Firefighters have higher risk of cancer: Study

Study confirms cancer cluster among firefighters in Victoria

Firefighters are exposed to flammable
chemicals, combustion, foams and more.

Firefighters who worked at a Country Fire Authority facility in Victoria’s Ballarat region have a higher incidence of skin, testicular and brain cancers, a comprehensive study has found.

The study, conducted by Monash University, examined cancer and death rates linked to the Fiskville site between 1971 and 1999. It found 69 cancers were among the 606 people who worked and trained there, resulting in 16 deaths.

After releasing the findings, the Victorian premier, Daniel Andrews, told reporters the research confirmed “beyond any reasonable doubt” that there was a statistically significant increase in cancers associated with firefighters who worked at the site.

“This is a very tragic report,” he said. “The evidence is becoming clearer and clearer each day that people have become sick because of this place. People have died because of this place.”

Researchers found a cancer cluster in the high-risk group, considered to be those who worked full-time on the site training firefighters, and who were exposed to flammable chemicals, combustion, foams and recycled firewater.

Of 95 high-risk workers traced, 25 had cancer and six had passed away from their cancer, the study found.

In December, Andrews announced a landmark parliamentary inquiry to examine pollution, contamination and unsafe activities at Fiskville training centre from 1970 to 1990. It is expected to conclude in June this year.

The commission would provide victims and their families with answers and support, and would consider “how, not whether” those affected and their families would be compensated. “This is sad, tragic, and we’re going to put this right,” Andrews said.

But the risk was a historical one, he said. Many of the chemicals staff came into contact with were no longer used during training.

“For those who work here now, there are very low risks associated with this site today because remediation work has been done,” Andrews said. “There’s ongoing oversight and monitoring of those risks and that vigilance is critically important.”

A spokeswoman for the Country Fire Authority (CFA) said the organisation’s chief executive, Mick Bourke, would not be speaking to the media. “He will be communicating with CFA members at some point today through a blog post,” she said.

An official with the United Firefighters Union Victorian branch, Mick Tisbury, said it was “abhorrent” Bourke had refused to comment. The union was calling for his immediate resignation, he said.

“He and the CFA have been denying there was anything wrong with the place for years, they have put our health and safety at risk.

“We’re not expendable. We have families. We are people.”

Tisbury worked at the Fiskville site for 11 years.

“Every day, we have to live with this at the back of our minds,” he said.

In June last year, there was anger among some firefighters and their families when Cancer Council Victoria released a preliminary report that stated firefighters who worked at Fiskville did not have an increased incidence of cancer.

Cancer Council CEO Todd Harper said the report was commissioned only to look at data readily available by cross-referencing the records of 599 Victorian firefighters with data from the Victorian cancer registry.

“At the time we explained the limitations of this study, including imprecision of the relative risk estimates. So, while the earlier report did not find evidence of a cluster, nor did it rule out the existence of one. The Monash University study takes into account those firefighters who had moved interstate - information which was not available earlier.”

He said the council would like to see coordinated action at a national and state level in order to reduce the burden of harm from occupational cancers.

The co-investigator of the latest study, Professor Malcolm Sim, said the research was now more comprehensive, which is why the findings differed.

“The Cancer Council report only looked at firefighters in Victoria and was only supposed to be a preliminary examination, but what we did is trace firefighters who had moved interstate and we did pick up some cancer in those people,” said Sims, who is director of the Monash centre for occupational and environmental health.

“We also placed people into different categories of exposure based on existing guidelines for doing so. This is quite a major piece of work that used Australian Institute of Health data and took over one year to complete.”

The cancer results “stood right out”, Sims said. “Their death rates from other causes of disease, like heart and respiratory disease, were quite low, because these are healthy, fit people.

“That’s why their cancer results stood right out. There was a big gap between cancer and other diseases you don’t usually see in people like this, with healthy lifestyles.”

Researchers would look in more detail at the specific compounds associated with the cancers among the group, he said.

“The problem is the firefighters studied came into contact with a cocktail of exposures and chemicals, and we don’t know which ones may be contributing to their cancers,” Sims said.

Source: The Guardian

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Study to assess breast cancer risk for female firefighters

Firefighters are exposed to flame retardants,
diesel exhaust and other toxic chemicals,
which may affect their health.

When firefighters rush out the firehouse doors, sirens screeching on the way to fight fires, they put their lives on the line in more ways than one.

