Abstract:
Two new studies show the men and women who battle wildfires face an unseen hazard -- the effects from poisonous gasses and soot in wildfire smoke. Among the culprits are carbon monoxide (impairs judgement), microscopic carbon particles (lodges in the lungs), aldehydes (irritates air passages), and hydrocarbon-based substances (gene damage and cancer). Wildfire smoke also may accelerate aging, prompt fatal heart attacks, and trigger respiratory diseases (bronchitis or asthma). Overly heavy gear and inadequate filters are major problems. Developing protection has received little attention. Researchers have asked Congress to fund a $13.4 million study on health threat and respiratory protection.
Introduction:
The 80,000 men and women who battle the nation's wildfires have always known 
their lives were endangered by flames or heat or falling debris. 

But now, two new studies show they also face an unseen hazard: Their health is 
under siege from the poisonous stew of gases and soot in wildfire smoke. 

Among the culprits are carbon monoxide, which slows reaction and impairs 
judgment; microscopic particles of carbon that lodge in the lungs; aldehydes 
and acids that irritate air passages, and hydrocarbon-based substances and 
other chemicals that can damage genes and cause cancer, tests show. 

Wildland firefighters, whose only protection is the cotton bandanna covering 
their faces, lose as much as 10% of their lung capacity after one routine 
season, and the damage persists for weeks, according to the studies by the 
California Department of Health Services and the Johns Hopkins University 
School of Hygiene and Public Health in Baltimore. Combined, the researchers 
tested the lungs of more than 100 California wildland firefighters before and 
after the 1988 and 1989 fire seasons. 

Health experts also suspect that exposure to wildfire smoke may accelerate 
aging, prompt fatal heart attacks or cancer and trigger respiratory diseases 
such as chronic bronchitis or asthma. 

"After fires, they cough up black gunk. Then, after a week, they think they're 
back to normal. But our studies show their lungs aren't back to normal," said 
Dr. Robert Harrison, the California health department's chief of occupational 
health surveillance and the physician in charge of one of the studies. 

"For some of the firefighters, the drop in lung function was rather striking." 

The worst doses of carbon monoxide and other hazardous chemicals, which can be 
fatal, are given off when fires smolder, the stage in which firefighters spend 
most of their time, said Darold Ward, a U.S. Forest Service chemist. 

Mark Linane, who heads a national firefighting crew known as the Hotshots, said 
he has seen wildland firefighters so poisoned by carbon monoxide that they 
can't decide which shoe to tie. 

The hazards are particularly acute in Southern California, which is prone to 
more large, smoky fires than anywhere else in the nation. Its four-year drought 
has turned grasslands tinder dry, and its stagnant weather conditions and 
topography can trap smoke for days. 

Furthermore, forestry officials predict that the region's 1990 fire season will 
be devastating. 

The Yosemite fires, which have scorched more than 15,000 acres and are still 
out of control, and the recent Santa Barbara and Glendale fires, which 
destroyed nearly 500 homes, are only the largest of hundreds of blazes in the 
state. 

"We've got lots of summer ahead of us and we've already burned 600 or 700 
structures," said Deputy Chief Keith Metcalfe of the state's southern regional 
firefighting crew in Riverside. " . . . Because of the dryness, fires are 
burning more rapidly and more intensely." 

For nearly 10 years, urban firefighters have known that toxic smoke from 
burning structures and cars greatly increases their chances of cancer and heart 
disease. The bandannas that once were their only protection were replaced by 
air tanks and masks long ago. 

But the U.S. Forest Service and state and county fire officials have been 
unable to protect their wildfire crews because they know of no gear light 
enough for firefighters to wear while hiking miles in burning terrain or 
effective enough to filter out the wide variety of toxic materials in smoke. 

Furthermore, developing protection for the crews has gotten little attention 
and virtually no state or federal funding. 

National fire officials say they cannot get help from Congress unless they can 
prove firefighters are dropping dead. But because no mortality studies have 
been funded, all they have is the old joke heard around the fire camp: Just try 
to find a wildland firefighter still breathing after 60. 

