Where There’s Smoke...

January was Firefighter Cancer Awareness Month. Even though we are now past January,

we need to make cancer prevention a year round event. In 2018 the National Volunteer Fire Council

(NVFC) teamed up with the Volunteer & Combination Officers Section (VCOS) to produce a report

on best practices for preventing firefighter cancer. You see while we certainly need to take care of

our brothers and sisters who get cancer, we need to do everything possible to prevent it from

occurring to begin with. Firefighters, both career and volunteer, have over two times the risk of the

general population getting certain kids of cancer. Testicular cancer, for example, has 2.02 times the

risk. While not as high from a percentage standpoint firefighters stand a 1.14 times greater risk of

getting leukemia. Other cancers rank in between: cancer of the colon, prostate, brain, & skin,

mesothelioma, multiple myeloma, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and malignant melanoma. It is no

wonder that many of these cancers have made their way into an expansion of the Public Safety

Officer Benefit Program (PSOB) that President Trump just signed into law - providing benefits for

fire families who have lost a loved one in the business. This is scary stuff. I’ve had two friends, that

I know of, that have died from cancer. One from Kansas City, Kansas - Captain Steve Miller - died

of skin cancer. We don’t think of that being a killer and we don’t necessarily think of it being risky

for firefighters, but it is. Don’t think that career firefighters are the only ones getting cancer,

volunteers also have the same risk factors and results.

So why is it that we get cancer at higher rates? Well it is because of the things we are doing

that we shouldn’t be doing - like not wearing our turnout gear and not doing things we should be

doing - like keeping our gear clean. Is it really that hard to convince you to follow the 11 best

practices? Are we stuck in the time when what was burning was wood and paper - instead of the

plastics that we experience in every fire today? Or is it because we weren’t taught just how

dangerous these chemicals can be that result from the burning of plastics? Or are we just caught up

in believing that this can’t happen to us? This is a dangerous business that can kill you - why

wouldn’t you do everything you can to avoid cancer?

Here are my asks for you - download the lavender ribbon report & its update. Then seek out

organizations like the Firefighter Cancer Support Network and the National Firefighter Registry for

Cancer. Ask yourself - what am I doing personally and for my firefighters to prevent cancer? If the

answer to that last question is “nothing” then get with it. I am not a fan of scaring new firefighters

with this information, but I want them to be realistic. I want them to not make mistakes that I made

in my career. I want them to live and I want their families to have them around for a long time,

because where there’s smoke...