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> “It’s not in our interest to share product with public or private agencies,” Jurasek said at the time. “You are not the first person to ask for us to give them fire retardant. It happens. It’s not something we do.”

I don’t get why they are acting like they have something to hide. Phosphate is mined from rock, rock contains all sorts of other elements including heavy metals. That’s simply how minerals work. It’s not by itself an indication that anyone has done anything wrong.

Or they don't want to make it obvious that they're taking something cheap and marking it up a million percent and nobody is asking questions. This happens a lot in "our only customers are government or compelled to buy by government" industries of which fire is one.
The usual reflexive secrecy. Nobody gives out any information about what's in any product if they can avoid it. This has really bad economic and environmental effects.

I don't know that this particular retardant is a big deal, but the rule really ought to be that the maker of every product must disclose to the public (not just actual buyers) (a) what they put into it, (b) where they got it, (c) how they assured that it was what they thought it was, (e) how they processed it, (e) exactly what analyses or characterizations they've ever done on the product or anything that went into it, and (f) the complete results of those.

Trade secrets not only shouldn't get any legal protection, but in many cases they should be illegal.

This is one of the downsides of an excessively litigious society.

Being afraid of potential risks, even if there are none, reduces transparency.

This feels like one of those things where context changes over time and takes a product outside of it's original use case.

Fire retardant is an emergency measure, one that would rightly be expected to see exceptionally low usage overall. But over time, more people and property have gotten closer to the forest; forest fires affect more people for many reasons.

So fire retardant use is not so rare.

The Therac-20 was a fine piece of electro-mechanical-nuclear technology, but the Therac-25 moved the control scheme out of its original context, and took away some of the physical interlocks. The Therac-25 is not remembered fondly.

Context changes over time, and assumptions need to be re-examined.

It reminds me of handling null values or other kinds of exceptional situations in coding.

We can assume they happen for some reason but unless we actually ensure that, the branch for handling the intended exception can silently start handling other use cases too.

- "Phos-Chek MVP-Fx is primarily made of ammonium phosphates, which are derived from phosphate. That rock, when mined, can contain trace amounts of heavy metals."

The thing they're catastrophizing about is rock phosphate—ordinary fertilizer that's mixed into the soil of every food farm in the world.

I'm not sure if the journalists who wrote this article are aware of this. "It's COVERING my garden plants!" reads quite definitely when you recognize it's f'ing Miracle-Gro.

https://www.usgs.gov/centers/national-minerals-information-c...

- "Phosphorus is an essential element for plant and animal nutrition. Most phosphorus is consumed as a principal component of nitrogen-phosphorus-potassium fertilizers used on food crops throughout the world. Phosphate rock minerals are the only significant global resources of phosphorus."

https://www.health.state.mn.us/communities/environment/risk/... ("Heavy Metals in Fertilizers")

- "Risk assessments conducted by the US Environmental Protection Agency and others have concluded that the hazardous constituents in inorganic fertilizers generally do not pose risks to public health or the environment."

The devil is in the details. Even though all minerals contain impurities, NPK fertilizer is processed to reduce them to acceptable levels for agriculture. If they did not do this, places dosed with large quantities of it (year after year after…) would become superfund sites. It is the same reason coal is so nasty: the CO2 is nothing compared to the ash—which is loaded with heavy metals. If the ash retaining ponds around a coal plant ever broke, the land would be uninhabitable for centuries, so the the ppms and ppbs are crucial information here.
> "Risk assessments conducted by the US Environmental Protection Agency and others have concluded that the hazardous constituents in inorganic fertilizers generally do not pose risks to public health or the environment."

What I believe you're missing is where this might be coming from. We live in an Institutional crisis, where for years propaganda was spread and amplified by internal and external actors (like Russia) to undermine institutions, with lies and conspiracy theories.

Bold claims were made that organizations and the government were captured by private interests, completely disregarding that actual qualified people are working to make sure things are safe, like products we consume.

Just for context, RFK Junior is the US Secretary of Health and Human Services.

So, to circle back to your quote, the Risk assessment made by the US Environmental Protection Agency could be easily dismissed by the following unfounded and unsupported claim, "yeah the US Environmental Protection Agency is serving the big companies; they should be dismantled."

Like it would be the easiest thing for Russia to start a trend to sway people to demand a ban on phosphate. They did similar things with regard to Ukraine, to the point where the US Administration is amplifying russian talking points.

To be clear, I'm not saying this article is a propaganda piece; what I'm saying is that this sort of opinion from someone who doesn't seem to fully understand the subject is a prime example of something that could be amplified for propaganda and contribute to institutional demise.

