Outside the Harrison Township Fire Department, in Pickaway County south of Columbus, a car erupted into flames.
As black smoke billowed from its open windows, a trio of firefighters aimed a thick hose toward the blaze.
No one was hurt in this car fire. It was a test to see if the soybean-based foam that firefighters sprayed onto the flames could successfully smother them.
“I've never used the SoyFoam product before. This is absolutely an amazing thing for us to be introduced to,” said Jordan Hempker, a local shift chief.
For decades, his department — along with many others across the state — has used Aqueous Film-Forming Foam, or AFFF, to put out fires. The firefighting foam is highly effective, but it contains PFAS, which are toxic 'forever chemicals' that don’t break down in the environment and are linked to cancer.
SoyFoam promises to be safer, and it’s made with a common Ohio crop: soybeans.
“Us being a farming community, this just brings our roots even closer to the farmers in our district,” Hempker said. “It's just better for the environment and better for our community.”
Transitioning to safer firefighting foams
Firefighters are 9% more likely than the general population to be diagnosed with cancer. It’s the leading cause of line-of-duty death.
That’s partly because of their prolonged exposure to hazardous smoke.
“When we go to these fires, whatever is burning in someone's home, industry or car, we don't know what chemicals we're being exposed to,” Hempker said.
But an increasing body of research points to their PFAS-laden protective clothing and equipment as another contributor.
Given that evidence, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine signed a bill in 2022 banning AFFF in firefighting training exercises.
Then, last year, he launched the Firefighting Foam Takeback program — the first in the country to collect AFFF from fire departments and destroy the PFAS in it.
More than a hundred stations across the state participated last spring, collectively turning in 13,600 gallons of AFFF.
The Bellbrook Fire Department southeast of Dayton was one of the first to do so.
For them, it was personal. A firefighter — who was also one of their lieutenant's wives — had recently died of cancer.
“So it meant that much more to all us here, as we knew her,” said Fire Chief Anthony Bizzarro. “Whatever we could do to limit any exposure whatsoever within our firehouse, we wanted to make sure we could do that.”
Bizzarro’s station, like others in Ohio, switched to a PFAS-free firefighting foam, but it doesn’t work as quickly as AFFF did.
What is SoyFoam?
Manufacturer Cross Plains Solutions has been working on an alternative.
Their new SoyFoam successfully put out the practice car fire in a matter of minutes. It’s PFAS free, biodegradable and it’s made from a product that’s abundant in Ohio.
Steve Reinhard has been growing soybeans for decades in North Central Ohio’s Crawford County. He said he and other farmers are always looking for ways to diversify their revenue sources. But this product has benefits that aren’t just monetary.
“I call this a triple win because in a lot of our rural communities our farmers are our first responders, so we're able to keep them healthy,” he said. “We're going to use soybeans in the process and it's good for the environment.”
But SoyFoam is new, so in practice, it’s relatively untested: Just 50 stations across the country are using it to fight fires and none are in Ohio.
Chiefs like Hempker and Bizzarro say they’re interested, but making the switch isn’t simple.
“Our budgets aren't growing by any means to be able to support the additional stuff that we need to buy to make sure that we keep our employees safe,” Bizzarro said. “Grants are starting to dry up. They're not as readily available as they once were to help offset the purchase. And state funding is pretty much non-existent for public safety.”
Cross Plains Solutions said the cost of SoyFoam is comparable to other PFAS-free firefighting foams. The Ohio Soybean Association says it’s talking with state legislators about a financial assistance program so more fire departments can try out the product.
“This has the great promise to give us a safe foam, a usable foam, a workable foam and a product that's not going to cost fire departments an arm and a leg,” said Ohio State Fire Marshal Kevin Reardon. “That's really important as public safety budgets get tighter and tighter and tighter.”
