‘Is our job causing cancer?’
In 2012, Lt. Heather Buren, along with colleagues from the San Francisco Firefighters Cancer Prevention Foundation (SFFCPF) noticed an alarming trend: In that year alone, five female firefighters were diagnosed with breast cancer.
“We started asking questions, wondering what was up,” said Buren, co-author of the paper. “Cancer wasn’t new to our profession, but for the first time, I was thinking about cancer as an occupational disease: Was fighting fire somehow a contributing factor in my friends getting sick? Were our repeated exposures to toxic burning chemicals on the fire ground a factor to the high breast cancer rates among SFFD women firefighters?”
Through a series of discussions and community meetings with Commonweal and Breast Cancer Prevention Partners, Buren was introduced to Morello-Frosch. Together, the two began the steps that would eventually launch the biomonitoring collaborative.
Since beginning the study, Buren and a small group of other women firefighters have teamed up with the Bluegreen Alliance to create a training program to help other firefighters take steps to reduce their exposures to PFAS and other toxic chemicals. These steps include many basic measures, like immediately wiping down exposed areas of skin and removing and cleaning turnout gear — a firefighter’s coat, boots and helmet — after an incident.
“There’s also a lot of interest in having firefighters use foams that don’t contain PFAS, not just to protect the firefighters, but also because the PFAS foams have contaminated a lot of groundwater and drinking water across the U.S.,” said study co-author Ruthann Rudel, research director at Silent Spring Institute.
Because many manufacturers do not disclose the ingredients contained in firefighting foam, the project GreenScreen has recently launched a certification program to identify PFAS-free foams, Rudel pointed out.
To conduct the study, the researchers collected blood samples from 86 women firefighters and 84 women who work in offices in downtown San Francisco. They also conducted hour-long interviews with each participant, asking about workplace activities, eating habits and consumer product use to tease out possible sources of PFAS exposure.
Of the 12 types of PFAS chemicals the researchers tested for, seven were found in detectable amounts in most participants’ blood samples, and four were found at detectable amounts in all participants’ samples. Three of the seven — PFHxS, PFUnDA, and PFNA — were detected at significantly higher amounts in firefighters’ blood, compared to office workers’ blood.
Each participant received a digital report generated by Silent Spring, detailing their individual results and providing information and concrete steps for reducing their PFAS exposure.
In a companion paper, which also appeared online this month in Environmental Science and Technology, the team detailed a new method that will allow researchers to rapidly screen blood samples for the presence of a variety of different toxic compounds. This method could help identify what else these women firefighters are exposed to that might be harmful. A future study, currently in preparation, will also report on the levels of flame-retardants in the blood samples of the women firefighters and office workers.
“We are here, and our health is important,” Buren said. “In many occupations, women are often overlooked and understudied. Firefighting is no different. The SFFD has more women firefighters than any other metropolitan fire department in the U.S. The strength in numbers, coupled with the continued and strong support from our administration and union, has allowed us to focus on the health of our women, which we hope will benefit all firefighters nationally.”
Co-authors of the paper include Roy Gerona of UCSF and Vincent Bessonneau of Silent Spring Institute.
This work is supported by the California Breast Cancer Research Program (19BB-2900), the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (R01ES027051), the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, the Targeted Research Training Program (T42 OH008429), the San Francisco Firefighter Cancer Prevention Foundation and the International Association of Firefighters-Local 798.
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