NIOSH Highlights Recent Efforts in Firefighter Health and Safety
New items related to NIOSH’s efforts in firefighter health and safety have been published in the Federal Register and on the agency’s website.
A recent Federal Register notice published by CDC seeks to gather information from the public on “priority topics” related to firefighter safety and health. The request has to do with NIOSH’s Center for Firefighter Safety, Health, and Well-Being, which was established in 2024 to centralize the agency’s research and service related to firefighters. Among the issues the center aims to address are the safety, health, and well-being of wildland firefighters and the hazards of smoke from fires burning in the wildland-urban interface, or areas where wildland vegetation and urban neighborhoods meet. The Federal Register highlights the growing threat from structural, wildland-urban interface, and wildland fires as one of the reasons NIOSH is working to refine its research and engagement priorities. Commenters are encouraged to provide input on research areas and service activities that could be expanded as well as how NIOSH can best partner with stakeholders to achieve its priorities. April 3 is the last day to submit comments related to this request for information.
Another item is a new report in NIOSH’s Personal Protective Equipment Conformity Assessment Studies and Evaluations (PPE CASE) series that focuses on three self-contained breathing apparatuses used by firefighters involved in a near miss while responding to a structure fire. PPE CASE reports are intended to summarize the agency’s findings from post-market tests, evaluations, and investigations of PPE. According to the report, one of the SCBAs could not be tested because it was missing the cover on the mask-mounted regulator. The other two SCBAs “were not found to contribute to the incident” following testing to determine their conformance to NIOSH approval requirements.
“The evaluation found no evidence indicating that the inspected and tested SCBAs … that failed some NIOSH post-incident testing, contributed to the firefighters becoming trapped during the near-miss of a rapid-fire progression,” the PPE CASE report (PDF) explains.
Additional reports can be found on NIOSH’s PPE CASE reports page.
A third update relates to NIOSH’s National Firefighter Registry (NFR) for Cancer, which the agency describes as “the largest effort ever undertaken to understand and reduce risk of cancer among U.S. firefighters.” A new page on the NFR Data Dashboard allows users to see the most common cancer types reported by participants at enrollment. According to the dashboard, the most common self-reported cancers by participants in the registry include skin cancer and prostate cancer. More information about the NFR is available on the NIOSH website.
Related: Read “Introducing the National Firefighter Registry for Cancer” from the June/July 2023 Synergist and “From Fire Season to Fire Year,” an article about protecting wildland firefighters, from the April 2024 issue.