"It's a crime that we continue to let these guys function like this," said 
James Johnson, director of hazard control projects at Lawrence Livermore 
National Laboratory in Northern California, which is developing respiratory 
gear for its firefighters. "They're a forgotten group, a hidden subset of 
people who have been ignored en masse. In all my 18 years of experience in 
industrial hygiene, I've never seen anything like it.". 

In the past, firefighters believed their coughing and congestion were fleeting 
side effects. But the new health studies have documented physiological changes 
in the lungs and airways that do not vanish with the smoke. 

The Johns Hopkins tests, conducted on 52 Northern California wildland 
firefighters during the 1988 season, showed that their lung function -- or flow 
of oxygen -- remained reduced by as much as 3% even eight weeks after exposure. 
The researchers said they have not determined if the lungs heal between seasons 
or if the damage accumulates. 

The California health department's tests on 63 firefighters showed they lost as 
much as 10% of their lung capacity during one six-month fire season, with an 
average loss of 4%. 

For many firefighters, the lung congestion turns into bronchitis or walking 
pneumonia three times a year, said Linane, 46, who has fought wildfires for 28 
years. 

"You take antibiotics and it eventually goes away," Linane said. "But then it 
comes back. And more often." 

During the four months of fires in 1988 at Yellowstone National Park, 12,000 
firefighters sought medical aid for respiratory problems, and about 600 needed 
a doctor's care after returning home, a U.S. Forest Service report says. 

Stan Stewart, 37, said he knew when he joined the Forest Service at 17 that the 
job was dangerous. But he didn't know he would feel sicker and sicker every 
year. 

"The doctor told me I look like I've smoked 10 packs of cigarettes a day all my 
life. But I've never smoked," said Stewart, foreman of the Hotshot crew in Los 
Padres National Forest near Ojai. "My lungs are probably shot. I'm a little 
more worried every year." 

Health researchers, usually reluctant to interfere in policy decisions, said 
they feel strongly enough about the hazard that they are urging fire officials 
to provide respiratory protection as soon as possible. 

"We're not surprised firefighters have decreased lung function. We just wanted 
to document it so the firefighting agencies would take action," said Dr. John 
Balmes, a pulmonary specialist and occupational health expert at UC San 
Francisco who helped with the state's study. 

Harrison said the forestry agencies and fire departments should at least warn 
their crews -- and potential recruits -- of the danger and consider rotating 
shifts more often to reduce smoke exposure. 

Although the findings of the national studies have not yet been published, word 
has spread to top officials in the state Forestry Department, who say they are 
now starting to search for protection for the agency's 3,500 full-time 
firefighters and about 2,000 seasonal ones. 

"I don't want to wait for firefighters to die," said Jack Wiest, the 
department's chief of fire planning and research. "We have to get on this right 
now." 

Part of the solution is to develop lightweight and long-lasting respirators. 

Air tanks and masks that are standard for fighting structural fires weigh 40 
pounds and last only 15 to 30 minutes, so they are impractical for wildfire 
crews that hike miles carrying as much as 60 pounds of hoses and tools. 

Developing technology, however, takes money, and none has been allocated by 
California forestry officials. 

"Respiratory protection for wildland firefighters is non-existent. And we're 
looking at a couple of years, at least, before something is developed," Wiest 
said. 

Last year, researchers from the U.S. Forest Service and Johns Hopkins asked 
Congress to fund a $13.4-million, four-year study to analyze the health threat 
and develop respiratory protection. 

But William Sommers, director of forest fire research for the National Wildfire 
Coordinating Group, said national funds are scarce. His group, which includes 
all federal and state agencies involved in wildland firefighting, now gets less 
than half the research money it received 15 to 20 years ago. 

This year, about $10 million, less than 1% of the federal dollars spent on 
fighting wildland fires, is set aside for research. Sommers said no other 
federal agency devotes that little, especially when jobs are life-threatening. 

Other hazard-prone occupational groups, such as chemical workers and 
construction crews, are much better protected, he said. Most employers are 
required by federal regulations to provide equipment that protects workers from 
dangerous fumes or other threats. 

Firefighters themselves -- who traditionally have brandished the attitude that 
if you can't stand the heat, you get out of the fire -- are now demanding 
protection. 

