Health and Wellness

So, if firefighters are tactical athletes--And I agree, as do the manufacturers of turn out gear and footwear—why do most fire departments not treat them like athletes when they suffer last time injuries or illness?

By United Women Firefighters – On Wednesday, September 26, 2018, an all-women staffed FDNY engine company served the City of New York for the first time in the department’s 153 year history. Female firefighters, either born female or now self-identifying as female, from the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, France, Australia, and elsewhere are being sought to participate in a ...

Firefighters will very well find themselves in the same position in the future as a growing number of firefighters develop cancer from doing their job will find themselves being crushed financially paying for cancer-related treatment and cancer-related deaths prompted by firefighter cancer presumption laws. When that happens, we should not be surprised when efforts begin to reduce or even dissolve the social compromise between firefighters in those governments.

The primary goal of the foundation (a registered 501(c) nonprofit organization) is to support Warriors Heart—the first private, fully licensed, and dedicated residential treatment facility for the healing of our nation’s warriors--in meeting its mission. And that’s the only populations that they serve (Note I said “populations”—that includes firefighters and EMS personnel and law enforcement officers. Just want to make that clear!).

During these types of events, and particularly during interior structural firefighting, the SCBA unit can be exposed to a toxic “soup” of chemicals, chemical compounds, and known carcinogens while it protects the firefighter’s respiratory system from those same hazards. And while much is currently being discussed and written about how to protect firefighters from those hazards, there is much to be learned about how to keep SCBA units clean and decontaminated after each use and ready for the next emergency.

But perhaps the greatest threat to our psychological well-being is reluctance on the part of many in the emergency services field to accept that these hazards exist and that their negative impact on our lives, our families, and our organizations are real.  In many respects, to quote the adage, “We have met the enemy and it is us.”

Everybody is now starting to say, “Treat every structure fire like a hazmat incident” (Something I’ve been saying and writing about for about four or five years now). Well, do you ever see a hazmat team member wearing a Level A (fully encapsulated) protective suit unless they're working on an incident or training? No, you don't! And it's time every firefighter starts looking at their structural PPE the same way!

We've only seen the beginning of the firefighters developing cancer from their occupational exposures. The numbers for those cases are going to skyrocket in the next 10 years; and along with the number of cases will be an even more daunting rise in health care premiums (That many localities still pay for their firefighters) and workers compensation claims being paid by local and state governments.

So, how much do you know about FMLA (Family Medical Leave Act) as an employee? As a supervisor? If you’ve answered, “Not much” in either capacity, there’s a potential for real trouble “down the road.”

My hearing loss is for certain sounds in the high frequency range of speech; for me those sounds are predominantly th, s, f, and ch. Who knew that the sounds for different letters and letter combinations come out of our mouths at different frequencies? Did you?