PENSACOLA, Fla. (WKRG) — A Pensacola law firm is part of a major victory in the fight for clean water.

PFAS, also known as “forever chemicals”, can be found in our drinking water, cleaning products, cookware and water-resistant fabric.

“Most every human on this earth and every living creature on this earth now has PFAS in their blood because of what these companies did,” Attorney Caleb Cunningham said.

Levin Papantonio Rafferty, where Cunningham is an associate attorney, is fighting against Dupont, 3M and other companies that have sold products containing the cancer-causing chemicals.

“They scaled up production and put it in literally everything,” Cunningham said. “Food packaging, Gore Tex, it was in everything for many years. All the way back to the 1960s, some of these providers knew how poisonous it was and they caused cancers. They continued to produce it and continued to expand production.”

A national settlement was reached last week between DuPont, Chemours, and Corteveva and the Plaintiffs Executive Committee in the Aqueous Film-Forming Foams Products Liability Litigation.

Money from the $1.185 billion settlement will go to water providers like Emerald Coast Utilities Authority (ECUA) in Northwest Florida that supplies drinking water to more than 180,000 customers. Water providers have to meet new federal regulations to limit PFAS in water which is a costly process.

“They’re having to add filtration and this is expensive filtration,” Cunningham said. “We estimate that $3 per gallon of water they move a day is what the filtration is going to cost.”

The chemicals have made it into the water supply for decades through firefighting foam that seeps into the soil.

“It migrates through the soil In kind of a plume and this plume is picked up in all of our drinking water and we’ve all been poisoned by it,” Cunningham said.

The law firm is also representing anyone who’s been diagnosed with cancer from PFAS exposure.

“If you’ve been exposed to PFAS for 6 months and developed either ulcerative colitis, kidney cancer, or testicular cancer, it is likely due to your PFAS exposure and my firm handles those cases,” Cunningham said.

“LPR has been fighting for clean water and those who have been injured from PFAS exposure for nearly a decade,” Attorney Wes Bowden said referring to a 2017 settlement that LPR lawyers reached with DuPont for dumping its C8 chemicals into the Ohio River and into the air from the DuPont plant in Parkersburg, West Virginia.

For more information about the ongoing litigation, contact Levin Papantonio Rafferty.