Tom McElroy

Yes, these forever chemicals in the form of firefighting foam used on defence bases around Australia over some decades have caused enormous environmental damage.

They're called forever chemicals for a reason, of course.

They're impossible to break down naturally and they require huge, expensive remediation work.

The government has identified 28 defence sites where this firefighting foam with PFAS, Forever Chemicals, was used.

And today the news that the Attorney-General is bringing a case in our federal court against 3M, seeking about $2 billion Australian, about €1.5 billion in damages from the company for manufacturing these goods and selling them to Australia.

They're bad for the environment.

As I say, impossible to break down naturally.

They stay in soil and they damage water catchments, but they also are bad for humans as well.

Perhaps because of the strength of these chemicals, they have a range of health risks, things like liver damage, lower birth weight for babies, types of cancer.

And the risk to military personnel, firefighters on these bases has been well ventilated through inquiries in Australia.

And a lot of the affected communities, including Indigenous communities, have explained what's happened in their parts of Australia.

The move today is recognition from the government that they've already spent something like a billion and a half Australian dollars cleaning up these chemicals, trying to remediate sites and bring them back online.

And they would like 3M to carry some of the cost for that because of its role in manufacturing these chemicals.

Yeah, that's right.

The case is focused on 3M, the big American company, as well as their subsidiary in Australia.

And the government alleges that they withheld and misrepresented information about the effects of some of these foams, that, as you say, that they knew how dangerous they were, they knew the damage that they could cause.

that they didn't disclose environmental risks and even that they gave assurances about the safe disposal and environmental remediation, which was inconsistent with what the company itself knew about the danger from these products.

I'm not a legal expert, but some of the other cases that have been brought related to forever chemicals in the United States and in other parts of the world, indeed here in Australia, have ended in settlements.

There was a big one in the United States in 2023.

A company agreed in a settlement to pay more than $10 billion to clean up public water systems that had been affected by pollution from these forever chemicals.