In responding to roughly 28,000 fire calls a year, members of the San Francisco Fire Department are routinely exposed to flame retardants, diesel exhaust and other toxic chemicals that seep out of raging infernos and work their way into the air.

A growing body of evidence strongly suggests that exposure increases firefighters’ risk of developing cancer. But until now, studies have focused on men.

That’s about to change. Members of the San Francisco Fire Department are working with researchers at UC Berkeley, UCSF and the Silent Spring Institute to find out whether exposure to toxic chemicals increases the risks of breast cancer in female firefighters.

The project, known as the Women Firefighters Biomonitoring Collaborative Study, has been under way for about a year.

“Since breast cancer is a cancer that more commonly affects women, and because of anecdotal evidence that the firefighters have been experiencing (many cases of breast cancer), we wanted to see if there was a link,” said Jessica Trowbridge, a UC Berkeley researcher who is coordinating the study.

Trowbridge and her colleagues are gathering blood and urine samples from about 160 women — 80 San Francisco firefighters and 80 city office workers who will serve as the control group — to use in measuring chemical, hormone and melatonin levels.

They will also measure the lengths of the women’s telomeres, caps on the ends of chromosomes that are associated with aging and cancer, also thought to be related to chemical exposure and working demanding night shifts.

Firefighters in general have higher rates of cancer, especially respiratory, digestive and urinary system varieties, a recent National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health study found.

That study included women, but there weren't enough of them to draw robust conclusions about their cancer risks, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

With about 225 female firefighters, San Francisco is better equipped than most cities for a study like this: Women make up about 13 percent of its firefighting population, said Heather Buren, a lieutenant and paramedic with the fire department who is working on the study.

In 2011, less than 5 percent of firefighters nationwide were women, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Researchers will also test for other chemicals that could contribute to higher rates of cancer in both groups of women, who are probably exposed to personal care and household products as well.

There has been a cultural shift with respect to chemical exposure. For one, firefighters now have better breathing masks, which they’re encouraged to wear for longer periods of time in toxic environments.

There are also rules prohibiting members of the department from storing their turnouts — the suits they wear to fight fires — in firehouse rooms where they eat and sleep.

The San Francisco Firefighters Cancer Prevention Foundation, which organizes screenings and promotes cancer prevention in the department, is partially responsible for those changes. It was formed in 2006 by Tony Stefani, a retired firefighter who himself fought cancer.

Researchers have nearly finished enrolling participants for the breast cancer study. They hope to have results published in two years. The women who participate in the study will be able to see their individual results when they are complete.

Source: San Francisco Gate. This article has been edited for length.

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Wildfires lead to costly health problems

Wildfire air pollution worsens respiratory and cardiac
health issues for people far away, scientists warn.

There are plenty of immediate concerns in a fire: protecting homes and businesses, saving lives, limiting the number of acres consumed and so on.

But increasingly, researchers and policymakers are finding that the lingering health and safety impacts of wildfires may be far more worrisome – and more widespread.

Smoke, after all, can travel any way the wind takes it, exacerbating an array of health problems in cities hundreds of miles from the original fire. In 2002, for example, a fire in Canada caused a 30-fold increase in fine particulate matter in the air in Baltimore, 1,000 miles away.

According to Kim Knowlton, a senior scientist with the health and environment program at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), that level of air pollution can contribute to a variety of respiratory and cardiac issues and has even been correlated with premature death and low birth weights.

In a 2011 study, conducted in partnership with researchers at the University of California at Berkeley and the University of California at San Francisco, Knowlton found that more than 760,000 encounters with the health system between 2000 and 2009 could be attributed to exposure to wildfire smoke.

These health problems carried a steep price tag: $740,000 in direct healthcare costs and more than $14bn in overall health costs once the value of lives lost prematurely was factored in.

The 2003 wildfire season in southern California alone resulted in 69 premature deaths, 778 hospitalizations, 1,431 emergency room visits, and 47,605 outpatient visits, mostly for respiratory and cardiovascular health problems aggravated by smoke exposure.

A brewing health crisis

Scientists fear that, as climate change intensifies, the conditions that make wildfires likely – namely heat, drought, and shifting weather patterns – are becoming increasingly common, laying the foundation for more wildfires and a major public health crisis.

In fact, there is evidence to suggest that we may already be in the midst of one: a 2011 brief from the NRDC found that two-thirds of US citizens live in counties affected by smoke conditions.

In its most recent report, the National Climate Assessment addressed the potential costs and risks of wildfire-related health concerns, noting that smoke from a fire could contribute to health impacts in regions far from the original disaster.

