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25 April 2025
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How New Hampshire firefighters try to limit cancer risk from contaminated gear, US
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“I don’t want to get cancer, personally and I don’t think anybody does,” said Noah Spader, a 19-year-old Rindge firefighter who is active in the department’s cancer reduction efforts. Spader believes his generation of firefighters is becoming increasingly passionate about exposure reduction as they enter a community service role where 72 percent of line-of-duty deaths in 2023 were from cancer, according to the International Association of Fire Fighters.
This story is the second in a periodic series from the Monadnock Region Health Reporting Lab about the effects of local firefighters’ exposure to forever chemicals in firefighting gear and efforts to mitigate the issue.
In fire departments throughout the Monadnock Region, firefighters are frequently using the same phrase to address their profession’s high cancer risk: exposure reduction.
The term, often used by environmental agencies in regulatory discussions surrounding environmental hazards like nuclear waste, coal ash or lead paint, has come to include the umbrella of strategies firefighters are using to limit contact with carcinogens like PFAS, which line the jackets, hoods, gloves, pants and boots that firefighters wear every day. These strategies range from deep cleaning gear to minimising contact to taking showers immediately after returning from a call.
As The Sentinel previously reported, firefighters in the Monadnock Region are beginning to replace contaminated turnout gear with low-PFAS gear. Yet, the new gear is expensive, and often unaffordable for local departments on limited budgets. While replacement efforts are underway, many departments in the region are still using gear contaminated with PFAS, the group of thousands of chemicals linked to numerous types of cancer and numerous other health effects.
The growing understanding of high PFAS levels in turnout gear is occurring during a larger reckoning surrounding the outsized cancer risk firefighters face by coming in regular contact with a range of carcinogens.
That’s where exposure reduction comes in. In 2024, the International Association of Fire Fighters issued a joint safety advisory with the Metropolitan Fire Chiefs Association in which it encouraged departments to implement exposure reduction strategies: “The time has long passed for occupational cancer to be accepted as ‘part of the job.’ ”
For this story, The Sentinel spoke with firefighters at departments throughout the Monadnock Region to learn how they are adopting exposure reduction strategies for contaminated gear. Although departments are working to implement these strategies, the infrastructure for these approaches creates a challenge for departments on tight budgets.
Gear treatment
One of the highest exposure scenarios for firefighters is immediately after they respond to a fire, according to Bryan Ormond, a professor at North Carolina State University whose research focuses on the risk first responders face from PFAS in their equipment.
“Every time a firefighter comes out of a burning structure or from near a car fire, their gear is going to be covered with toxic chemicals, byproducts of combustion and carcinogens,” Ormond said. Although PFAS are heat-resistant, high temperatures can cause the chemicals to leach off the fabric of turnout gear and migrate into the surrounding environments, so “any way that we can get them to limit their exposure to any of these chemicals is going to impact their overall risk.”
That’s why washing turnout gear immediately after use has become a key part of exposure reduction at departments. After responding to a call, Rindge firefighters spray down their gear and wash it after returning to the fire department, according to Chief Rickard Donovan.
Turnout gear is washed in an extractor, an industrial-sized washing machine that uses detergent specific to the gear. The gear is then dried on racks specifically for turnout gear.
These amenities are becoming a new part of fire department infrastructure at departments in the region. “We used to just hang them on the railings [to dry], which took forever,” said Greg Seymour, deputy chief of the Keene Fire Department. “You could come back a week later, and they would still be wet and would smell like mildew.”
According to Ormond, frequent washing of turnout gear can help address the number of carcinogens that the fabric picks up while firefighters respond to a call. According to a 2024 National Institute of Standards and Technology study, PFAS concentrations in tested gear were higher following stressors like abrasion and temperature. In certain scenarios, laundering could lower PFAS levels, “presumably because PFAS were washed away into the wastewater,” the study said.
“All of these things really add up,” Ormond said of exposure reduction strategies. “We look at it as mitigation, not elimination.”
Keeping PFAS from migrating off contaminated turnout gear also requires segregating the gear from parts of the fire department where gear isn’t stored. That’s why some departments have begun marking off parts of the department where carcinogenic materials are stored to keep them separate from offices and common areas like the kitchen.
Exposure reduction also includes simply avoiding wearing the gear as much as possible. “We used to train in all of our gear to get used to wearing it, to build your muscles and make sure that you’re agile in it. We now try to limit that time,” Seymour said.
This strategy has raised unavoidable questions for departments. For example, should firefighters wait until they are on the scene to put on their turnout gear, even if it slows down their response time? When answering a medical call, should firefighters wear gear that could expose a patient to its PFAS?
Each department is establishing different guidelines for how to best balance community and occupational safety. But the goal, according to Seymour, is to “try to limit and reduce any exposure you can to your staff.”
Changing habits
Adopting new strategies to limit exposure to contaminated gear faces an educational barrier, according to Spader; changing career-long habits takes time.
“I think it’s going to be the younger generation that’s going to change because we’re taught from the beginning versus the end of our career,” Spader said. He noted that older generations of firefighters were never made aware of the toxicity of firefighting gear and the carcinogens present in structure fires. “You can see pictures from 10 years ago, people had their masks off at the scene … and they’re breathing in all that stuff.”
