Retired Easthampton firefighter Bill Simmons lobbied Massachusetts legislators in the 1970s for policies to help colleagues exposed to carcinogens on the job. Some 25 years later, he got cancer.
He battled the disease for four years and endured eight surgeries. Cancer claimed his bladder, a kidney and ureter, he said. He’s been cancer-free since 2011, but says he’s forever changed.
“I went from 100 miles an hour to zero overnight,” Simmons said of his lifestyle before and after. “It’s a possibility I wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t in such good shape.”
Ironically, the same policies Simmons lobbied for as president of Easthampton’s firefighters union didn’t help his own situation. The state’s “Cancer Presumption Law” provides benefits for firefighters who contract cancer while on active duty and up to five years into retirement. Doctors diagnosed Simmons with cancer during his sixth year of retirement.
“It is what it is,” he said.
From smoke inhalation to mental stress and perilous flames, firefighters have long been recognized as having one of the most dangerous jobs around. But only recently has the spotlight been put on another deadly hazard they face — cancer. The Centers for Disease Control reported last year that firefighters are coming down with cancer at higher rates — and at younger ages — than civilians.
“When you join the fire service it’s not as easy or pleasant as everybody thinks,” said Northampton Deputy Fire Chief Timothy McQueston said. “Today’s houses and today’s furnishings are all made out of plastics and composites — toxic chemicals, the stuff that sticks to your skin.”
Fire officials across the state are pushing for passage of legislation currently in committee, “An Act to Protect Children and Families from Harmful Flame Retardants,” which would limit the use of chemicals they say are killing firefighters.
State Fire Marshal Peter J. Ostroskey said research shows that when furnishings with flame retardants catch fire, it creates a toxic environment for both fire victims and responding firefighters, exposing them to dangerous carcinogens.
“Cancer rates in firefighters are high compared to other groups, and anything we can do to reduce exposures to carcinogens is important,” he said.
Jared Kajka joined the Northampton Fire Department in 2001, filling a vacancy left by John Holt. Kajka was given the somber task of tracking cancer in the department.
Kajka said Holt had just died of multiple myeloma, an aggressive cancer of the bone marrow, at age 39.
Then another Northampton firefighter, Donald Willard, died of brain cancer in 2005. And in January of this year, Bob Davis died of lung cancer after 29 years with the force.
“Basically, everyone’s just trying to think about it a little bit more,” Kajka said. “You don’t want to be a statistic.”
The CDC reports the chance of lung cancer diagnosis increases with the amount of time one spends at fires, and Davis’ former colleagues remember him as a diligent worker.
At 57, Davis was a month away from the early retirement he’d already decided to take when doctors diagnosed him with the disease.
“He was very upset he couldn’t finish out his time,” Lori Davis, his wife of 34 years, said of his having to leave the force a month earlier than the planned date in June of last year.
Instead of enjoying his new golf habit, he spent the first month of his retirement having his lung removed.
“He was very much looking forward to golfing all summer, which he never got to do,” she said, noting that his pain was too severe. “He couldn’t do anything. Literally, he couldn’t go walking, he couldn’t sit in the car.”
Davis said the cancer spread so quickly that her husband was in hospice care within six months, with doctors saying there was nothing more to do. Within seven months, he was gone.
She said he always acknowledged the possibility of dying in a fire, but cancer “would have been the last thing on his mind.”
Because he never thought to worry about it, neither did she.
“I just figured their gear helped them, so I never put much thought into it,” she said. “You just figure they have the equipment.”
She said whenever he left in the middle of the night to fight a fire, she was always nervous.
“That’s the kind of thing I would think about — not the cancer,” she said.
Her advice for active firefighters: “Make sure you have the best gear available, and make sure it’s always on.”
David Mottor, Easthampton fire chief and newly installed president of the Fire Chiefs Association of Massachusetts, has had cancer scares himself and is watching the issue closely.
He said one of the first steps in the evolution toward reducing exposure came during the 1990s, when many departments began installing diesel exhaust recovery systems. Before that, “our walls would always be covered in black soot.” According to the American Cancer Society, diesel exhaust, a mixture of gases and soot, is linked to both cancer and lung and heart diseases.
He said the next step came in the early 2000s, when many departments began buying washers and extractors to decontaminate their gear after a fire.
“That was a big step in trying to reduce exposure to carcinogens,” he said.
He said now the newer problem is all of the carcinogenic flame retardants that coat home furnishings. He said they’re not good for anyone to be around, and when they’re set on fire they are toxic.
“When they burn, 90 percent of their byproducts are all known carcinogens,” he said.
“The very treatments designed to keep the fires from spreading rapidly are one of the leading carcinogens in a fire, causing cancer in firefighters,” Mottor said.
He said the danger posed by these chemicals outweighs advancements made with gear and exhaust systems.
“Firefighters now are at more risk than they were 30 years ago, and a lot of it has to do with the interior finishes,” he said. “Particulate matter, they actually pass right through our gear.”
The Boston Globe reports that Michael Hamrock — a Boston physician who treats firefighters — finds that firefighters in Boston run a three times higher risk of colon cancer than the average person. Numbers like these show that firefighters require more screenings, Mottor said.
