Study Finds Firefighters At Greater Risk For Cancer
You might expect firefighters to be more at risk of getting lung cancer, but a year-long study of 800 California firefighters found they’re also twice as likely to get other types of cancer and suffer fatal heart attacks.
The Firefighters Wellness Program teamed up with San Diego State University’s Visualization Lab to tackle deadly health risks that go beyond fighting fires.
“The graphics give you a simple picture that you can just go, ‘Ah ha, they’re getting healthier,’” says the Visualization Lab’s Steve Price.
And they need to be.
“Firefighters are facing significantly higher numbers of cases of cancers, both lung cancer, skin cancer, non-hodgkins lymphoma, prostate cancer,” says Captain Colin Stowell.
A 2005 study of 800 firefighters found they are also 50% more likely than others to have heart attacks on and off the job.
“We’re exposed to a lot of different toxins, environments out there both smoke and the different hazardous environments that we work in. We’re under a various amount of stress - both on the job and off the job, our routines, our sleep patterns are not normal for everybody, all of those things play an effect physiologically on our body,” adds Captain Stowell.
But that’s just a guess.
Doctors using high tech monitoring systems from the Viz Lab examined 96% of the region’s firefighters in hopes of nailing down a cause.
Meanwhile, the focus on fitness combined with the new data from the Viz Lab has helped dozens of firefighters improve their health.
“It affects our longevity in our healthy, happy careers that we have, but it also
affects the departments we work for and the cities we work for,” says Captain Stowell.
