Utah bill aims to provide comprehensive cancer screenings to firefighters

SALT LAKE CITY — Firefighters almost daily face risks on a variety of different fronts, but one risk that has flown somewhat under the radar until recent years has been exposure to smoke, chemicals, and toxins that can lead to cancer.

With more attention on the issue, a measure on Utah’s Capitol Hill aims to provide comprehensive cancer screenings to the state’s firefighters.

H.B. 65 provides state funding up front for a program to provide early testing to firefighters with the expectation that local fire departments will assume out-of-pocket costs for ongoing testing in roughly 3 years.

Utah Fire & Rescue Academy director Brad Wardle said the testing will include MRIs, CT scans, dermatology, prostate exams, PFAS screening, and other blood work.

“Early detection equals better outcomes,” Wardle said during an interview Sunday with KSL 5. “The only way we know how to cure this is to get after it early and to try to treat this before it becomes something that is either life-threatening or life-altering.”

Wardle has been part of a task force pushing for cancer screenings for firefighters, as has Draper City Fire Department Chief Clint Smith.

“It’s time that we start doing something different in Utah,” Smith said. “It’s time that we really felt like we take a stand toward figuring out how we can help provide better protection for the firefighters across the State of Utah.”

Smith said several of his past coworkers who went to Ground Zero on 9/11 were diagnosed with and passed away from cancers that were directly attributable to firefighting.

“In recent years, our profession has now been categorized as a ‘Class 1’ carcinogen,” Smith said. “Then, you look at all the toxins that we are exposed to—almost everything that burns today is synthetically made—it’s not those natural products we were used to years and years ago—and all of those synthetically-made products all produce carcinogens, and we are at the risk of developing something because of our direct exposure to those.”

Lehi Fire Department Chief Jeremy Craft, who is also on the task force, said he was diagnosed with renal cancer and prostate cancer after a simple screening a couple of years ago.

“I had no idea—once again, no symptoms,” Craft said. “Since then, I’ve had my right kidney removed, I’ve had my prostate removed, I’m currently going through hormone therapy.”

Craft said he believes his cancers are attributable to his work as a firefighter.

“That’s what I believe is that it came from the job, right, from being in super-heated environments that put off these toxins and just years of exposure,” Craft said. “(I’m a) fairly healthy person. I don’t really have any other reason that I would have these cancers, and both of these cancers through research have been tied back to the job of firefighting.”

The measure also expands the list of “presumptive” cancers to bladder, brain, colorectal, esophageal, kidney, leukemias, lung, lymphomas, melanomas, mesotheliomas, oropharynx, ovarian, prostate, testicular and thyroid.

“You get one of those (15) cancers that are outlined in the presumptive cancer legislation, then you are presumed to have got it on the job,” Wardle said. “That’s a big deal.”

Rep. Casey Snyder, R-Paradise, said it would be the “most robust” program of its kind in the country.

“We spent the time to look at the science and go through trials with folks and there is clear and convincing evidence,” he told KSL 5 by phone Sunday.

He said the measure was likely to come up in a floor debate on Tuesday or Wednesday.

Craft said early testing made a difference for him.

“I’m going to be able to get past this thing, have a decent quality of life,” he said. “If it had gone just a couple more years, that could have been completely different.”

He hoped other firefighters would also benefit from comprehensive screenings.

“When they’re symptomatic, they’re late to end-stage and then their quality of life, at minimum, is no good anymore,” Craft said. “A lot of them have lost their lives.”

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