Indeed, developing awareness of the carcinogens in the fabric of turnout gear and how to best handle them takes time, according to Ormond, the textile expert. “These are all things that they probably didn’t have to think about previously.”
For example, at the Keene Fire Department, firefighters used to “wear their [turnout] pants all over the place, all the time because it’s easier when you’re already dressed,” Seymour said. “But it’s that long-term exposure that is not good for us.”
That’s why enforcing exposure reduction strategies is a key priority, according to Donovan of the Rindge Fire Department.
“If I walk in the door and all I can smell is a structure fire, then the guys are gonna hear from me because somebody didn’t wash their gear,” Donovan said.
Fire department leaders like Seymour are confident that the firefighting community is beginning to understand the urgent need to properly handle contaminated gear.
“Everybody knows somebody who has had job-related cancer, so it’s in your face and not one of those things where we think ‘it won’t happen here.’ ”
Implementation barriers
While exposure reduction strategies like minimising time spent in gear can be done at no cost, the infrastructure for exposure reduction is expensive for rural and volunteer departments, according to Ormond.
“Beyond the health and safety, beyond the performance aspects, there is an economic piece that has to be considered as well,” he said; this also includes low-PFAS turnout gear, which is expensive and in low supply.
In Troy, Fire Chief Mark Huntoon was purchasing three sets of new low-PFAS gear every year, but increasing costs of new gear, combined with his limited budget, led him to cut back to two sets per year.
A drying rack for turnout gear would also have been too expensive on the Troy department’s budget, so Huntoon found a creative way around purchasing a new rack. Using a second-hand bounce house blower, an old door and some PVC pipes he bought from a local hardware store, he fashioned the ensemble into a homemade drying rack. His department now uses it as part of its process of decontaminating PFAS-laden turnout gear.
“I probably put $600 into it versus $6 000,” Huntoon said. At its recent town meeting, Troy approved an operating budget that includes $133 427 for the fire department, and $236,638 for the town’s ambulance service. Between the cost of vehicle repairs, salaries, new firefighting equipment and a limited budget, “you try to do what you can,” Huntoon said.
Huntoon would also like to get his firefighters yearly physical exams for early cancer detection, a strategy that other departments have adopted to catch cancer cases early on. But at Huntoon’s small department of around 15 firefighters, this too is out of the question. “It’s a matter of money.”
Adhering to exposure reduction strategies has become an important part of addressing an issue that has taken a major toll on firefighters and firefighting communities, according to Seymour.
“I can think of five or six members that have had cancer in … one form or another and some of them very severe,” Seymour said. “When they come back in, and you see them face to face, they’ll tell you that this is real.”
Source: The Keene Sentinel
This story is the second in a periodic series from the Monadnock Region Health Reporting Lab about the effects of local firefighters’ exposure to forever chemicals in firefighting gear and efforts to mitigate the issue.
In fire departments throughout the Monadnock Region, firefighters are frequently using the same phrase to address their profession’s high cancer risk: exposure reduction.
The term, often used by environmental agencies in regulatory discussions surrounding environmental hazards like nuclear waste, coal ash or lead paint, has come to include the umbrella of strategies firefighters are using to limit contact with carcinogens like PFAS, which line the jackets, hoods, gloves, pants and boots that firefighters wear every day. These strategies range from deep cleaning gear to minimising contact to taking showers immediately after returning from a call.
As The Sentinel previously reported, firefighters in the Monadnock Region are beginning to replace contaminated turnout gear with low-PFAS gear. Yet, the new gear is expensive, and often unaffordable for local departments on limited budgets. While replacement efforts are underway, many departments in the region are still using gear contaminated with PFAS, the group of thousands of chemicals linked to numerous types of cancer and numerous other health effects.
The growing understanding of high PFAS levels in turnout gear is occurring during a larger reckoning surrounding the outsized cancer risk firefighters face by coming in regular contact with a range of carcinogens.
That’s where exposure reduction comes in. In 2024, the International Association of Fire Fighters issued a joint safety advisory with the Metropolitan Fire Chiefs Association in which it encouraged departments to implement exposure reduction strategies: “The time has long passed for occupational cancer to be accepted as ‘part of the job.’ ”
For this story, The Sentinel spoke with firefighters at departments throughout the Monadnock Region to learn how they are adopting exposure reduction strategies for contaminated gear. Although departments are working to implement these strategies, the infrastructure for these approaches creates a challenge for departments on tight budgets.
Gear treatment
One of the highest exposure scenarios for firefighters is immediately after they respond to a fire, according to Bryan Ormond, a professor at North Carolina State University whose research focuses on the risk first responders face from PFAS in their equipment.
“Every time a firefighter comes out of a burning structure or from near a car fire, their gear is going to be covered with toxic chemicals, byproducts of combustion and carcinogens,” Ormond said. Although PFAS are heat-resistant, high temperatures can cause the chemicals to leach off the fabric of turnout gear and migrate into the surrounding environments, so “any way that we can get them to limit their exposure to any of these chemicals is going to impact their overall risk.”
