NIOSH report on firefighter cancer … SF, Philly, Chicago

 

From a recent study: Exposure–response relationships for select cancer and non-cancer health outcomes in a cohort of US firefighters from San Francisco, Chicago and Philadelphia 1950–2009

ABSTRACT
Objectives: The study aimed to investigate the relationship between exposure levels during firefighting and specific health outcomes, including both cancer and non-cancer conditions, among U.S. career firefighters.

Methods: Researchers analyzed eight types of cancer and four non-cancer outcomes using conditional logistic regression. Each case was matched with 200 controls based on age. Exposure was measured through "exposed-days," "fire-runs," and "fire-hours." Various statistical models were used to assess the relationship between exposure and health outcomes, including loglinear, linear, and restricted cubic spline models.

Results: Among 19,309 male firefighters included in the study, there were 1,333 cancer-related deaths and 2,609 new cancer cases. The results showed a clear increase in lung cancer risk with higher fire-hour exposure. A similar link was found between leukemia mortality and the number of fire runs. However, for colorectal and prostate cancers, the results suggested a negative association, likely due to the healthy worker survivor effect and increased medical screening among firefighters.

Conclusions: The study found a modest but significant increase in lung cancer and leukemia mortality linked to firefighting exposure. These findings support the growing evidence of a causal connection between firefighting and cancer. However, the effects were small, so the results should be interpreted with caution. NIOSH plans to continue monitoring the health of this firefighter cohort over time.

The full report is available at the following link: Exposure–response relationships for select cancer and non-cancer health outcomes in a cohort of US firefighters from San Francisco, Chicago and Philadelphia 1950–2009 * (2015) [PDF 662 KB, 9 pages]