> Late last year, LAist requested samples of MVP-Fx from Cal Fire, the U.S. Forest Service and Perimeter Solutions, which manufactures the product, for the purpose of running an independent analysis for heavy metals. All declined.

> “It’s not in our interest to share product with public or private agencies,” Jurasek said at the time. “You are not the first person to ask for us to give them fire retardant. It happens. It’s not something we do.”

How is this legal? Like how can the government spray random chemicals all over the land and there's no way for the public to compel them or the people supplying them to declare what's in them?

> “You are not the first person to ask for us to give them fire retardant. It happens. It’s not something we do.”

Scary to think what other discoveries were missed if those other investigations had been given the samples they asked for.

I also enjoy how they all pile on to say the results can't be trusted.

> Cal Fire, the U.S. Forest Service and Perimeter Solutions all dismissed the results of the testing — saying that the samples couldn’t be relied on because they were gathered in the field.

The federal government is at least somewhat aware of these issues

https://www.epa.gov/assessing-and-managing-chemicals-under-t...

https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2016-05/documents/fl...

Historically, its not unusual for California's government and industry to dump chemicals all over the state.

It isn't the responsibility of the manufacturer to provide samples for analysis (unless the law compels them). Take it up with your government.

> Like how can the government spray random chemicals all over the land and there's no way for the public to compel them

There is, by voting.

Rumor is they couldn't figure out where to put the "warning this product is known to cause cancer in the state of california" sticker on the planes
Some of the heavy metals are likely from the fire retardant, and some are likely from the fire. Look at zinc vs lead for example. There is little lead in the unused sample vs the environmental samples, thus most of the lead is likely not from the fire retardant. I would guess the most likely source is lead from roofs of burning houses.

Zinc on the other hand is present in all samples in about the same amount, including the unused one. That means that the zinc is likely from the fire retardant rather than the environment. Other metals are present in slightly higher amounts in the environmental samples, and often only in some of the samples. In that case both the fire retardant and the fires/environment are likely to contribute.

To me it seems like copper, lead and manganese are mostly from the fires, while zinc and chromium seems to be from the fire retardant. Then there is the sample from the Franklin fire, that seems to be higher in everything.

> Some of the heavy metals are likely from the fire retardant

I'm not disagreeing with what you wrote, but they did also analyze unused, "fresh out of the package" retardant.

I was trying to figure out what is in class A firefighting foam last week.

Nobody really wants to say, it is all trade secrets, evading a direct response, using vague sweeping terms, like it contains surfactant and foaming agents.

However based on the published MSDS. my guess, soap, it is mainly soap.

https://www.fs.usda.gov/rm/fire/wfcs/products/msds/foam/silv...

Note that I do think it is soap finely engineered for it's fire suppression characteristics. I also think you would get 80% there with a bottle of dish soap.

Ya some of us rural volunteer firefighters will use dish soap instead of foam concentrate. I personally haven't but some of the others in the department have.
It's ammonia phosphates with trace amounts of heavy metals.
I wonder who can figure out what the red coloring is ;)

Or if it will be accomplished one way or another?

All the heavy metals were below 1ppm, are any of the levels concerning?
In case there's some natural accumulation process, the concentration can reach any levels, so absolute quantity might (or might not) matter as well.
I found it a bit concerning that this doesnt talk about safe dosages of any of the heavy metals.
Many of the levels are well above the levels required for drinking water.

That isn't much to go on, however.

> Lane feels firefighters were left in the dark

That kind of thing happens a lot (see “9/11 Syndrome”).

Kind of a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” situation.

One of the things about fire, is that it alters chemistry. Perfectly safe materials, can turn into highly toxic gas, when heated. In many cases, this cannot be anticipated, or realistically prevented. There are also firefighting foams and whatnot. I think some of the foams contain fairly significant quantities of questionable chemicals. They are pretty much required, for Li-ion battery fires.

Firemen kinda take the brunt of that. I know a number of retired firefighters, and they all have health issues.

Remember that some of the firefighters are prisoners (as in criminals), a vulnerable population that has less choice and less access to health care or other remedies.
We should know what’s in the retardant, yes.

The alternative to retardant at the moment is uncontrolled wildfires.

That's an "all or nothing" fallacy, easily countered.

One alternative is water. Plus alternative products might be less efficient but less contaminating. Finally, even with Phos-Check, success is far from guaranteed.

Bottom line: the lack of transparency must be remedied and officials need to be aware and factor in heavy metal contamination into their decisions.

