CANBERRA, Oct. 9 (Xinhua) -- Australia's Department of Defence has admitted that a chemical contamination warning came three years late.
The department is fighting perfluorinated chemical pollution from fire-fighting foam at 18 defence bases in Australia.
An investigation on Monday revealed that the department misused the foam for decades despite warning as early as 1987 that the product should not enter the environment.
"There's no doubt about it, that the way we used these products in the firefighting airfields back in the 80s and 90s was not as good as it should have been," Defence Deputy Secretary Steve Grzeskowiak told the Australian Broadcast Corporation (ABC), whose investigative report program Four Corners broke the story on Monday.
He admitted that the department made a mistake in hiding the contamination from people who live near a Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) base in Williamtown, New South Wales for three years.
"I think if we had our time again, should we have told the community back in 2012 ... we probably should," Grzeskowiak said.
The chemicals were elements of a Light Water foam manufactured by 3M.
In 2000, the company discontinued the foam and U.S. authorities warned their Australian counterparts that the product's ingredients "potentially pose a risk to human health."
Experts in the United States have found a correlation between perfluorinated chemical pollution and elevated cancer rates.
Despite the warning in 2000, the Department of Defence did not fully stop using the product until July 2012.
