‘Forever Chemicals’ Reckoning: US Giant 3M Agrees to Pay Up to $US7.35 Billion to Thousands Who Say Toxic Firefighting Foam Poisoned Their Water, as Australian Defence Base Communities Watch Closely
- Chemical titan 3M will pay as much as $US7.35 billion over nine years to up to 120,000 people who claim PFAS-laced groundwater made them sick, without admitting any wrongdoing.
- The toxic compounds, dubbed ‘forever chemicals’ because they never break down, have been linked to cancers, liver damage and immune system harm.
- The same firefighting foam blamed in the US was used for decades at Australian military bases and airports, poisoning land and water in towns from NSW to the Northern Territory.
- 3M keeps the right to walk away and resume the legal fight if too few victims sign on.
For years they were told the water was fine. They drank it, bathed their children in it and watered their vegetable gardens with it.
Now one of the world’s biggest chemical manufacturers has agreed to hand over a staggering sum to make the lawsuits go away.
The deal will reverberate far beyond the United States.
Australian families living beside contaminated defence bases have spent close to a decade fighting the same invisible enemy, and many will be asking one pointed question: what about us?
Minnesota-headquartered conglomerate 3M has agreed to pay up to $US7.35 billion to resolve claims from people who allege they were made ill by groundwater tainted with per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, better known as PFAS.
The money will be spread across nine years and could reach as many as 120,000 claimants.
The payment schedule is heavily back-loaded. An initial $US50 million will flow this year, before annual instalments exceeding $US1 billion arrive each year between 2028 and 2033.
There are strings attached. Additional money could be paid if participation is strong.
But if not enough plaintiffs agree to the terms, 3M can tear up the deal entirely and return to the courtroom.
Crucially, the company has not accepted liability for the contamination.
The chemicals at the heart of the case leached into groundwater near military installations, airports and other sites where foam was sprayed to smother fires, often during routine training drills.
3M chairman William Brown described the agreement as a major milestone, saying it substantially cut the uncertainty hanging over the company from the litigation.
Plaintiffs’ lawyers took a very different view of what the settlement represents.
Fred Thompson, of the Motley Rice firm that helped negotiate the agreement, characterised it as long-awaited relief for thousands of victims who had pursued answers and accountability for close to ten years.
He stressed that many urgently needed help with spiralling medical bills and other costs.
PFAS earned the chilling ‘forever chemicals’ nickname for a simple reason. They do not degrade naturally.
Once released, they persist in soil, water and human bodies for years.
That indestructibility is precisely what made them commercially irresistible.
They went into non-stick cookware, water-repellent clothing and grease-resistant packaging, as well as the firefighting foam now at the centre of global legal battles.
Environmental campaigners argue the very property that made PFAS so profitable is also what makes them so dangerous. They allege manufacturers understood the health risks long before the public was warned.
This latest deal is far from 3M’s first.
The company previously agreed to a $US450 million settlement with New Jersey over natural resource contamination, and to a deal worth more than $US10 billion with numerous American public drinking water systems.
Rival producers have also paid up. DuPont de Nemours, along with spinoffs Chemours and Corteva, have agreed to settlements totalling more than $US1 billion.
Yet regulatory gaps remain glaring.
The US Environmental Protection Agency has imposed tough limits on PFAS in public utility drinking water and mandated testing, but those protections do not extend to private wells.
A study designed to identify which industries discharge the chemicals in wastewater has reportedly sat stalled for two years awaiting White House review.
Analysis: What This Means for Australia
For Australians, this is not a distant American story. It is a mirror.
The same class of firefighting foam was used for decades at Australian Defence Force bases and airports.
Communities including Williamtown in NSW, Oakey in Queensland and Katherine in the Northern Territory discovered their land and water had been contaminated, triggering property value collapses, fishing bans and deep anxiety about long-term health.
The Commonwealth has already paid out hundreds of millions of dollars through class action settlements with affected residents, including a $212.5 million deal covering Williamtown, Oakey and Katherine.
A separate multibillion-dollar action targeting 3M over defence base contamination has now begun moving through the courts.
That raises a hard national security question.
When the tools used to protect military assets end up poisoning the very communities surrounding them, the cost is borne by taxpayers, landholders and local economies for generations.
Law enforcement and regulators face pressure too. Australian drinking water standards for PFAS have come under intense scrutiny, with the National Health and Medical Research Council moving to tighten guideline values.
Detections in some water catchments have rattled residents who never lived near a base.
The economic stakes are enormous. Farmers near contaminated sites have struggled to sell produce or land.
Remediation of soil and groundwater is slow, technically difficult and extraordinarily expensive, adding fresh strain on a federal budget already stretched by the cost of living crisis.
And socially, the toll is harder to measure. Families in affected towns describe years of uncertainty, blood tests and fear, with little clarity about what the chemicals in their bodies might ultimately mean.
Legal observers say the US deal could strengthen the hand of Australian plaintiffs by demonstrating that manufacturers are prepared to pay enormous sums rather than risk drawn-out trials.
Environmental health analysts warn, however, that settlements without admissions of liability can leave communities without the formal accountability they crave, even when the cheques eventually arrive.
Industry observers believe the sheer scale of PFAS payouts worldwide signals a turning point, with insurers, investors and governments increasingly treating forever chemicals as a long-tail liability on par with asbestos.
Defence insiders note that phasing out legacy foams has been a priority, but say cleaning up what has already seeped into the ground is a challenge measured in decades, not years.
Community advocates are blunter. Money, they argue, does not undo exposure, and the true scale of environmental contamination in Australia may still not be fully understood.
For now, the settlement offers a measure of relief to tens of thousands of Americans. For the Australian towns living with the same poison in their soil, it is a reminder that their own fight is far from over.