Incident Report Subject: PFOA ECA PLENARY MEETING Date of Email : Fri 14/11/2003 16:22 Report Detail: PFOA ECA PLENARY MEETING GOOD NEWS for the C6 telomer based fluorochemicals used in Angus branded foams. The Fire Fighting Foam Coalition (FFFC) group in USA has gained confirmation that the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) agrees that telomer based fluorine containing foams are unlikely to be a source of PFOA (and are already known not to be a source of PFOS) in the environment, and are therefore unlikely to be as hazardous as initially assumed, following the 3Mw ithdrawal. As you know C6 telomers are (like all fluorochemicals) persistent in the environment, but this confirms they are unlikely to be bioaccumulative or toxic like PFOS and are therefore unlikely to be put in a future restricted usec ategory. Undoubtedly studies will continue but these should only re-confirm this position. (See attached file: workgroupsummary.doc) This is the result of much hard work carried out within the FFFC group in the US, but it does form a good corner-stone to support the continued safe< /SPAN>use of C6 telomer based fluorochemicals which are used in Angus Fire's high performance synthetic and protein based foams. SUBJECT: PFOA ECA PLENARY MEETING ___________________________________________________ The PFOA ECA Plenary has accepted the proposal by the Telomer Technical Workgroup that telomer-based fire fighting foams no longer be considered as part of the PFOA ECA process. When FFFC was started two years ago, the fate of telomer-based AFFF was being tied directly to the fate of PFOA and EPA had just told the military to start searching for alternatives to AFFF. On the 29th October, the Executive Director of FFFC stood at the EPA public meeting and stated that "telomer-based fire fighting foams are not likely to be a source of PFOA in< /SPAN>the environment". Everyone in the room including EPA agreed. FFFC committed yesterday to provide EPA with a letter of intent within two weeks that puts in writing our voluntary commitment to collect data on inventories of AFFF in USA. Linked Documents:
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