Being a firefighter is a dangerous business.
The health risks associated with the job are only beginning after a fire is put out. That was the message that Jim Burneka Jr. gave to the attendees at the Saskatchewan Association of Fire Chiefs conference in Moose Jaw Saturday.
Burneka is the founder of Firefighter Cancer Consultants and he offered some sobering numbers about the prevalence of cancer amongst firefighters.
“I want to tell you what our current reality is,” Burneka said. “Last year in Colorado Springs at the IAFF (International Association of Fire Fighters) Memorial 271 names were added to the wall, 211 of those were from cancer. Nineteen of those were from 9/11 cancers.
“The reality is that a lot of the time, we’re dying with our boots off.”
A University of Cincinnati firefighter cancer study found that firefighters are twice as likely to develop testicular cancer and have a more than 50 per cent greater rate of Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma and Multiple Myeloma than the rest of the population. The factors that contribute to this are numerous. Not only is it repetitive exposure to carcinogens, but it’s the breadth of toxins that firefighters are exposed to. To top it all off, a study found that the toxins are absorbed 400 per cent more for every five degrees your body temperature is raised.
In 2018, firefighter cancer was the second leading cause of occupational disease-related fatalities in Saskatchewan. Thirty per cent of workplace deaths in 2018 were from firefighter cancer.
The positive news is that Burneka travelled from his home in Dayton, Ohio to visit 15 fire halls in eight different fire departments in Saskatchewan in February to do a detailed audit as part of a pilot program done with the Saskatchewan Workers’ Compensation Board.
As a result of that program, Burneka has a good sense of what departments are doing well and where they can improve to reduce the risks.
“What I came in to do was to show this is where we stand and with at least a sampling of Saskatchewan show where we are right now and where we need to go,” Burneka said. “I called out the problems, but part of the solution is trying figure out a way to help these departments get the funding and get the resources they need and also the education to where they can ultimately try to prevent this.
“We’re going to get exposed at a fire regardless. We’re going to take stuff home with us. But anything we can do to reduce our risk will hopefully add up and we’ll be able to enjoy our career and then enjoy life after retirement.”
He wanted to share best practices and a list of “The 25” a self-analysis checklist of 25 ways fire departments can reduce the cancer risk for their staff. As a part of the project, Burneka created an acronym list of 12 highlights to keep in mind to reduce the risk which will be distributed to halls across the province on Monday.
“I’m hoping they realize just how significant of a problem this truly is,” Burneka said. “Then they also realize with that, they need to start doing something. They need to start enacting these policies and these best-practices in order to everything they can to reduce their risk.”
Burneka typically does his audits on an individual station basis and said that Saskatchewan’s halls are on par with what he sees in the U.S. and Canada.
“It was very comparable. The same issues that were here are the same issues that I see in the U.S.,” Burneka said. “I had to go to Sweden – all the way over there – to find somebody who was actually doing everything really the right way.”
While some of The 25 tips were very specific, many came down to minimizing risk by wearing a self-contained breathing apparatus (SCBA, which has a full oxygen tank) and their full personal protective equipment (PPE), especially a particulate-blocking hood, at all calls and – crucially – when doing an overhaul and cleaning up the scene. Burneka said he knows that it’s annoying, heavy and tiring to be in full gear at all scenes, but he tried to stress the importance of doing it any time there are still carcinogens in the air.
Burneka also noted that being hyper-vigilant when it came to cleaning your gear and cleaning yourself in the right way after a fire can go a long way to removing many of the carcinogens off of the skin, gear and equipment.
It was no shock that for many of the categories in the audit that the big city fire halls and the small city fire halls had higher scores because they had more resources than some of their smaller counterparts.
“A lot of the stuff is just procedural and also a lot of it is just changing the mindset and realizing just how significant the threat this occupational cancer is and knowing that we can do something about it,” Burneka said. “The rural, volunteer departments definitely needed the resources. They can be doing everything else right, but they don’t have the money for the diesel exhaust system, for a second set of fire gear, to have a gear extractor and properly clean their gear. Those departments that don’t have a lot of money need help to get that stuff.”
“They know it’s a priority, by they just don’t have the means to get it quite yet.”
Burneka offered the sobering that firefighters are generally healthier than the general population, but also have a 14 per cent higher risk of dying from cancer than the U.S. population as a whole.
As part of reducing their risk, Burneka recommends a healthy diet and exercise, limiting sun exposure and refraining from smoking.
The other thing that he stressed to a great deal is early detection. If the odds of a firefighter getting cancer are that much higher, catching it early and having an annual wellness exam – including firefighter-specific testing – can save lives even with a cancer diagnosis.
