Climate Wire | Firefighter Matt Alva is having flashbacks. Watching video footage of wind-driven flames in Los Angeles brought back memories of battling the Camp Fire six years ago.
He spent 11 days in a scorching inferno called Paradise, a California town that was destroyed by wildfires in November 2018. More than 18,000 buildings were reduced to ashes. Alba wasn’t protecting her lungs most of the time during that time. But there was disease in the smoke. He breathed in a whirlpool of toxic chemicals released from heavy metals and carcinogens as his house and car burned. May cause brain damage.
He remembers smelling the smoldering tree stumps in the park of the burnt-out mobile home. It had a pungent and unnatural smell.
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“I went back to the crew and said, ‘Wow, I lost five years of my life to that inhalation,'” he recalled in an interview. “That was before I had a brain tumor.”
Cancer is the number one cause of death among firefighters. Now, crews battling the Los Angeles fires are once again inhaling carcinogenic chemicals without proper respiratory protection. This highlights how unprepared communities are for the changing nature of wildfires. As global warming dries vegetation and primes it to ignite, intensifying fires could increasingly sweep into urban areas and release more harmful chemicals.
And firefighters are surrounded by a cloud of toxic smoke.
Lack of respiratory protection has been an issue that has compromised the health of wildland firefighters for years. Despite new efforts after the Camp Fire, no ventilators are available that are portable, can remove all the chemicals released from structure fires, and are durable enough to last long-term duty by wildland firefighters. Not yet commercially available.
“In 2018, we kept saying over and over again that this was unprecedented, and now we’re using the same words to talk about these new fires,” Alba said. . “But we should have seen it coming.”
Not so “wild” fires
Firefighters battling wildfires in Los Angeles have been given N95 masks and special respirators attached to oxygen tanks. Los Angeles County spokeswoman Edith Lai said it’s up to them whether to use them.
Masks with oxygen tanks, known as SCBAs, are commonly used by firefighters in urban areas to protect against the dangerous combination of plummeting oxygen levels and rising carbon monoxide. They also prevent inhalation of toxic gases, but they only last 30 to 45 minutes and can weigh up to 40 pounds. They are not designed for 24-hour exposure to toxic substances caused by wildfires like those in Los Angeles.
Jo ten Eyck, wildfire training coordinator for the International Federation of Fire Protection Associations, said N95 masks were also not a viable alternative. Although they protect against some particulate contamination, they cannot filter out carcinogenic gases such as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and dioxins released from structural fires. N95 masks only block 11 to 15 percent of these chemicals, Ten Eyck said. It also restricts breathing in a potentially dangerous manner during firefighting operations.
“Right now, firefighters working in structural defense and perimeter control in Los Angeles are experiencing the worst of the smoke and are not as protected as we would like or need to be. “No,” he said.
Wildfires have historically destroyed plants. That smoke is also dangerous to inhale because it contains small particles that can clog the respiratory system and worsen asthma and other conditions. However, increased development in previously rural areas means more wildfires are occurring in urban spaces, with more structures burning and more chemicals being released. I am.
About 7,180 structures were destroyed by wildfires in California from 2004 to 2014, according to state data. After that, the number exploded. Over the past decade, wildfires have destroyed nearly 54,700 buildings. More than 18,800 of them were destroyed in a single fire, the Camp Fire.
As more structures burn, firefighters are exposed to more chemicals and more cancers.
“Plumbing has copper and lead in it, paint has toxic chemicals in it, electronics and plastics have some really nasty stuff in them. All these chemicals that aren’t there are now part of smoke,” said Mary Johnson, a senior research assistant at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health. “The list is really long and really bad.”
The city’s fire department already had a cancer problem. According to federal data, in 2016, about 70% of firefighters killed in the line of fire were cancer-related. In 2022, the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer went so far as to label firefighting itself as “carcinogenic to humans” due to the sheer amount of chemicals encountered on the ground.
“Carcinogenic” work
Firefighters also encounter carcinogens in the foam they use to suppress flames and in some protective clothing. The International Federation of Fire Fighters Associations says using an SCBA respirator is “the single most protective volunteer activity” a firefighter can do.
But firefighters in wildland areas usually don’t have access to them. Instead, rely on neck gaiters or scarves to try to limit smoke inhalation. Even if SCBA were available, their weight and short duration would make them impractical for fighting wildfires, where firefighters often fight fires for 10 to 24 hours at a time.
“Wildland firefighters are exposed to many of the same respiratory hazards that structural firefighters avoid by using self-contained breathing apparatus,” the U.S. Department of Homeland Security warned.
The campfire marked a turning point of sorts. However, progress in protecting firefighters has been slow.
After the 2018 fires, DHS announced that “many wildland firefighters had reached the limits of their respiratory injuries” and retired.
Firefighters who fought the Camp Fire had elevated toxin levels in their blood, according to a study commissioned by the San Francisco Firefighters Cancer Prevention Foundation. In this project, 80 firefighters underwent blood tests hours after being called out to a camp fire. Their blood contained higher levels of carcinogenic flame retardants commonly found in plastics, electronics, foam and furniture than the general population. Levels of PFAS, a carcinogen and endocrine disruptor, were also elevated, and some firefighters also had elevated levels of mercury and lead.
“No valid devices”
After the Camp Fire, DHS provided a grant to develop ventilators suitable for firefighting operations. It should be lightweight, portable, long-lasting, and easy to wear during strenuous activities such as trenching.
But progress was slow.
“We currently have an effective device that has been validated to operate in smoke, is durable enough to withstand the conditions firefighters face in these incidents, and is practical given its size and weight. There is no one on the market,” said Mike Wilson. California’s senior safety engineer said in a presentation at the California Industrial Hygiene Council annual meeting last month.
One of the prototypes that will receive funding is a waist-mounted air-purifying respirator by TDA Research. A fan is used to blow air over the layers of the HEPA filter, removing toxins before firefighters can inhale them.
Drew Galloway, the engineer who designed the device, said it has been tested in training exercises by CalFire and the Los Angeles Fire Department, but production is still at least two years away.
He remembers meeting the parents of firefighters who had been deployed to the Camp Fire for two weeks. It was his first fire and he suffered severe lung damage, so he had to retire.
“It’s like momentarily blacking out your lungs,” Galloway said. “The biggest threat to wildland firefighters is having to get these carcinogenic particles out of their systems.”
The California Occupational Safety and Health Administration is also trying to address the issue. The state issued general wildfire smoke safety rules in 2020, requiring employers to provide masks to outdoor workers when air quality exceeds certain standards, but wildfire smoke firefighters were exempted. Two years later, the agency released draft regulations aimed at protecting wildland firefighters. They will be required to provide them with the portable ventilators that Galloway is developing.
However, this rule has not yet been finalized, in part because the technology is not yet ready. The agency, which has been working with TDA Research to test prototypes, said it expects the rule to be finalized in 2026.
“Protecting firefighters from severe smoke exposure is the California/OSHA highest priority for firefighter safety and health when they are called out to fight the state’s large wildland and wildland-urban fires. “It’s one of our priorities,” said department spokesperson Dennis Gomez.
Alba, 47, now a battalion chief in the San Francisco Fire Department’s Health, Safety and Welfare Division, can’t wait.
Since fighting the campfire, he has developed a brain tumor the size of a pear. Most of the tumor is removed surgically, and chemotherapy and radiation therapy keep the cancer in check.
But he knows he’s not out of the woods yet.
“I really hope that the only cancer I get is a brain tumor,” he said.
Reprinted from E&E News Published with permission of POLITICO, LLC. Copyright 2025. E&E News provides news that matters to energy and environment professionals.
