Patty Machelor The chemicals that become airborne when a building burns are known to be dangerous to the health of firefighters working the blaze, but just how harmful and just how quickly?
The idea for this work started locally about eight years ago after a firefighter named Tom Quesnel became sick with leukemia. Quesnel, the department’s longtime arson investigator, was having a hard time with his compensation claim. Quesnel died in March 2014 after he spent 20 years investigating nearly 3,000 fires throughout the Southwest.
Burgess’ research includes the evaluation and the prevention of carcinogenic exposures to not only firefighters but also miners, Native Americans and those exposed to arsenic in their water and food. In the local study, Burgess and his research team obtained blood samples from 50 non-smoking new firefighter recruits prior to their first live fire and again 20 to 37 months later. In the latter samples, they found changes at 680 different sites on the firefighters’ genomes — a set of genes or genetic material present in a cell — many of which were in genes related to cancers and immune and neurological function as well as other diseases, including cardiovascular disease.
This research is also helping them make improvements to keep firefighters safe while they work, he said. The findings have already changed how they do their job in a few ways.