Moreover, the report argued, particulate matter from wildfire-related smoke could affect atmospheric properties and thus weather patterns.

The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, NIEHS, has also addressed this side of the wildfire issue.

For the past five years, it has taken a particular interest in research that examines climate change-related health impacts on vulnerable populations, and in 2010 launched dedicated funding for this research. The first of those grants began in 2011, including a project at Yale that aims to pinpoint which populations are most vulnerable to the health impacts of forest fires under a changing climate.

Still more research attempts to quantify the financial impact of wildfires. The 2008 fire season led to almost $2.2m in hospital costs in the Reno-Sparks area of Nevada, while the 78,000 wildfires in California between 1999 and 2013 burned approximately 3.8m acres and incurred more than $4bn in suppression costs, a recent Union of Concerned Scientists study reports.

And these impacts are likely to increase. In a Harvard University study on the effects of wildfires on US air quality, researcher Xu Yue estimates that by the middle of this century wildfires will have increased the amount of fine particulate matter in the air from 46% to 70%, and the amount of black carbon from 20% to 27%, relative to today’s numbers.

Not only are respiratory and cardiac issues expected to rise, but also, in a seemingly endless and vicious loop, the particulate matter and other chemicals contained in wildfire-smoke will further exacerbate climate change.

A 2010 study from the National Center for Atmospheric Research and the University of Colorado at Boulder estimates that wildfires in the contiguous US and Alaska release about 290m metric tons of CO2 a year, which is the equivalent of 4%-6% of the nation’s CO2 emissions from burning fossil fuels.

Learning to live with fire

The Clean Air Act has gone a long way toward reducing the amount of particulate matter and other pollutants emitted into the air by companies.

However, the act doesn’t cover air pollution caused by wildfires, and the combination of climate change and continued development in fire-prone areas could negate much of the improvement that it has brought about.

In a recent research brief, the Nasa Air Quality Applied Sciences Team alluded to this problem. It began by pointing out that US air quality has vastly improved in recent years: “Eight-hour averages of surface ozone (O3) have declined by nearly 20% since 1990, while 24-hour averages of fine particulate matter (PM2.5) have dropped by 25%.”

The report then noted, however, that these improvements are vulnerable to atmospheric disturbances: “Unusual weather can interrupt that trend, as was seen in the hot dry summer of 2012, when Chicago and St Louis experienced double the average number of O3 episodes from the previous four years.”

Given the difficulty of regulating fire-related air pollution, state and local agencies have focused instead on better communicating health risks to the public, creating early-warning systems, and integrating wildfire risks into climate adaptation plans.

That means looking at everything from land-use management and development permits to forest management in an effort to minimize the impacts of wildfires in the future.

Even shifting the time of year that fire departments conduct controlled burns could have an impact; recent research has shown that extreme heat exacerbates the health impacts of fires, and thus recommends that controlled burns happen in the spring.

Source: The Guardian

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Flame retardant substitutes analyzed by EPA

Agency looks into alternatives for flame
retardants - but are they safer?

The Environmental Protection Agency has released two alternatives assessments to help companies that want to choose chemicals to substitute for bisphenol A in thermal paper and decabromodiphenyl ether (decaBDE) as a fire retardant for plastic.

The goal of both analyses is to provide information about potential health and environmental hazards the chemicals and possible substitutes pose, the agency said.

The assessments should help companies that are looking for alternatives make choices and reduce their risk of having to repeat the process because an initially selected alternative doesn't work, the EPA said.

The documents also may help states or other regulators examining information a company has submitted in its own alternatives analysis. Some states, such as California, are requiring these types of analyses.

The EPA's Design for the Environment program assembled diverse parties who brought different information, expertise and perspectives to each analysis.

DecaBDE

For decaBDE, these participants included chemical, aerospace, automotive, electronics and textile manufacturers; the International Association of Fire Chiefs; environmental health organizations; recycling companies; and state and local government officials.

The decaBDE analysis provided information for 29 chemicals and chemical mixtures.

“Chemicals were selected for evaluation based on their potential as substitutes for decaBDE, not because they are expected to be safer than decaBDE,” the EPA said.

The 901-page analysis provided detailed information that showed trade-offs.

For example, decaBDE scored low for genotoxicity, moderate for carcinogenicity, high for developmental toxicity and very high for persistence.

Companies making flame-retardant products want chemicals that don't degrade so that the protection continues throughout a product's lifetime, the EPA said. Persistence in the environment, however, can pose a concern.

