Fire retardants in general are pretty terrible. Great example of unintended consequences of overzealous regulation. Now we don’t have fires but are killing ourselves with pfoas on our pillows, mattresses evetthing.
The US military has a long history of toxicity. For example, there's an artificial island in the middle of SF Bay, where they stored ships after they were irradiated during nuclear testing, which had to be cleaned up as more housing was built: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treasure_Island,_San_Francisco#Remediation_and_redevelopment" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treasure_Island,_San_Francisco...</a><p>and also Hunter's Point, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunters_Point_Naval_Shipyard#Shipyard_Redevelopment" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunters_Point_Naval_Shipyard#S...</a> where the cleanup company lied and left a bunch of contaminated materials.<p>I shouldn't forget to mention the superfund sites around the golden gate bridge. And that's just the SF Bay.
It was not totally clear what kind of substance AFFF was, but the article mentioned in one paragraph that it's PFAS (perfluoroalkyl substances), which is again a group of compounds, but chiefly PFOS (perfluorooctane sulfonate) and PFOA (perfluorooctanoic acid).