Firefighters & Cancer: The Fight No One Trains For

In this deeply personal episode we're opening up about a topic that hits close to home: cancer. Firefighters face many dangers on the job, but few are as hidden or as deadly as the increased risk of cancer. Jimmy opens up about startling statistics from the firefighting world, where cancer is responsible for nearly 70% of career firefighter deaths in recent years. He shares his own experiences, reflecting on how this disease has impacted his family—losing his father to cancer and watching his mother survive multiple diagnoses.

Jimmy also sheds light on the invisible dangers firefighters face daily, from exposure to toxic chemicals to gaps in protective gear, particularly for female firefighters. But this episode isn't just about facts; it's about strength, resilience, and the power of support. Jimmy gives a heartfelt shoutout to those battling cancer, reminding us all of the importance of building a team, asking for help, and never fighting alone.

Whether you've been touched by cancer or want to learn more about the risks firefighters face, this episode is a powerful reminder that we’re all in this together. Stay safe, stay strong, and know that you're not alone in the fight.

Life Safety Associates specializes in emergency response training for corporate ERT Teams. We help businesses create competent and confident first responders who are ready to handle unexpected emergencies. For more information you find us @lifesafetyassoc or email@lifesafety.com.

Chapters

• 0:00 Firefighter Cancer Risks and Support
• 12:35 Podcast Support for Cancer Fighters

Transcript

Jimmy: 0:23

Hey, what's happening? It's your boy, jimmy, with Megan and the Life and Safety Podcast, and this one's gonna be a A doozy. It's a doozy, it'll be a doozy. Usually we try to do our podcasts right around the same time, as you know, like the same month, right? So CPR month. We try to do CPR stuff, right. Stop the bleed stuff. We do that.

Jimmy: 0:53

Um, this one's just kind of a personal one. Um, this one's just kind of. We're talking about cancer. You know it's uh, I think cancer has affects just about everybody. Um, you know, one way or another, it's affected most households. I'm not going to say everybody's household, but I'm going to say a lot of households. So first I'm going to talk about it as a firefighter and as a responder and then I'll probably throw some stuff in there for, um, you know, some personal stuff, right?

Jimmy: 1:32

So, with that being said, I am on the actual firefightercancersupportorg website and cancer is the most dangerous step to firefighter health and safety. Today I'm quoting that Cancer caused 66% of the career firefighter line of duty deaths from 2002 to 2019. And that's from the International Association of Firefighters. Heart disease caused 18% of career line of duty deaths in the same period. So heart attacks, things like that. Cancer caused 70% of the line of death line of duty deaths for career firefighters in 2016. 70% of the firefighters that died.

Jimmy: 2:29

Firefighters have a 9% higher risk of being diagnosed with cancer and a 14% higher risk of dying from cancer than the general US population, according to CDC and the National Institute for Occupational Health and Safety, niosh. That's pretty crazy. It's wild. It's wild. It's wild. Do you know why? Yeah, I'll get into why here in a second, jumping the gun as always. No, you're good, you're awesome, that's awesome. So, um, here's something really interesting.

Jimmy: 3:04

Um, so, an overview of you know, some specific risks for firefighters. Notice specific cancers. There's 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 of them. I'll read just a couple. So testicular cancer 2.02 times the risk. So 100.02 times the risk. So 100%. So twice the risk of normal. If you fight fire, you get testicular cancer, mesothelioma, right, so two times greater risk. Multiple myeloma 1.53 times greater risk, and then non-Hodgkin's lymphoma 1.51 times greater risk, and then skin cancer is 1.39 times greater risk. I mean, that's pretty scary stuff there.

Jimmy: 4:14

Um, for me, you know, having the stuff in my life and my family, um, you know, it's kind of slapped me in the face here this morning when I was looking this up. Um, but yeah, it's pretty wild. It's pretty wild. Um, I've lost my dad to cancer. I don't know if a lot of people don't know that I lost my dad to kidney cancer. Um, it's pretty interesting because he worked with chemicals here in the silicon valley. He was a you know and I remember him coming home as a kid with covered in chemical and him telling us no, you can't hug me yet, I gotta go get dressed first. So earlier you asked why. So I'm scrolling to a little fact sheet here I have on some same website.

Jimmy: 5:19

So just exposure starts to carcinogens. So things that cause cancer is just greater, right, the fire arrest things like that. And then carrying that stuff on our PPE on our turnouts. So we're not usually watching our turnouts immediately right after on our turnouts. So we're not usually washing our turnouts immediately right after. It could be off-gassing, it could be stuck on there. It's just on you. Just certain things are on you. So that's one of the reasons why. So obviously, if we inhale it, it gets on our skin. We don't wash our hands. So, like our gloves, for instance, they're not vapor-proof, right, they're heat-proof, they're protected from heat, so your hands still can absorb things that are through the gloves and if you don't wash your hands really good or decontaminate your hands, let's say on the fire service or on the fire line, then you eat or you touch your nose or things like that. You pick your teeth whatever. You're ingesting those things, yeah. So you have a higher likelihood of doing that. So definitely you know the guys out there at the top got to be cleaning those things down.