Some of the alternatives were readily biodegradable but toxic to the aquatic environment, the EPA said.

Bisphenol A

A minor use of bisphenol A is to help make paper receipts such as grocery receipts without carbon paper. The analysis said, however, that this particular use could result in higher exposure than some other BPA applications would.

The partnership that examined alternatives to bisphenol A in thermal paper included paper manufacturers, companies making equipment for thermal paper, chemical manufacturers, retailers, trade associations, scientific experts, environmental health organizations and international governmental organizations.

The 519-page analysis of bisphenol A examined 19 possible alternatives.

“No clearly safer alternatives to BPA were identified in this report—most alternatives have moderate or high hazard designations for human health or aquatic toxicity endpoints,” the analysis said.

The partnership found that three of the 20 chemicals (BPA and the 19 alternatives) scored low or very low in their potential to persist in the environment, and 11 had high or very high persistence values.

Two had a high potential to bioaccumulate.

U.S. manufacturers of decaBDE are phasing that chemical out of production under a voluntary agreement the EPA announced in 2009.

By contrast, bisphenol A remains a high production volume chemical, produced at an estimated volume of 2.4 billion pounds in 2007, the EPA's analysis said. It had an estimated value of almost $2 billion in 2010, the agency said.

However, in 2010 the EPA issued an action plan for bisphenol A. That plan said bisphenol A is a reproductive, developmental and systemic toxicant in animal studies and is weakly estrogenic.

The decaBDE and bisphenol A analyses are available here.

Source: Bloomberg News

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More wildfires may mean poorer air quality

An increase in wildfires can affect human
health and respiratory conditions.

As the American West, parched by prolonged drought, braces for a season of potentially record-breaking wildfires, new research suggests these events not only pose an immediate threat to people's safety and their homes, but also could take a toll on human health, agriculture and ecosystems.

The study, appearing in ACS' journal Environmental Science & Technology, could help societies map out a plan to mitigate these effects in wildfire-prone regions.

Matthew D. Hurteau and colleagues point out that wildfires naturally occur in many areas around the globe.
In response, human societies have harnessed the power of fire to better control wild blazes and minimize damage. But climate change also can impact the number and severity of wildfires.

Understanding how these factors influence each other is crucial so that people can better prepare for the future and perhaps lessen the effects of the blazes.

Previous studies have estimated the effect of climate change and population growth on wildfire patterns and the risk of damage to buildings and homes in California. Hurteau's team wanted to expand on those findings and investigate six possible future climate scenarios.

Using several different models, they estimated that by 2100, emissions from wildfires in California will grow by 19 to 101 percent. They found that climate, not population growth or development, will likely be the driving force behind these increases.

However, a rise in wildfires still will mean significant societal challenges, such as higher pollution levels, which can affect human health and aggravate respiratory conditions. Poor air quality also can lower crop yield, and forest health could suffer.

Source: American Chemical Society via AAAS

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A changing climate blamed for bigger wildfires

Changing climate leads to bigger, smokier wildfires

Bigger wildfires may become a bigger
threat to public health, experts warn.
Photo by Danilo Rizzuto/FreeDigitalPhotos.net

This year more than 4,000 wildfires burned almost a million acres across the Northwest. That falls below the 10-year average, as only one year in the last decade has had fewer fires than this year.

Scientists are quick to point out that no single fire season can be attributed to changes in the global climate, but as summers in the western half of the United States become drier and warmer, the chances of bigger, longer smokier fire seasons is expected to increase.

A recent Harvard University study has found that by 2050 the wildfire season for the western United States will be about three weeks longer and be up to twice as smoky because of changes connected to global warming. 

In the Pacific Northwest, the area burned during the month of August could increase by 65 percent.

Wildfires come with smoke and health effects

With larger, longer-lasting wildfires, air quality is projected to suffer. Based on the amount of on-the-ground biomass available to be burned, researchers expect to see wildfire smoke increase in the Northwest between 40-100 percent in the coming decades.

Wildfire smoke is made up of tiny organic and black carbon particles that are a fraction of the diameter of a human hair. These microscopic particles can travel deep into the lungs and even cross over into the bloodstream. 

Inhaling those fine particles isn’t good for anyone, not even healthy people. Smoke can irritate the eyes and airways, leading to coughing, headaches, scratchy throats and runny noses. 

And for some people, wildfire smoke can be life threatening. It can trigger asthma attacks, heart attacks and even strokes.

