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Wildland Firefighter Exposures to Carcinogens
An article in the October 2024 issue of the Journal of Occupational and Environmental
Hygiene addresses exposures to carcinogens among wildland firefighters. The authors
reviewed 49 papers published from 1992 to 2023 that reported exposures to 31 carcinogens as classified by the International Agency for Research on Cancer or individual countries,
including the United States. The information from the review article that appears on this page focuses on four substances that IARC has classified as Group 1, the agency’s designation for known human carcinogens.
From “A Review of Occupational Exposures to Carcinogens Among Wildland Firefighters”:
“Although few papers reported exposure concentrations that exceeded the 8-hr OELs for individual contaminants, the duration of wildfire assignments, long hours worked, and the increasing length of the wildfire season may result in higher cumulative exposures and increased risk of cancer from occupational exposures associated with wildland firefighting.”
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SOURCE
Journal of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene: “A Review of Occupational Exposures to Carcinogens Among Wildland Firefighters” (October 2024).
Note: To access this paper, AIHA members must first sign in to their AIHA account. Instructions are available on AIHA's website.
RELATED
The Synergist: “From Fire Season to Fire Year: Protecting Wildland Firefighters in an Extreme Environment” (April 2024).
The Synergist: “Introducing the National Firefighter Registry for Cancer: A New Effort to Understand and Reduce Cancer in Firefighters” (June/July 2023).
The Synergist: “Reflections on Wildland Firefighting: Protective Clothing, Equipment, Hazards, and Procedures” (January 2023).