AFFF MANUFACTURING WORKER EXPOSURE LAWSUITS

LK Investigating PFAS Exposure Claims from AFFF-Manufacturing Workers

Workers at manufacturing facilities for aqueous film-forming foam (AFFF) allegedly suffered serious illnesses linked to PFAS exposure.

Levy Konigsberg is investigating claims that workers employed at facilities manufacturing AFFF were exposed to increased levels of toxic substances.

Facilities that produced AFFF and PFAS-based specialty chemicals — including 3M’s Decatur, Alabama plant and DuPont’s Washington Works facility in West Virginia — employed thousands of workers who handled perfluorooctanesulfonyl fluoride (POSF), perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), perfluorooctanesulfonate (PFOS), and related compounds on a daily basis. Peer-reviewed studies tracking these workers over decades have documented elevated rates of bladder cancer, kidney cancer, liver cancer, mesothelioma, lymphatic malignancies, diabetes, liver cirrhosis, and cardiovascular disease — with risks increasing in proportion to the level and duration of exposure. 

If you or a loved one worked at an AFFF manufacturing facility and developed a serious illness, contact us today.

What We Know About PFAS Exposure in AFFF-Manufacturing Workers

• In February 2024, researchers published a long-term study of workers at 3M’s Decatur, Alabama facility — a major production site for PFAS-based chemicals used in AFFF — finding that workers with the highest exposure died from bladder cancer and cerebrovascular disease at significantly higher rates than the general public.

The study tracked over 4,000 workers employed at the facility from 1961 through 2010, during which 3M produced the chemical building blocks that went into AFFF.

Before 3M phased out this chemistry in 2000, tested workers carried PFOS in their blood at concentrations roughly 31 times higher than what was measured in the general public at the same time.

Bladder, lung, colorectal, and pancreatic cancers were all found at elevated rates among workers with greater cumulative exposure — the more exposure, the higher the risk.

The authors concluded that the link between this occupational exposure and bladder cancer, lung cancer, and cerebrovascular disease warranted serious further attention — findings that go directly to what and when 3M knew about the risks its workers faced.

• In December 2019, a mortality study of workers at an Italian facility that had produced PFOA, PFOS, and related chemicals since 1968 found that manufacturing workers died at dramatically higher rates than both the general population and workers at a nearby factory — from liver cancer, blood cancers, diabetes, and liver cirrhosis.

Workers carried extraordinarily high concentrations of PFOA in their blood — far beyond what any occupational exposure standard would consider safe.

The elevated death rates were not random: they rose in direct proportion to how much PFAS a worker had been exposed to over time.

That dose-response relationship — the more exposure, the worse the outcome — is among the strongest forms of evidence that the chemicals, not coincidence, caused the harm.

• In October 2012, a cohort mortality study of nearly 6,000 workers at DuPont’s Washington Works chemical plant in West Virginia found that PFOA-exposed workers died from mesothelioma, diabetes, and chronic kidney disease at significantly higher rates than other DuPont workers in the same region.

The more PFOA a worker was exposed to, the greater their risk of kidney cancer and kidney disease — a pattern that held even after accounting for other variables.

DuPont had access to blood serum monitoring data for more than 1,300 workers going back to 1979.

The documented relationship between workers’ PFOA levels and their risk of dying from kidney disease raises a direct question of what DuPont knew about the dangers its workforce faced — and what it chose to do about it.

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