Firefighters face dangerous risks every time they respond to a call, but the danger is so much more than the obvious.
“This is the room where we store our protective clothing,” explains Fridley Fire Chief John Berg. He understands that smoke, noxious fumes and hazardous materials contaminate their heavy clothing known as turnout gear. It’s the contamination that gets embedded in the gear’s fabric that puts every firefighter at a much greater risk of cancer.
“The oral cancers, urinary and digestive cancers are much higher,” Berg said. “Those are all related to the toxins we are exposed to.”
The only defense is to keep a firefighter’s turnout gear clean of tiny contaminants. So, departments are using specialized and expensive extraction washers to reduce the threat.
Explains Minnesota State Fire Marshal Bruce West, “It’s all about the RPM’s that the washer will generate. It’s going to remove the contaminants that are embedded in that turnout gear.”