characteristics which means they can pose a serious risk to human health.

They are persistent, as suggested in the names POPs, which means that they do not break down through environmental degradation. The chemicals are also bioaccumulative, which means that organisms will absorb the substance faster that it is excreted from it. They are also reprotoxic, in that they may affect the fertility of those exposed to them, as well as affecting the development of offspring.

At a press conference, firefighters and figures from the oil and aviation industries who no longer use fluoride foams asked UN delegates to ban the chemicals and any loopholes which allowed them to be used. One such attendee was Mick Tisbury, president of the United Firefighters Union of Australia and commander of the Melbourne Metropolitan Fire Brigade, which itself as moved away from using fluoride foams. “As a firefighter, I can tell you our anxiety levels are high because we know we’ve had to deal with exposure to this toxic chemical for over 50 years,” he said. “Right now we feel like we’ve got a ticking time bomb in our bodies.”

PFOS was added to Annex A of the Stockholm Convention – a list of banned chemicals in 2009, and PFOA is currently under recommendation to be added, however, each comes with certain exceptions to the rule, which at present include firefighting foam.

While many firefighters claim that non-fluoride foams perform just as well as fluoride foams, there is some resistance from others within the industry. According to Chemical Watch,

According to one commentator, Thomas Leonhardt from Eurofeu, an association representing fire protection equipment and firefighting vehicles, fluoride foams are competent for some fires, but not all, and they need to be retained for use for the likes of fuel fires and within high-risk areas such as the chemical and aviation industries.

He also says that firefighters are used to using fluoride based foams, and extra training in the use of properly applying non fluoride based foams would need to be taken into consideration before exclusion of the substances from widespread use.