That’s why washing turnout gear immediately after use has become a key part of exposure reduction at departments. After responding to a call, Rindge firefighters spray down their gear and wash it after returning to the fire department, according to Chief Rickard Donovan.
Turnout gear is washed in an extractor, an industrial-sized washing machine that uses detergent specific to the gear. The gear is then dried on racks specifically for turnout gear.
These amenities are becoming a new part of fire department infrastructure at departments in the region. “We used to just hang them on the railings [to dry], which took forever,” said Greg Seymour, deputy chief of the Keene Fire Department. “You could come back a week later, and they would still be wet and would smell like mildew.”
According to Ormond, frequent washing of turnout gear can help address the number of carcinogens that the fabric picks up while firefighters respond to a call. According to a 2024 National Institute of Standards and Technology study, PFAS concentrations in tested gear were higher following stressors like abrasion and temperature. In certain scenarios, laundering could lower PFAS levels, “presumably because PFAS were washed away into the wastewater,” the study said.
“All of these things really add up,” Ormond said of exposure reduction strategies. “We look at it as mitigation, not elimination.”
Keeping PFAS from migrating off contaminated turnout gear also requires segregating the gear from parts of the fire department where gear isn’t stored. That’s why some departments have begun marking off parts of the department where carcinogenic materials are stored to keep them separate from offices and common areas like the kitchen.
Exposure reduction also includes simply avoiding wearing the gear as much as possible. “We used to train in all of our gear to get used to wearing it, to build your muscles and make sure that you’re agile in it. We now try to limit that time,” Seymour said.
This strategy has raised unavoidable questions for departments. For example, should firefighters wait until they are on the scene to put on their turnout gear, even if it slows down their response time? When answering a medical call, should firefighters wear gear that could expose a patient to its PFAS?
Each department is establishing different guidelines for how to best balance community and occupational safety. But the goal, according to Seymour, is to “try to limit and reduce any exposure you can to your staff.”
Changing habits
Adopting new strategies to limit exposure to contaminated gear faces an educational barrier, according to Spader; changing career-long habits takes time.
“I think it’s going to be the younger generation that’s going to change because we’re taught from the beginning versus the end of our career,” Spader said. He noted that older generations of firefighters were never made aware of the toxicity of firefighting gear and the carcinogens present in structure fires. “You can see pictures from 10 years ago, people had their masks off at the scene … and they’re breathing in all that stuff.”
Indeed, developing awareness of the carcinogens in the fabric of turnout gear and how to best handle them takes time, according to Ormond, the textile expert. “These are all things that they probably didn’t have to think about previously.”
For example, at the Keene Fire Department, firefighters used to “wear their [turnout] pants all over the place, all the time because it’s easier when you’re already dressed,” Seymour said. “But it’s that long-term exposure that is not good for us.”
That’s why enforcing exposure reduction strategies is a key priority, according to Donovan of the Rindge Fire Department.
“If I walk in the door and all I can smell is a structure fire, then the guys are gonna hear from me because somebody didn’t wash their gear,” Donovan said.
Fire department leaders like Seymour are confident that the firefighting community is beginning to understand the urgent need to properly handle contaminated gear.
“Everybody knows somebody who has had job-related cancer, so it’s in your face and not one of those things where we think ‘it won’t happen here.’ ”
Implementation barriers
While exposure reduction strategies like minimising time spent in gear can be done at no cost, the infrastructure for exposure reduction is expensive for rural and volunteer departments, according to Ormond.
“Beyond the health and safety, beyond the performance aspects, there is an economic piece that has to be considered as well,” he said; this also includes low-PFAS turnout gear, which is expensive and in low supply.
In Troy, Fire Chief Mark Huntoon was purchasing three sets of new low-PFAS gear every year, but increasing costs of new gear, combined with his limited budget, led him to cut back to two sets per year.
A drying rack for turnout gear would also have been too expensive on the Troy department’s budget, so Huntoon found a creative way around purchasing a new rack. Using a second-hand bounce house blower, an old door and some PVC pipes he bought from a local hardware store, he fashioned the ensemble into a homemade drying rack. His department now uses it as part of its process of decontaminating PFAS-laden turnout gear.
“I probably put $600 into it versus $6 000,” Huntoon said. At its recent town meeting, Troy approved an operating budget that includes $133 427 for the fire department, and $236,638 for the town’s ambulance service. Between the cost of vehicle repairs, salaries, new firefighting equipment and a limited budget, “you try to do what you can,” Huntoon said.
Huntoon would also like to get his firefighters yearly physical exams for early cancer detection, a strategy that other departments have adopted to catch cancer cases early on. But at Huntoon’s small department of around 15 firefighters, this too is out of the question. “It’s a matter of money.”
Adhering to exposure reduction strategies has become an important part of addressing an issue that has taken a major toll on firefighters and firefighting communities, according to Seymour.
“I can think of five or six members that have had cancer in … one form or another and some of them very severe,” Seymour said. “When they come back in, and you see them face to face, they’ll tell you that this is real.”
Source: The Keene Sentinel