The inside features of a coat, the firefighters’ standard turnout gear, has multiple layers designed to resist moisture and chemicals that they encounter when fighting fires. The problem is, that material in and of itself contains fluorine chemicals, polyfluoroalkyl or PFAS, known to cause cancer.
“So, when the bell rings, we just slide those on, go to our rigs, and go on calls,” Danbury, Conn., Fire Chief Richard Thode told the Danbury News-Times. “And we wear our gear all the time, every call that we go on, whether it was an EMS call, a fire call, a motor vehicle accident.”
The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health recently described cancer as the leading cause of death for firefighters nationally. A study by the University of Notre Dame, which was published in the Journal of Exposure Science and Environmental Epidemiology, examined turnout gear from firefighters and found it to be made up of more than 30 percent fluorine. “We know there are so many firefighters getting cancer — where is it coming from,” Graham Peaslee, a chemical physicist at Notre Dame, whose team examined the gear — told Emergency Management.
Peter Brown, president of the Uniformed Professional Firefighters Association, cited statistics from the International Association of Fire Fighters that cancer is the leading cause and accounts for about two-thirds of all deaths among active-duty firefighters.
“We’ve got dozens of firefighters that have had cancer across the state,” Brown told the News-Times. “Far too many that have lost their lives unfortunately. But way more that have had cancer, gone through treatment, are still in treatment or are in remission.”
Connecticut lawmakers recently signed a law that as of October 2023 established the diagnosis of cancer as a “refutable presumption” in the firefighting occupation, allowing firefighters so diagnosed to be eligible for workers’ compensation benefits.
As for a long-term preventative solution, gear made without PFAS is the hoped-for result of firefighters and others calling attention to the tragedies.
That would require gear made with a different agent that keeps it dry and doesn’t allow it to get waterlogged. Peaslee said there is at least one company hard at work on it.
