Tag Archives: firefighter cancer risks

Battalion Chief (Ret.) Robert Avsec answers a reader's question about how to reduce exposure to cancer risk during live fire training.

I was fortunate in my career to attend many good—and some not so good—leadership and management courses, classes, and seminars. One common thread always seemed to be that one of the key functions of a leader/manager/supervisor (take your pick) is to motivate their employees or members. But can we really motivate another individual? Learn how to create an "atmosphere" that supports motivation in your firefighters.

So, when it comes to your fire departments, cancer risk reduction efforts, do you have a system? Or is your current state that of several “moving parts” that may or may not be congruent with one another?

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.