Wildfire smoke is already one of the biggest drivers of degrading air quality throughout the Northwest. Over the past few months, wildfires have created hazardous and smoky conditions, and clouds of smoke as big as thunderheads billowed over communities in Southern Oregon and Central Idaho.

Looking back on U.S. fires

Since the 1980s, the overall number of wildfires and the amount of acres burned in the United States has increased steadily. As the climate has warmed, snow melts earlier and dry periods have lengthened both of which favor fire conditions.

Other factors contribute to increasing the size and severity of wildfires, including a history of fire suppression over the last century. Fire suppression can lead to an abundance of biomass on the ground in forested areas. That biomass serves as kindling that turns what might have been a small manageable fire into an unstoppable megafire.

But even after you account for fire suppression, climate change is still a factor. Places like Yellowstone National Park, which have experienced larger wildfires in recent decades, never had active fire suppression.

Extreme fire behavior has become more common.

Editor's note: This story has been edited for length.

Source: Oregon Public Broadcasting

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Study to examine firefighter exposure to chemicals

Firefighters are exposed to airborne chemicals and particles,
which can linger on their suits and equipment.
Courtesy of nokhoog_buchachon/FreeDigitalPhotos.net

A dirty turnout suit after a fire used to be a point of pride for firefighters.

The times have changed, and research now shows firefighters are at a greater risk of developing cancer because of exposure to toxic chemicals while fighting fires.

A recently published study of firefighters in California from Dr. Susan Shaw, an environmental scientist based in Blue Hill, found higher levels of chemicals from commercial flame retardants and other household materials than expected, increasing firefighters’ risk of developing cancer later in life.

Showing the actual health outcomes of the chemical exposure, however, is the goal of a new 15-year study Shaw presented Thursday morning to Ober, other municipal officials and firefighters and fire chiefs from across the state at the annual meeting of the Maine Fire Chiefs’ Association at the Augusta Civic Center.

The meeting was part of the annual Maine Municipal Association Convention held Wednesday and Thursday.

Shaw, founder and president of the Blue Hill-based Marine Environmental Research Institute, said the study will follow 50 Maine firefighters over a 15-year period, analyzing their blood after fires to determine the levels of chemicals and cancer indicators.

The California study found two to three times higher levels of chemicals from flame retardants — polybrominated diphenyl ethers, or PBDEs — than most of the population.

The high levels of toxic chemicals place firefighters at a higher risk, but the longer-term study will try to identify the chemicals that factor in the development of cancer. Shaw said the study is the first of its kind.

“Exposure has not been adequately assessed in firefighters, and the relationship between firefighter and cancer risk is not well understood,” she said, “so the research we’re going to do here in Maine will be a model for future studies.”

Toxic chemicals found in most homes

She said some chemicals have been phased out of production, and several states, including Maine, have banned some types of flame retardants. Yet the chemicals still are commonly found in homes in plastics, foam, furniture, carpets, mattresses, TVs and computers.

Shaw said the flame retardants have been shown to save only a few seconds of ignition time; but when burned, they produce twice as much smoke, 13 times as much toxic carbon monoxide and thousands times more soot.

The Maine study is in the planning phase, Shaw said, but it’s set to begin next year. The firefighters haven’t been chosen yet, and the study probably will select them from larger departments, she said.

Firefighters participating in the study will learn of their blood results but will have the option of whether they want them shared, Shaw said. As in the California study, the firefighters’ names will remain confidential.

Shaw told the audience that in order to reduce the risk of exposure, fire departments should decontaminate gear after each fire; enforce the wearing of air-packs, even after the fire has been put out; not allow firefighters to take dirty gear home; regularly clean the interior of trucks; and have spare turnout suits to use when the others are being cleaned.

Augusta Fire Department Chief Roger Audette, who attended the presentation, said his department took steps in the last two years to reduce the risk for its firefighters by purchasing gas meters and ensuring the air is safe before allowing firefighters to take off their air-packs.

The department also has washing machines on site for the firefighters’ gear. Audette said now it’s common for newly built fire stations to have separate rooms to store suits and equipment between calls, a contrast to the prior practice, and current practice in other fire departments, of air-drying turnout suits in the station.
“It’s a big change,” he said.

Source: Kennebec Journal

Remove airborne chemicals and particles in fire departments

The chemicals and particles released during a fire can linger long after the flames have been extinguished. Firefighters may be exposed to airborne chemicals, particles and fumes that can affect their health and well-being.

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