In 2019, Alaska Republican US Sen. Dan Sullivan joined a growing coalition of lawmakers concerned about the “forever chemicals” used in firefighting foams, which have been linked to cancer and don’t break down in the environment.
And in 2022 former President Joe Biden signed into law the Protecting Firefighters from Adverse Substances Act, or the PFAS Act, a measure that Sullivan co-sponsored.
But in the years since, and especially under President Donald Trump, Sullivan has quietly backed efforts to rollback protections against forever chemicals—a move that is particularly notable given his family’s chemical company, RPM, the maker of Rust-Oleum, has faced legal challenges over its use of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, known as PFAS. Sullivan has faced increasing scrutiny on how his decisions to legislate have benefitted his family’s company, of which he owns as much as $5 million in stock.
Many of his moves since the 2022 vote have been aimed at shielding corporate interests from liability over their use of PFAS chemicals, and he’s cosponsored several bills that would provide immunity to businesses, airport operators and even farms that used the chemicals unless plaintiffs can prove they acted with “gross negligence or willful misconduct.”
Proving liability for PFAS pollution is already difficult under existing rules, as shown by RPM successfully dodging a PFAS lawsuit over questions of whether the PFAS contamination could be traced.
Dan Sullivan reopened the door to incinerating firefighting foam
But Sullivan’s most notable action in Congress when it comes to easing rules on PFAS chemicals is a change to the National Defense Authorization Act last year that lifted a rule that stopped military bases from getting rid of PFAS-containing firefighting foam by burning it in incinerators.
The ban had been put in place in 2022 following a 2021 report that found the US military under Trump had started to secretly incinerate the firefighting foam for years, despite having ample evidence that the foam was harmful to humans. The report also raised questions about whether incinerating a chemical that’s designed to fight fires was actually destroying the material or just spreading the cancer-causing substance out into neighboring communities.
“The Pentagon is effectively conducting a toxic experiment and has enrolled the health of millions of Americans as unwitting test subjects,” David Bond, who oversaw the research, wrote in a 2021 op-ed.
But thanks to Sullivan’s changes, the Pentagon can resume those tests.
Alaska has hundreds of sites that have been identified for PFAS contamination, and clean-up efforts have been slow moving and met with skepticism, while other studies suggest the contamination is even more widespread. Kimberly Lake in North Pole, which is near a former refinery, has been closed to all fishing since 2019 because of PFAS contamination.
Sullivan’s office has tried to downplay the health impacts of incinerating firefighting foam. In a report by The Hill on efforts to soften PFAS rules, Sullivan’s staff defended his decision to bring back PFAS incineration, pointing to a study that claimed that incineration of PFAS chemicals is “99.9999% effective.”
According to Sullivan’s staff, the senator was just cleaning up a mess left behind by Biden.
“Despite this, the Biden Administration slow-walked issuing the guidance necessary to lift the ban … leaving mounds of PFAS-laden soil in piles on our military bases,” a spokesperson told the outlet. “Senator Sullivan’s provision doesn’t mandate incineration, but it removes an unnecessary restriction and gives DOD back a safe and effective disposal option that doesn’t require shipping waste out of state.”
However, there may be a good reason why the Biden administration was skeptical of the findings.
Dan Sullivan pointed to industry-backed study on safety
That’s because the cited 2022 study was conducted by Clean Harbors, a company that happens to specialize in exactly the type of incineration its study found was ultra-effective. The company’s latest announcements about the study, which circulated about the same time that Sullivan pushed for the change, read more like a sales pitch than a scientific paper.
“Our study confirms we have the safest and most effective commercial-scale PFAS destruction process in North America,” reads a company web page about the study. “In hazardous waste disposal, there’s Clean Harbors—then there’s everyone else.”
The company’s site also notes that the study’s data was reviewed “independently,” but one of the listed reviewers is the Coalition for Responsible Waste Incineration, a trade group of which Clean Harbors is a full member.
Researchers who don’t directly stand to benefit from looser regulations have been more skeptical of the claims that incineration is a safe approach for firefighting foams.
One study found that unless the incineration happens under ideal conditions—with extremely high temperatures and concentrated amounts of chemicals, something that’s difficult to do when you’re treating piles of contaminated soil—that the outcome can actually be much worse, releasing massive amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere as well as a whole new slate of hazardous chemicals.
“The combustion of (PFAS firefighting foam) residues with unknown or varying dilution levels is a risky method for large-scale implementation. … Incomplete combustion of PFAS can have severe health and environmental consequences,” the study said in its conclusion, noting that other methods may be safer. “These alternatives may become more favorable than incineration in addressing health and global warming concerns related to PFAS release into environment.”
The report also notes that PFAS incineration takes a considerable amount of energy, requiring the materials to be heated up to nearly 2200° Fahrenheit. The 2021 report that kicked off the ban, however, noted that the military likely wasn’t using these kinds of incinerators, but ones that operate at much lower temperatures.
So while Clean Harbors may have a proprietary solution to hitting those ideal conditions to incinerate firefighting foam, not all incinerators do and Sullivan’s change doesn’t require military bases to follow those higher standards.
And in the big picture, Sullivan hasn’t been alone in rolling back PFAS protections.
Dan Sullivan isn’t the only Republican pushing to roll back or delay PFAS protections
The Trump administration has also moved to roll back PFAS protections on drinking water, which would allow all but two of the worst chemicals to continue to be present in drinking water, a move that has run into little pushback from Republicans in Congress.
House Republicans have also pushed off the implementation of a ban on military bases using PFAS-laden firefighting foam for years, likely allowing them to continue using the chemical with little oversight through at least 2028.
The moves haven’t been popular across the board with Republican voters, though, and several have argued that public health shouldn’t be sacrificed for corporate profits. Anti-PFAS activist Diane Cotter, who voted for President Trump, told The Hill she felt let down by the GOP by their backtracking.
“I’m so sick of seeing congressionals stand for photo ops with firefighters and then vote this legislation down or chip away at it,” said Cotter, whose husband Paul was a firefighter who had cancer but is now cancer-free.
Matt Acuña Buxton is a long-time political reporter who has written for the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner and The Midnight Sun political blog. He also authors the newsletter on the Alaska Legislature, The Alaska Memo, and can frequently be found live-tweeting public meetings on Bluesky.
