Most people who develop a serious illness after drinking PFAS-contaminated water are not suing their local water district. They are suing the chemical companies that made the PFAS and the firefighting foam that carried it into the ground.
If you drew water from a private well or a community system near a military base, an airport, a fire training site, or an industrial facility, and were later diagnosed with kidney, testicular, thyroid, or liver cancer, thyroid disease, or ulcerative colitis, this is the litigation that concerns you. One question shapes where such a claim is handled: where did the contamination come from? That answer often determines whether a claim becomes part of the national firefighting foam litigation or proceeds as a separate manufacturing contamination case.
How PFAS Reaches a Household Water Supply
Understanding the exposure pathway matters, because it explains why people who never worked around these chemicals still ended up with them in their blood.
Firefighting foam was used for decades at airfields, fire training academies, refineries, and industrial sites. It was sprayed during emergencies, discharged during routine training, and released in equipment tests and accidental spills. Much of it soaked into bare ground. PFAS compounds can migrate downward through soil and into groundwater, where they may travel with the natural movement of the aquifer. Technical guidance compiled by state environmental regulators describes how these compounds partition between soil and water and migrate away from the original release area.
Two features of that process drive the litigation. The chemicals do not meaningfully break down, so a release from the 1970s can still be present today. And contamination can reach wells well beyond the property line of the site where the foam was used, which is why affected households are often surprised to learn they were exposed at all.
The scale is substantial. A U.S. Geological Survey model published in 2024 estimated that between 71 and 95 million people in the lower 48 states may rely on groundwater containing detectable PFAS. Two caveats belong with that number. It measures untreated groundwater rather than what comes out of a tap after treatment, and a detectable level is not automatically an unsafe one. What it conveys is how widely these compounds have spread through the water supply.
Who These Claims Are Against
These are product liability claims. The principal defendants are the companies that manufactured PFAS chemicals and the firefighting foam that contained them, although additional defendants may be involved depending on the circumstances. In the typical case, the claim is not against the water district that delivered the water or the fire department that used the foam. 3M, DuPont, Chemours, and Corteva are among the most prominent.
The core allegation is that these companies knew for decades that the compounds were persistent, accumulated in the human body, and carried health risks, and that they continued to sell the product without adequate warning to the people who would eventually drink the water. The companies deny liability and dispute general causation. They have also raised the government contractor defense, arguing that the foam was built to a military specification and that liability should follow the government rather than the manufacturer. The MDL court denied summary judgment on that defense in 2022, finding genuine factual disputes over whether the manufacturers told federal agencies what they knew about the risks. That ruling did not reject the defense. It left it to be resolved on the evidence, and it remains available at trial.
A water utility that finds PFAS in its wells is generally in the same position as its customers. That is why utilities brought claims of their own, and why those claims were resolved separately from the injury cases. Those utility settlements paid for testing and filtration infrastructure. They did not compensate any individual for an illness, and no comparable resolution exists yet on the injury side.
A smaller set of cases involves contamination traced to a particular plant’s own discharges rather than to foam. Those generally proceed on their own, in local courts or as class actions, rather than in the national litigation. The Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation applied that distinction in June 2025, declining to move a group of Wisconsin residents into the foam MDL where they alleged their private wells had been contaminated by a manufacturing facility and expressly disclaimed any foam claim. The line is fact-specific, and the Panel has transferred drinking-water cases where the groundwater itself was alleged to be foam-contaminated.
Where the Litigation Stands
The foam cases are consolidated as MDL 2873 in the U.S. District Court for the District of South Carolina. Multidistrict litigation gathers similar cases before one judge for shared pretrial work. It does not merge them into a single claim, and each plaintiff keeps an individual case with its own facts and its own proof.
Much of the past year has gone to managing the size of that docket. The court vacated a personal-injury bellwether trial in 2025 after learning that many cases had been filed without required documentation, then established a process for dismissing claims that fall short of its proof requirements. No new personal-injury trial date has been set publicly. When one is, it will be the clearest signal yet of how these claims may be valued, because bellwether verdicts are what tend to move settlement discussions. Our companion piece covers where the AFFF litigation stands in 2026 in more detail.
New York Communities Affected
New York has experienced both major categories of PFAS contamination, illustrating why identifying the source of contamination is so important in these cases.
- Newburgh, Orange County. PFOS from firefighting foam used at Stewart Air National Guard Base reached Washington Lake, the city’s drinking water source. The State designated the base a Superfund site in 2016 after identifying the foam as the source.
- Westhampton Beach, Suffolk County. The State declared the Air National Guard Base at Francis S. Gabreski Airport a State Superfund site in 2016, naming the U.S. Department of Defense as responsible. Suffolk County found PFAS in private wells near the base.
- Hoosick Falls, Rensselaer County. A different kind of case. PFOA from a fabric-coating plant contaminated the village supply and area private wells, and that litigation proceeded in the Northern District of New York rather than in the foam MDL.
Hoosick Falls is also a caution about headline numbers. The class litigation there recovered roughly $92 million, and a federal judge granted final approval to the last piece in April 2026, but those funds resolved property damage and paid for medical monitoring rather than compensating anyone for an illness. Figures of that kind say nothing about the value of an individual injury claim.
