Updated On: May 147, 2014 |
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Dr. Susan Shaw, an environmental toxicologist, is the first to measure what flame retardants do to firefighters.
“Cancer today is causing 56 percent of all line-of-duty deaths among firefighters. That is just astronomical,” Shaw said.
She puts firefighters at a 100-percent greater risk for testicular cancer and a 50-percent greater risk for blood cancers.
Shaw found for every five degrees a firefighter’s skin temperature increases, their skin absorption rate increases by 400 times the normal amount. Her research also found chemicals in flame retardants that already pose health problems were 20-times more toxic to them.
“In 30 years of studying chemical exposure in people, the exposure among firefighters is truly one of the worst I’ve ever seen,” Shaw said.
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