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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.

Firefighters need to have PPE options that more closely align with the tactical operations that they do beside just structural firefighting. No longer can structural PPE be the “one size fits all” option.

Firefighter recruitment. One of those topics that's like the weather: everyone is talking about it, but nobody is doing anything about it. What fire department out there--career, combination, all-volunteer--doesn't have a tough "row to how" when it comes to finding and retaining good people?

Look, I’ve made this connection between the HAZWOPER standard and interior structural firefighting with about an hour’s worth of research. How long do you think it’s going to take for an attorney—and their legal team—representing a firefighter who’s developed cancer on the job to develop a solid case that their client’s cancer was caused by the inappropriate PPE and unnecessary exposure to toxic chemicals, chemical compounds, and carcinogens?

We now know enough about the connection between firefighter exposures to the toxic chemicals, chemical compounds, and carcinogens present in today's smoke encountered during interior structural firefighting to know that it is not right to continue putting firefighters into that environment.

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.

By: Robert Avsec, Executive Fire Officer Why does it take so long for new equipment or work practices to become the norm in the fire service? Case in point, the first commercial SCBA appeared in fire stations in 1920, though it wouldn’t be until the late 1970s before SCBA use began to gain widespread acceptance in the fire service in ...

Said Wheldon, who has worked with firefighters in her private psychology practice, “In my own work, and in speaking with other psychologists who’ve treated firefighters, I’ve come to learn that that firefighters are different. They’re different from police officers, who I’ve also worked with, and they’re the general public. And I think they need a different kind of psychologist. They deserve a different kind of psychologist.”

Do any of you know a firefighter who’s completed an Ironman Triathlon in full PPE with an SCBA unit on their back? I do, and her name is Diana Woolf. Check out her story here and see why she does it.

Chief Avsec highlights the importance for scholarship and research in the fire service with this post that features a new research paper from Firefighter Lydia Wilcox on the topic of women entering the fire service in Ontario, Canada.