As the doctors ran tests, Joel grew sicker. Within days, he was too exhausted to walk. On the eve of his 25th birthday, he received a diagnosis: acute myeloid leukemia, an aggressive, often fatal blood cancer that usually strikes people more than twice his age. Joel told the doctors he was not a regular smoker and had no family history of blood cancers. But he did have one risk factor: his job.
For decades, wildfire fighters have been sent to work in toxic smoke without masks or warnings about long-term health risks, The New York Times has reported. They inhale poisons that are linked to more than a dozen kinds of cancer, including leukemia. Many are falling gravely ill, and some are dying at young ages.
But when these firefighters get sick, they don’t all receive the same help.
About two-thirds of the country’s 40,000 wildland firefighters work for state and federal agencies. By law, many of their cancers are assumed to be job-related, and their workers’ compensation benefits are automatically approved.
The other firefighters — about 14,000 — are like Joel. They work for private companies that the government hires to shore up its ranks against a growing wildfire threat. Reliance on these contract crews has more than doubled since 2019, as climate change drives more extreme fire seasons. They have fought alongside federal workers in every major fire of the last decade.
OSHA needs to step up… oh wait. This stuff is insanely commonplace. Most workers are not educated enough on carcinogens and reducing risk. Ironically it’s people that work around radiation that tend to be the safest. But when it comes to hazardous chemical exposure, safety is brushed aside. Benzene, acid mists, chromium dusts, all have popped up in recent OSHA reports.
What a savage, uncivilized country. A country without single payer socialized medical insurance is just an undeveloped shithole country. Total no-go zone.
Dear contract firefighters, have you considered you may be doing more good by letting it all burn?
Acute myeloid leukemia is what killed my mother when I was a teenager. She wasn’t as young as the fire fighter, but obviously still way too young.
Cancer sucks, and capital doesn’t care if you get sick and die, as long as number still goes up.