Environmentally responsible disposal of fire fighting foam

Foamclean’s business is the responsible disposal of fire fighting foam.

The use of foam in fire fighting is essential as it saves lives and protects capital plant and infrastructure worth billions of pounds world-wide. Foam technology has evolved considerably over the last 30 years and today’s foams are extremely efficient.

One of the environmental downsides to these developments is that fluorosurfactants are used in these more efficient foam formulations. Whilst fluorosurfactants are used to achieve improved efficiency, when uncontained and discharged into the environment, these types of foams produce degradation products known either as H-PFOS, also known as 6:2 FtS or fluorotelomer sulphonate and resulting from degradation of fluorotelomer foams. These degradation products are known to be extremely persistent in the environment. H-PFOS is both bioaccumulative and toxic. 'Organohalogen Substances' such as fluorosurfactants are categorised as List 1 Substances under the UK Ground Water Regulations 1998 and to discharge them to groundwater is prohibited.

      Molecule image supplied by Industrial Fire Journal

The Previously known degradation product PFOS, was associated with foams manufactured by 3M. These Foams are no longer manufactured by 3M but may still be in storage, with the end user. Legislation in the UK will require all the PFOS based foams to be safely desposed of by the end of 2011. This is likely to be achieved through incineration of the foam concentrate.

The Environment Agency are the Competent Authority and responsible for the enforcement of regulations such as the Ground Water Regulations, the and Water Resources Act 1991, and more recently incorporated in the Permitting Regulations 2010, which makes such discharges illegal. Failure to comply with this legislation can lead to prosecution.

Foamclean can be utilised in a range of situations:

• Dealing responsibly and compliantly with at least 3 million litres of fire fighting foam that is discharged from fire extinguishers for testing purposes in the UK every year.

• Treating and disposing of spent foam from the training grounds of Fire Brigades, Company Fire Fighting Units, power plants, chemical plants, airports etc.

• Removing and treating the contaminated fire water from sites following incidents such as the Bunsfield disaster.
You may be a Fire Service Engineering business who would like to become involved in the responsible disposal of your customers’ spent fire fighting foam.

You may work in a business which would like to ensure that its fire fighting foam is correctly dealt with.

You may be involved in an organisation which needs to ensure that its Incident Recovery Planning includes safe disposal of fire-water run-off.

In any of these situations, we would welcome contact from you, to discuss how Foamclean can help you to achieve your objectives.