So the article contains the data for the detected concentration. And it's basically a nothingburger.

For example, the samples contained 37 to 80 micrograms per liter of cadmium. The safety limit for _drinking_ _water_ is 5 micrograms. So diluting the retardant with 10 times the water makes it safe enough to drink.

Lead content in the samples was wildly different, from 7 micrograms to 800, indicating that the sampling procedure itself was unreliable.

Similar story for chromium, 100 micrograms is the safe level, and 200-300 micrograms were in the tested samples.

In fact, only arsenic is concerning, with roughly 10-60 times the allowed concentration for the drinking water.

> In fact, only arsenic is concerning, with roughly 10-60 times the allowed concentration for the drinking water.

Even this is unconcerning. The water standard for arsenic is unscientifically low for unrelated political reasons. There is no evidence that it is unsafe at much higher levels, as is common in many locales.

Arsenic is an essential micronutrient in animal biology, similar to selenium. We require some amount of arsenic in our diet and water is a common source. (More surprisingly, there is evidence that lead is an essential micronutrient in trace quantities but its biological function is not currently known.)

> Lead content in the samples was wildly different, from 7 micrograms to 800, indicating that the sampling procedure itself was unreliable.

That isn't the only possible explanation for the variance. That much variance could have been in the product itself, e.g. if the suppressant was supplied by different companies or by the same company that has sourced raw materials from different mines for different batches.

Do you think they really mean "per liter" of the actual sample or is this possibly the amount in an already diluted solution that they made from the sample? It seems like an odd unit of measurement otherwise.

What would have been helpful in the article was a comparison to the levels produced by the fire itself. Fires in residential areas produce all sorts of nasty stuff. While we should make the retardant as safe as we can, if it prevents something even worse from being released it still could be a win.

First off, water standards were weak in the first place (because of lobbying from the chemical industry) and have been weakened several times since, so they've become a joke. If you're over the federal limits, you're in pretty bad territory.

It's also not a "nothingburger." How much area do you think one liter covers in ground area? Now go look at the giant cargo planes dropping the stuff thousands of pounds at a time?

All that crap washes down into waterways or leeches into the soil, then into the water table.

> Lead content in the samples was wildly different, from 7 micrograms to 800, indicating that the sampling procedure itself was unreliable.

...that's not what that indicates, no. It could also be that lead is very inconsistently spread through the chemical.

Chromium doesn't have a safe level, just like there's no such thing as a safe level of radiation.

Before you start hammering away that the chances to you or me are extremely low: so are house fires, murder, etc. They still happen, and they happen to somebody. A low concentration of chromium consumed by a large population will definitely cause health impacts.

I was always told it was boron (or borate?). People always called them boron bombers.

Yes, that was a thing. https://www.borax.com/news-events/november-2022/boron-flame-...

Fire retardant itself is much more harmful than heavy metals in this context.

It essentially causes neurodegenerative diseases, especially if you inhale it.

This applies to unintuitive routes of exposure, like taking a hot shower on an Air Force base that used flame retardant in fire drills decades prior and breathing in the water suspended in air.

> It essentially causes neurodegenerative diseases, especially if you inhale it.

Good thing they do mandatory evacuations before using it and don't let people back in until clean up has happened.

> Fire retardant itself is much more harmful than heavy metals in this context.

I haven't found any studies about that, can you link them? It doesn't look like ammonium phosphate is dangerous.

Some phosphate rock deposits have very high levels of cadmium. Phosphate fertilizers derived from high Cd rocks can have up to 100 ppm cadmium.
Where is it manufactured? In USA or somewhere else?

If it is manufactued in other country then they might not care about heavy metals in the product.

This is like antivaxx. Yes you will find heavy metals pretty much everywhere if you test sensitively enough.
Great investigative reporting!
I wonder if some of the high levels of lead found in the samples are from the airplane fuel, Which is sadly still leaded in the us
I feel like the economy has become one giant scheme to enable chemical companies to peddle their toxic products onto the oblivious public.

They put preservatives in everything... Even some brands of ice cream has preservatives...they taste awful. I don't know how anyone can eat that... Am I the only one who can taste that horrible bitter aftertaste? These products are inedible.

The irony is that they load up processed foods with preservatives and ship them half way across the world... While people in your local community can't find work... They could have been making better food in a food truck and selling it locally, no need for preservatives. Why is this not possible in most places?

I've lived in a country which had a strong foodtruck culture and the food there was both excellent and cheap. The model is proven yet it doesn't work in a lot of places for some reason. Too much regulation? Regulating the wrong things? They should be regulating chemicals!