Our government is responsible for spraying endless amounts of foam that contains toxic chemicals that end up in our water and soil. Please let your elected officials know that they need to stop poisoning us: from the county to the city to the state and beyond.
These toxins build up in us and our children. PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) chemicals have been found in newborn babies that traveled through the mother’s blood. These fluorinated chemicals do not break down.
“At least some PFAS are present in every Madison well …” according to the City of Madison Water Utility. All of the wells around me have poison in them, poison that we don’t know how seriously we will be harmed. It’s like they are gambling with our lives.
I’m involved in my local community here on the Northside of Madison working to make sure that the people in government do their job properly. We, as citizens, come together to create government that serves the people: all of us. I am a military veteran, an Air Force veteran, a former member of the 115 Fighter Wing. I am involved with Safe Skies Clean Water Wisconsin because I believe in the rule of law, accountability and standing together with my neighbors for what is right.
We would like to stop this practice of spreading poison. The problem is that legislators tend to listen more to the people who hand them money, than to science or the American people. Poisoning us is not necessary in order to protect us. We need transparency so that we can see the equation, the cost-benefit analysis.
The people in government will try to tell us that we need these chemicals, but really often it’s just that the people making the ultimate decisions have connections to the people raking in the money. It’s all in who you know.
Without complete transparency, these problems will continue to be shoved under the rug. We should ban these awful chemicals. Sweden, the Netherlands, Germany, Denmark and other European people and nations are working to restrict all PFAS.
PFAS have a multitude of harmful effects on human beings. They are endocrine disruptors which mimic hormones. Endocrine disruptors suppress a person’s immune system. We want our immune systems to be as strong as possible. Say you want to live through COVID, you need a healthy immune system. Endocrine disruptors make vaccines less effective. It is beneficial for a vaccine to be effective. Take some time to do a search on “endocrine disruptors.”
These PFAS imitate natural hormones. PFAS can increase or decrease hormone production. We know they cause cancer.
From The Madrid Statement on Poly- and Perfluoroalkyl Substances: “In animal studies, some long-chain PFASs have been found to cause liver toxicity, disruption of lipid metabolism and the immune and endocrine systems, adverse neurobehavioral effects, neonatal toxicity and death, and tumors in multiple organ systems.”
As early as the 1960’s, the manufacturers and the government knew from research that PFAS related chemicals had serious harmful effects. The businesses and government have been switching between similar chemicals, with similar properties, in recent years. They turn out to be just as dangerous or worse, but the testing seems to come long after the profits are made.
From the Environmental Working Group: “Despite knowing about the potential health hazards of firefighting foam made with toxic PFAS chemicals, the Department of Defense continued to use aqueous film-forming foam, or AFFF, for decades … The Navy worked with 3M to develop AFFF in the early 1960s and sought to patent the firefighting foam in 1963.”
We must make sure that we are in charge, our elected work for us. Otherwise, the laws and regulations that are created will be ignored. Those in the federal government tend to act as if they are above the law, regardless of what they are responsible for and who they harm.
Join us in working to stop the poison and clean up this mess with Safe Skies: safeskiescleanwaterwi.org/contact-us.
Brad Geyer
Sources: Midwest Environmental Justice Organization (mejo.us), Military Poisons (militarypoisons.org), Citizens for Safe Water Around Badger (cswab.org)