Studies by University of Arizona Health Sciences, in collaboration with Tucson Fire Department, have helped provide evidence that occupational exposure does pose a cancer risk to firefighters.
Findings from these studies contributed to a larger body of evidence that led the International Agency for Research on Cancer to reclassify firefighters' occupational exposure from "possibly carcinogenic" to "carcinogenic." Dr. Jeff Burgess, a UArizona public health professor, was one of 25 experts invited to take part in an IARC working group to review scientific literature on the topic. The group found evidence showing that occupational exposure causes mesothelioma and bladder cancer, and limited evidence that it causes colon cancer, prostate cancer, testicular cancer, melanoma of the skin and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.