Intended Responses

John Linstrom's article "Unintended Consequences" in the June issue produced a number of reader responses.

I would like to thank Chief Linstrom for his thought-provoking article. I know it had to be difficult to reveal such intimate details of his ordeal; however, there are those of us who sometimes need to hear this level of detail to get our attention.

For my agency, I think it gives a compelling argument for more stringent respiratory-protection standards, especially for our most routine exposures — the typical residential structure fire. Having started in the fire service in the generation that did not use SCBA, I was an early supporter of the use of breathing apparatus when they became available because they did make the job easier and safer.

However, I also did not see the point in using them after the fire was put out and after the majority of smoke had been ventilated. Even a quarter of a century later, with mountains of data on the hazards of off-gassing toxins, the current practice of most agencies that I'm familiar with is to doff the SCBA as soon as the fire is extinguished.

I believe Chief Linstrom's ordeal is a sobering wake-up call for a change in the culture of the fire service to use comprehensive air monitoring before allowing our personnel to remove any of their PPE. Isn't it a shame we do a better job of protecting our feet than we do our lungs?

— Deputy Chief Micheal Despain
Fresno (Calif.) Fire Department

"Unintended Consequences" was an excellent testimonial to the efforts of the New York Rescue Worker's Detoxification Project. I first heard of the project about eight months ago. A big thank you to John Linstrom and FIRE CHIEF magazine for bringing this valuable tool to the attention of all those who are still suffering the long-term effects of toxic-dust exposure.

— Chief Thomas R. Wood, CFO
Boca Raton (Fla.) Fire Rescue Services

TriData Responds

We appreciated your editorial ("Topic of Cancer") in the May 2009 issue on our study "Assessing State Firefighter Cancer Presumption Laws and Current Firefighter Cancer Research." Cancer is a threat to firefighters and us all and attention to the threat is important.

We would, however, like to clear up some misunderstandings concerning the study.

Some have said the report is "wrong" because it says that firefighting is not associated with cancer. The report did not say that and, in fact, did not make any conclusion about that. The purpose of the report was to review the literature and briefly summarize the many recent studies on the subject, and the extent to which they offer evidence in support of current cancer presumptive laws.

The report found that the research since the mid 1990s is not consistent on cancers associated with firefighting. Some studies found some cancers related and others not. Others waffle on the degree of correlation. Because of this inconsistency, we said that the research did not definitively support nor refute firefighting as a cause of certain cancers for firefighters. There also has been no research on some types of cancers regarding firefighting. While this might not be very satisfying, it is where things stand today. There is a lack of adequate data to be definitive — the sort of data that might come from a national cancer registry for firefighters.

Our study did not include research prior to the mid 1990s because the fire service — encouraged by the IAFF, IAFC, and NVFC — has taken many measures over the past few decades to reduce exposure to carcinogens that old-time firefighters had experienced. That the new research results may not coincide with earlier work could be an indication that the years of emphasis on use of SCBA, fire station exhaust systems, reduction of smoking and other measures taken by fire departments have had a positive effect on the health of the firefighter.

It would be tragic if despite the many measures taken that cancer rates were up — and they may be, but we don't really have the right data to say. Many things that burn today and many substances involved in modern hazmat incidents might have increased the risk to firefighters — we just don't know the overall impact statistically for sure.

Your EMS Viewpoints column ("Cancer is Fire Service's Horse on the Table") in the May issue suggested that a firefighter cancer study by Michael Bates at the University of California-Berkeley should be mandatory reading. That 2007 (not 1988) study considered 3,659 male cancers registered in California. The opening of this study states, "There is no consensus whether firefighters are at increased cancer risk for particular cancers." The study also notes "… the results of the firefighter studies carried out in the 1970s and 1980s may no longer be relevant to the more recent generation of firefighters." This reasoning is why our report focused on research in the last 15 years.

We encourage interested parties to read our report rather than what was written about it. In our opinion, most press releases and other coverage have not accurately described the report's findings.

— Philip Schaenman, President
TriData Division, System Planning

Editor's note: For an in-depth look at the NLC report, see "Clearing the Air".