“Boston recommends a colonoscopy at age 40 for firefighters,” he said, as opposed to the 50-year mark for most people. “They’ve agreed to let us get these done sooner to better protect our firefighters.
Mottor, 50, said he’s had four pre-cancerous growths, found last fall.
“Luckily, if they catch them precancerous they can remove them,” he said. “I have to go back again in a year to make sure I’m polyp-free.”
Mottor said there has been a shift in thinking the past two years regarding post-fire practices. He said firefighters in Easthampton no longer toss dirty gear in the truck, but instead either clean it at the scene of a fire or seal it in a bag before transport. He said everybody is instructed to shower, and wipe their hands with baby wipes before taking a drink.
And everyone must wear an air pack until the air is cleared of contaminants.
“As a new guy you were always looked at as being soft if you put one of those on — by the same older guys who barely lived to be 60 before they died of lung cancer,” Mottor said. “We are very resistant to change.”
Amherst Assistant Fire Chief Lindsay Stromgren said even though the department has a washer and dryer, it can be difficult to get firefighters to wash gear when they’re tired after a fire.
“You have to get people to do that, and I think that’s where the fire service is still coming up to speed,” he said. “I don’t think people are washing their gear after every single fire.”
He said he’s also seeing more firefighters wearing air packs.
“Decades ago it was a macho thing to be able to fight a fire without wearing a mask,” he said. “Parallelling the thrust in gear-washing is the thrust to leave the mask on.”
Stromgren, 53, who had a potentially precancerous patch of skin removed from his cheek, said firefighters in Amherst face all kinds of strange chemicals on the job.
“The university is probably our single biggest client that may have odd stuff if there’s a fire,” he said. “You never know what you’re going to be running into.”
For smaller, volunteer-based departments in Hampshire County, it has taken longer to catch up with evolving practices. Ideally, each firefighter has two sets of gear — so that in the event of back-to-back fires they’re not putting contaminated gear back on — but with suits costing as much as $2,000, that’s hard to do.
Goshen Fire Capt. Bob Labrie said the Goshen Fire Department hasn’t had the money to buy two sets of gear for each volunteer firefighter.
“That was one of the reasons we got the new dryer,” he said of a recent Assistance to Firefighters Grant for $18, 500, covering a new dryer that can process gear at higher speeds. “We can have the gear washed and dried within a few hours rather than a few days.”
In case the department fights back-to-back blazes, Labrie said, each volunteer firefighter is aware of another on the department who wears a similar size in case their gear is still in the dryer. The most important thing, fire officials agree, is creating a system in which firefighters are not putting on dirty gear or bringing it home to their families.
“We can’t not be getting gear to these volunteers, and the full-time folks heading home to their families,” said Michael Spanknebel, chief of the Hadley Fire Department. “That’s the mission in the fire service, now, is making sure we’re decreasing that chance by getting people the gear.”
Departments in Hadley and Westhampton are hoping for larger complexes, equipped with fully functioning diesel exhaust systems and room for showers.
“There’s just so many toxics in all these plastics — it’s in everything now,” Spanknebel said. “They’re getting covered with it, basically. That’s why it’s a priorty that we have a shower stall for them to wash down.”
Williamsburg Fire Chief Jason Connell said his department is shopping for its first gear-washer.
“I think it’s a huge step for our department,” he said. “Dirty gear’s not just about causing cancer, either.”
Connell said chemicals that don’t get washed off can also degrade the gear and diminish its flame resistance.
He said it’s been harder for smaller departments like his to keep up.
“That’s part of the risk that we take as part of a volunteer fire department,” he said, comparing his department to that of Northampton. “We don’t have as many fires, but our fires burn the same way theirs do.”
Simmons, the Easthampton firefighter, said local officials should consider lobbying for mandated exhaust systems in fire stations, so small departments don’t have to continue fighting for money.
“You could see the blue smoke hanging in the air for hours,” he said of working without one for 20 years. “It’s all about money. You have to convince a taxpayer that this is a worthy thing to spend money on. That’s where the lobbying part comes in.
“It’s not mandated by state law,” he said.
Simmons said research hasn’t advanced enough to know what caused his cancer, but he’s convinced it was job-related.
He was simultaneously diagnosed in 2007 with pneumonia, cancer and hypertension. He said he isn’t able to do the things he used to, but his eight children help with the shoveling and yard work.
“I never knew how many people cared for me,” Simmons said, choking back tears. “You find out who your friends are.”
He started with the Easthampton Fire Department in 1972, at 27, when “research into this type of workforce-related injury was in its infancy.” At the time, he said, there were only 10 self-contained breathing apparatuses for a force of 30. Firefighters wore rubber raincoats, he said, and plastic helmets.
“It’s an evolutionary process,” he said of the eventual upgrades in protective gear. “They’re totally aware today. Forty-five years ago, they were not.”
Adding to his life’s irony, Simmons wrote articles about personal safety in the 1990s. Before studies illuminated links between pervasive chemicals and cancer, he urged caution when handling them on the job.
“It’s worse than ironic — it’s weird,” he said. “It kind of struck me that that was prophesizing what happened to me.”
If he could do one thing over again? “I would buy my own cartridge-style dust mask,” he said.
Amanda Drane can be contacted at adrane@gazettenet.com.