Jimmy: 6:38

There's a list here of lots of stuff that it is. That's in there. I'm not going to get into that too much. So the biggest thing is this was introduced by the International Association of Firefighters. So PFAS, p-f-a-s or PER, p-e-r those are some acronyms and those mean polyfluoroalkali substances.

Jimmy: 7:12

It's a large family of manufactured chemicals that have been used in industry and consumer products worldwide since the 1950s. They do not occur naturally. Pfa's are highly persistent and will stay in the body for a long time and they do not break down easily. So a lot of the stuff is in our walls, in our wood, wood, things like that. Things are just being built and when firefighters are there, um, on a fire, obviously these things happen, you know. So you get the stuff on them. So what happens is our turnouts are not designed for that.

Jimmy: 7:55

Okay and sorry, turnouts are the outer clothes, the outer clothes, the jackets, the you know the firefighter uniform guys wear when they go into the fire, right, they call them turnouts or bunker gear. So a lot of that stuff's in there and I'm sorry, team, I'm kind of looking at this little uh diagram of on there. So, like your skin, right, the pfas get this hit, your hit the clothing and again there's no major vapor. Like there's a little bit of vapor protection there, but not a lot, and your turnout, so that gets on there. So that goes to who's most of the responders? You see firefighters out there. What's 90% of the firefighters out there? Are they male or female? Oh, male, they're male. So what about our female firefighters? They're actually a little bit of a higher risk. It's inconclusive, it doesn't say exactly how much higher risk it is, but it's a higher risk because they don't have firefighter protection.

Jimmy: 9:07

The turnouts, the bunker gear, doesn't fit them as well, right, so it's too large. They usually usually gaps in their neck and the wrist areas, right, just smaller, smaller humans. The gloves are too large. Yeah, and to you why? At the fingers making work and carrying equipment really hard to do so. And then their SCBAs, their self-contained breathing apparatuses, are too large, they can't get a good seal. So that's positive pressure, so that's putting a little air curtain out there, but it's definitely going to be an issue. So, a little more experience, a little bit more issues with that, so to speak.

Jimmy: 9:52

Now, how do we firefighters, how do you protect yourselves, clean yourselves off before you leave the fire scene? They're making wipes out there for them, just using soap and water, just using the hose. Just, you know, take that stuff off, put it in the back on the hose bay and then, you know, drive back in your station gear. And then, you know, drive back in your station gear. Is that super practical? Not so much, not so much, but it's out there and you know things to deal with.

Jimmy: 10:29

Now there's a couple things you can do. Right, get a good care provider. If, if you do have cancer, you know somebody you gotta. You gotta build a team, gotta build a team. Um, you know, and it's not always people that are your family, it could be somebody else that is, you know, willing to step up and help you out. Um, ask for help, right, you can't always battle this on your own. There's lots of services out there, especially like in the firefighter response world. We're alpha guys and gals. We don't want help. We're there to help other people, so we don't always take care of ourselves, right. So that's one I will tell you. You know it's good assistance, um, firefighters, this firefighter, firefighter, cancer supportorg works really good. Um.

Jimmy: 11:27

So one other thing, you know I bring this up like I said earlier, my lost my father, um, my mom's uh survived cancer a couple of times. She's actually, um, you know, survived breast cancer and some others, you know, thyroid cancer and some other things like that, and she's still with us, which we're grateful for and thankful for that every day. Um, both my mother-in-law's um just had some skin things taken off their faces, you know. Um, it affects everybody team and I want to give a special shout out to somebody really dear to me and Jenny, dear to me and Jenny, and that's my wife's first wife. We'll say, sherry, that's a long story. I can't tell that story. That's Jenny's and Sherry's story to tell.

Jimmy: 12:35

We'll get them on for a podcast for you guys. We'll have to do that on a podcast for later. Hear that, sherry, you're coming in, you're gonna come down, you're gonna make it and you're gonna come down and do the podcast with your boy she actually introduced jenny and I, so huge part in our life and I'm gonna leave this, this podcast, with. We love you, we think about you every day. Keep fighting and we'll fight with you. And that goes out to everybody else that has cancer or is affected by this. Let us know if we can support you in any way and we'll be there. Stay safe, be cool, and we'll talk to you guys soon, later.