RANTOUL, Ill. (WAND) – Chanute Air Force Base in Rantoul closed in 1993. Thirty-two years later, the Air Force is trying to determine where so-called forever chemicals, PFAs, are located and how to handle them.

“I will literally die with large amounts of PFAs remaining in my blood because it doesn’t break down,” veteran Kevin Ferrara, a former Air Force firefighter who served at Chanute, told WAND News. “This stuff is man-made. It’s not natural. It should not be in our blood, and that’s 30 years after I went to Chanute.”

Chanute was in firefighter training school, which used a firefighting foam known as AFFF, an effective foam used in battling aircraft fires. Those training with it, or using it in actual fires, did not realize that AFFF was toxic, possibly linked to cancer and other heal

See Full Page