National IGE Report: March-April 2026

PFAS Conversation Continues; Key Trends to Take center Stage

In 2021, SAME’s Environmental COI began an initiative to study the rapidly shifting world of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS)—particularly addressing the challenges of condensing the rapidly growing body of knowledge into practical guidance for defense personnel.

After 13 webinars and nine fact sheets, which were validated by the Defense Department, the COI’s National IGE Project, “Avoiding PFAS Information Overload: Targeted Training for Operational Entities” has concluded its four-year effort, leaving behind a wealth of accessible resources.

Understanding the Issue. Lisa Kammer, Vice President and Technical Director with Weston Solutions, has been involved with PFAS over 10 years. She joined the Environmental COI in 2021 and later took over leadership of the IGE project. “We just had a true information overload of PFAS,” Kammer said, and this information overload extended to the military enterprise. The SAME project was stood up to distill the massive amounts of technical and regulatory content into concise, actionable content—for those who needed to know the most.

“A lot of the information out there can be confusing, hard to follow, and overly scientific,” Kammer said. “The goal was to ask, how can we take this really complex, all-encompassing situation and break it down to show why you should care, this is how it impacts you, and this is what you can do about it.”

The team behind the PFAS IGE Project represented a breadth of expertise. The goal was to build guidance that would support, not conflict, with existing directives. “We didn’t want to come across as being DOD guidance, because they have official guidance,” she said. “It was a coordinated effort to make sure that it only helped and built on that.”

Accessible and Actionable. The webinars were followed by a concise summary highlighting key takeaways for personnel and contractors. “We really wanted to provide digestible bits of information that were practical to the field work actually being done,” Kammer said. The collaborative nature helped ensure the webinars and fact sheets were both technically sound and genuinely usable in the operational environment. The training was tailored for a variety of audiences that needed to address PFAS.

The knowledge captured will continue to support technical needs as policies evolve, technologies advance, and PFAS‑related requirements become more defined. More importantly, the project highlights the value of SAME’s Communities of Interest as engines of technical collaboration—forums where like-minded practitioners can connect, share insights, and translate scientific complexity into mission‑focused understanding.