The City of Covington is now part of a national class-action lawsuit against manufacturers of firefighter protective gear, alleging companies covered up the presence of cancer-causing materials.
“Recently, there’s been a national legal effort to seek reimbursement of damages relating to the use of PFAS chemicals in firefighter turnout gear,” Covington City Solicitor Frank Schultz told the Board of Commissioners Tuesday night before asking the board to approve joining the lawsuit.
The move came after the board went into closed session at the beginning of last week’s caucus meeting. After about ten minutes of deliberations, the board returned to the dais and placed entering into the lawsuit onto the consent agenda for next week’s legislative meeting. Even though the board did not cast a vote on Tuesday, the city’s legal department can still begin the process of joining the lawsuit.
PFAS, which stands for perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, are a group of chemicals that have been in use since the 1950s and can be found in a variety of products, including those used as protectants against water, fire and grease. Their chemical structure degrades very slowly over time, thus leading them to be categorized as so-called forever chemicals. They have been linked to multiple health problems, including several forms of cancer, according to the EPA.
The high rate of occupational cancers among firefighters is well documented, both locally and nationally, although the cause of such cancers isn’t exclusively due to PFAS exposure.
“There’s a high likelihood of cancer in our profession,” Ben Wasson, president of Covington’s fire union, told LINK nky in 2024 for an unrelated story. “Just in the last six years … we’ve lost two brothers from occupational cancer.”
The International Association of Firefighters put the rate of line-of-duty deaths due to occupational cancers among its membership in 2025 at 80%.
The specific lawsuit comes out of the U.S. District Court for the District of Montana, a federal court. Filed in April 2025, the plaintiff in the case is the consolidated county and city government of Butte-Silver Bow, Montana. The defendants are several companies that manufacture firefighter turnout gear– i.e. the protective equipment firefighters wear in the course of their jobs–including 3M, Dupont and several of its affiliates.
The 274-page complaint alleges that the companies’ products were not only a source of PFAS exposure but also that the companies knew about it and colluded to cover it up. The lawsuit is one of five such federal lawsuits from around the county, according to reporting from Courthouse News Service.
In July, U.S. District Judge Brian Morris ruled against the company’s attempt to dismiss the lawsuit, thereby opening it up to class action.
“Defendants could not have achieved their goals of selling PFAS and turnout gear containing PFAS if Defendants’ knowledge of the harms of PFAS had been exposed,” Morris writes in his order to deny the dismissal request. “These actions by Defendants, allegedly acting together to conceal the known dangers of PFAS, do not constitute merely normal or ordinary commercial relationships. These allegations indicate a continuing effort of concealment by Defendants.”
The commissioners did not discuss the case in public at Tuesday’s meeting, and Fire Chief Corey Deye declined to comment. However, Mayor Ron Washington sent a written statement to LINK nky after the meeting.
“Entering into litigation is not a decision the city of Covington takes lightly,” Washington said. “However, when negligence potentially threatens the health of our firefighters and imposes significant costs on taxpayers, we must take action to protect the city’s interests and pursue every available opportunity to recover those public funds. I look forward to the city taking action to prevent taxpayers from being forced to absorb costs caused by the negligence of others.”