The Conditions at Issue
In the foam MDL, the conditions grouped for pretrial work are kidney cancer, testicular cancer, ulcerative colitis, thyroid disease, liver cancer, and thyroid cancer. Readers often notice that roughly the same illnesses appear across PFAS cases nationwide. Those conditions were not chosen at random. They largely reflect decades of epidemiological research into PFAS exposure.
An earlier drinking-water case against DuPont, involving communities near a plant in West Virginia, produced an unusual scientific undertaking. As part of a class settlement, an independent panel of epidemiologists studied roughly 69,000 residents for years. Between 2011 and 2012 it reported probable links between PFOA and six conditions: kidney cancer, testicular cancer, ulcerative colitis, thyroid disease, pregnancy-induced hypertension, and diagnosed high cholesterol. DuPont and Chemours later agreed to pay $670.7 million to resolve about 3,500 injury cases. Those findings governed that litigation specifically. They do not decide any other case, but they shaped how PFAS injury claims have been framed ever since.
Separately, a working group convened by the International Agency for Research on Cancer classified PFOA as carcinogenic to humans, its highest hazard category, and PFOS as possibly carcinogenic. That is a statement about whether a substance can cause cancer, not about how much risk a particular person faced. Causation in an individual case remains contested and has to be proved with that person’s own exposure and medical history.
Who May Have a Claim
Two things have to line up: a qualifying diagnosis, and exposure that preceded it. The litigation recognizes a defined set of conditions, so the diagnosis comes first. Those conditions are:
- Kidney cancer
- Testicular cancer
- Thyroid cancer
- Liver cancer
- Thyroid disease, including hypothyroidism
- Ulcerative colitis
A diagnosis outside that list generally will not support a claim in this litigation, however serious the illness. Among people diagnosed with one of these conditions, these exposure histories are the ones most likely to support a viable PFAS injury claim:
- Residents who drew drinking water from a private well near a contamination source.
- Residents served by a community water system where PFAS was later detected.
- Families who lived in an affected area for an extended period, including children raised there.
- Service members, civilian employees, and their families who lived on or near an installation where foam was used.
- People who have since moved away but were exposed during the years they lived in the area.
Because many of these illnesses develop years after exposure, the relevant events often occurred decades before a diagnosis. Documentation is usually the practical hurdle, particularly for anyone who has since moved. Useful records include residential history such as deeds, leases, and utility or school records; any water testing results for the property or the public system; blood testing, where it was offered; and medical records establishing the diagnosis and its date.
Private wells deserve a specific note. New York sets enforceable limits for PFOA and PFOS in public water systems, but those standards do not reach private wells. Households on well water frequently have no testing history at all. Where a nearby public system or a state investigation has documented contamination in the same aquifer, that record can help establish what a private well was drawing.
Filing is also more involved than in an ordinary injury case. Plaintiffs in the consolidated litigation complete detailed fact sheets covering residence history, exposure, and medical background, and the court has been dismissing claims that do not meet its documentation requirements. Assembling that record accurately at the outset matters.
The New York Connection
New York adopted drinking water standards for PFOA and PFOS in 2020 that are among the strictest in the country, and federal standards have since been set and are being revised. Those limits govern what water suppliers must deliver. They do not decide liability in an injury case, and a reading below a regulatory limit does not by itself defeat a claim.
The Law Offices of Rudolph F.X. Migliore, P.C. represents New York residents, including Long Island residents affected by PFAS, in national proceedings of this kind, working through a nationwide co-counsel network. Which litigation a particular claim belongs to, and which state’s law may apply to it, are questions evaluated at intake on the specific facts. Consolidated federal proceedings run under federal procedure and the presiding court’s orders.
What Comes Next
The near-term signals are procedural: how the court resolves the pending dismissals of undocumented claims, and when it sets a new personal-injury bellwether trial. Until a jury hears one of these cases, there is no market reference for what an individual claim is worth, which is why the utility settlements and the property-damage recoveries are such poor guides.
Plant-specific cases move on their own schedules, in their own courts. Both kinds of litigation are active and the details change quickly, so anyone following this should confirm the current status rather than rely on any single report, including this one.
Speak With a New York PFAS Water Contamination Lawyer
If you drank PFAS-contaminated water and were later diagnosed with kidney, testicular, thyroid, or liver cancer, thyroid disease, or ulcerative colitis, a claim may be available. The attorneys at the Law Offices of Rudolph F.X. Migliore, P.C. can evaluate your exposure history, review available records, and determine whether your claim may qualify for one of the current PFAS proceedings, all at no cost. We work with co-counsel networks active in this litigation. Please note that at this time the firm is able to accept PFAS cases only in limited circumstances. A case evaluation will tell you whether yours is among them.
Call our Commack office at 631-543-3663 for a free, confidential case evaluation, or use our online contact form. There is no fee unless we recover compensation for you.
This article is for general informational purposes and is not legal advice, and it reflects information available as of its publication date; laws, regulations, and case developments change over time. Each case depends on its specific facts, and any filing deadline that may apply should be determined by an attorney. The companies named in these cases deny wrongdoing, and no determination of liability has been made by any court. No outcome can be guaranteed in any litigation.