It’s safe to say that today’s firefighters aren’t advancing handlines into thick, black smoke without the use of an SCBA. Those conditions are simply untenable. In fact, a firefighter in a blackout smoke environment would likely become unresponsive immediately from the concentration of carbon monoxide, hydrogen cyanide and other chemicals ingested in the absence of a facepiece.
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However, even with SCBA compliance being better than ever, firefighters are still getting sick. So, where are these exposures happening? Generally speaking, they aren’t happening for the first-due companies assigned to interior duties at a working fire. They’re happening at the lower-stress, seemingly lower-risk assignments — the smells and bells calls, food on the stove, car fires, dumpster fires and assignments like overhaul. Why? Because they seem less dangerous.
Let’s break down the calls where you should be on air, plus some simple rules for making it routine.
Cooking fires
According to the U.S. Fire Administration and the NFPA, cooking fires continue to be the leading type of structure fire. About 80% of those fires are contained to the cooking vessel of origin. That means firefighters respond to somewhere between 160,000 and 175,000 cooking fires that never leave the stovetop. And at many of those calls, the SCBA facepiece dangles at the firefighter’s hip. Given the hundreds, if not thousands, of these jobs you’ll respond to in a career, we’re talking about chronic exposure to carcinogens.
There’s a certain complacency that comes with cooking fires. It may be because we think, “It’s just food — how bad could it be?” But smoke is smoke. All of it contains compounds that should not enter your respiratory tract. Sure, the nasty black stuff pumping out from a bedroom window as all the furniture and finishes ignite is different from the smoke from burning cooking oil, but it’s still bad. That smoke contains toxins like acrolein, aldehydes, and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. These chemicals are known to cause cancer and mutate DNA.
But food isn’t the only thing burning. Much of today’s cookware is coated with non-stick material. While great for keeping scrambled eggs from sticking to the pan, these materials are synthetic chemicals, and the hotter they get, the more chemicals they release into the atmosphere.
That haze from the stove fire is from chemicals most of us can’t even pronounce. More specifically, most nonstick coatings contain polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE), a PFAS-based fluoropolymer. When this chemical overheats, it pyrolyzes and releases gases like hydrogen fluoride, tetrafluoroethylene and several other fluorocarbons. Inhaling the fumes can cause polymer fume fever. This acute condition includes fever, chills, coughing and trouble breathing. But even if you don’t encounter these symptoms, repeated exposure to these chemicals increases cancer risk and other long-term health risks.
“Smells and bells” calls
Then there are the smells and bells calls — electrical odors, gas odors, “unknown odors” and similar calls. You respond to thousands of these over your career. You enter a building and use your nose to identify the cause and location of an odor. Maybe it’s an overheated circuit board or burned-out motor. It might be a small chemical spill or minor gas leak. In a hospital I used to respond to, it was often cauterization from surgical procedures. Yeah, gross.
Sometimes we need to use the sniffer we were born with to find the source of an odor, but that can be a dangerous trade-off. Consider electrical odors. That distinct smell is the result of amines, aldehydes, phthalates, plasticizers and halogenated fire-retardant compounds.
If you responded to a formaldehyde spill or hydrogen bromide leak, you would approach slowly, from upwind and uphill. You would use reference materials to determine the risk you are encountering and to come up with a plan. You would be wearing appropriate PPE with SCBA and be breathing clean air through your facepiece. You’d use advanced monitoring equipment to identify the substance, then use a methodical and safe process to mitigate the hazard and reduce health and environmental impacts.
But respond to a burning odor in a basement and you’ll walk around sniffing like a hound. Same chemicals, different environment. The aldehydes off-gassing from burning electrical components are just as bad for you as the spilled formaldehyde in a laboratory or from a tank car. So, what do you do?
Once you’ve encountered the odor and realize that it’s hazardous, mask up. For odors that are likely to produce heat such as an overheated motor, ballast or wiring, use your thermal imager. Today’s TICs are excellent at showing even subtle changes in temperature. Turning off the power to the affected circuit might be all you need to do for the burning to stop so you can check for extension, ventilate the space, and turn the situation over to the property owner, electrical contractor or utility company.
Dumpster fires
Another call type where firefighters may be complacent in SCBA use is the dumpster or rubbish fire. Firefighters generally don facepieces during initial knock-down, but what about during overhaul when breaking up debris to check for deep-seated embers? Are you on air?
People throw everything in the trash, even things they shouldn’t. A dumpster might contain anything from routine household trash to hazardous materials. But regardless of what’s in there, combustion produces hazardous materials. Think about the standard trash bag. It contains chemicals that aren’t considered dangerous under normal circumstances. But firefighters don’t exist for normal circumstances. Melt and burn the same material, and you’ve got a chemical release. Now consider the amount of that plastic that could be in a dumpster at an apartment complex.
Even after extinguishment, many of these toxic compounds remain present in the immediate area as materials release them. It may be days, even weeks, before some of these chemicals stop off-gassing.
Vehicle fires
Photos still surface of firefighters putting out car fires without their SCBA. Today’s cars contain so many plastics and other synthetics that I can’t believe anyone is willing to accept that health risk. Think about it. If a car is on fire, it’s probably going to be totaled. Quick work might save some belongings in the car and prevent extension to other cars or buildings, but the car of origin is likely a loss. Take 5 seconds to don your mask and breathe clean air. Your friends and family will appreciate it, and you will too.
Simple rules
We can’t eliminate every environmental exposure, but we can change how we operate on routine calls. Follow these rules:
● Leverage technology before senses: Use TICs to isolate overheated motors, ballasts and wiring before relying on your sense of smell.
● Deploy atmospheric monitoring early: Bring four-gas and specialized meters inside on “smells and bells” calls rather than using human respiration as the primary detection tool.
● Establish clear “air-on” rules: Enforce SCBA use during dumpster overhaul, vehicle suppression and indoor ventilation of burnt food or electrical smoke until monitoring verifies safe air quality.
● Isolate power early: De-energizing affected circuits quickly stops off-gassing at the source while crews check for extension.
The risk is real
It might seem like overkill to wear your facepiece for some burnt hamburger meat or an overheated circuit, but doing so protects you. Consider how many times you respond to these types of incidents and the toxic exposures you encounter over your career. Every time counts. Firefighter cancer risk is real. We can’t eliminate all exposure to carcinogens, but you can do some simple things to reduce them significantly. Using, not just wearing, your SCBA is one of the best.