Their change in attitude came largely as a result of the unforgettable 
California summer of 1987. 

In what was called the "Siege of '87," 1,500 fires attacked the Klamath 
National Forest near the California-Oregon border in one month. A strong 
inversion layer settled into the valley, trapping the thick smoke for the 
entire time. 

The firefighters' union, concerned that crews were falling ill in record 
numbers, asked Johns Hopkins University to send a doctor. Dr. Patrick Ford, 
then a medical resident specializing in occupational health, looked at the 
firefighters' base camp, which was engulfed by a thick fog of black smoke. 

"We were miserable within hours of arriving. Nose burning, throat burning, eyes 
burning. And it didn't go away," said Ford, now an occupational medicine 
physician for the Navy in Philadelphia. 

Police officers at the camp, called in to direct traffic, were using 
flashlights at noon because they couldn't see 20 yards in front of them. Ford 
recalled that some of the officers wore gas masks, yet the firefighters wore 
only bandannas. The crews slept in makeshift tents -- cotton sheets strung over 
clotheslines. Because the camp offered no respite from the smoke, the 
firefighters breathed it 24 hours a day for several weeks. 

Ford questioned the firefighters about their health and was shocked by how many 
had alarming symptoms. He listened to their chests, and heard wheezing in 
almost every one. 

Candace Gregory, 33, the first woman battalion chief at the California 
Department of Forestry, recalls that 11 members on her crew of 15 fell ill. 

"You were literally living in the smoke. After a while, you were coughing all 
the time," she said. 

Immediately after the 1987 fires, Ford and other researchers from Johns Hopkins 
and the California health department mounted studies. 

"It's the old cliche of how you don't put up that traffic signal at a dangerous 
intersection until there's a lot of people killed," Wiest said. 

Now 46 and working his 28th fire season, Linane will retire in a few years. 
Looking back, he says, "When the adrenaline's pumping and you're saving 
property and lives and important natural resources, it seems worth it. But when 
I retire and I'm coughing and gagging, it may be another story. 

"The doctor here recommended that I take full pulmonary tests. I said, 'Yeah, 
yeah, sure.' But I never did it. I'm afraid he'll tell me there's really 
something wrong. We're all afraid to do it. None of us wants to know how much 
lung function we've really lost." 

YOSEMITE FIRES: While the flames slowed, concern remained high over possible 
new lightning storms. A3 


HOW POISONS IN SMOKE AFFECT FIREFIGHTERS 

Wild-land firefighters are exposed to a variety of poisonous substances in the 
smoke they breathe. When forest material or brush catches fire, the incomplete 
combustion turns the harmless vegetation into a barrage of dangerous chemicals. 

The Poisons: 

1. Carbon Monoxide -- This invisible odorless gas attacks the brain and nervous 
system of a firefighter, causing temporary disorientation, impaired judgment 
and slower reaction times. It also puts extreme stress on the heart. 

2. Inorganic Compounds -- Including lead and sulphur, these materials vary 
widely in smoke, depending on the content of the soil. Lead, found in high 
concentrations in smoke from Southern California wildland fires, can cause 
neurological damage. 

3. Aldehydes -- These strong irritants, especially acrolein and formaldehyde, 
are found in high concentrations in smoke. They are believed to cause much of 
the wheezing, coughing and eye irritation suffered by wild-land firefighters. 
Many of them are also carcinogens. 

4. Particulates -- These small pieces of black carbon lodge deep in the lungs, 
possibly causing asthma, chronic bronchitis and cancer. The smallest particles, 
which are the most dangerous to lungs, are found in smoldering fires, where 
firefighters spend most of their time. 

5. Ozone -- This potent chemical is formed during fires when there is strong 
sunlight and smoke is trapped by stagnant weather patterns. Human tests show 
ozone, which is also the main ingredient of smog, hampers lung function, while 
animal tests indicate it can cause chronic respiratory disease. 

6. Organic Acids -- Including formic acid and acetic acid, these chemicals are 
powerful irritants to the lungs, eyes and throat. 


The Protection: 

Bandanna: Wild-land firefighters wear nothing but a thin cloth on their face to 
protect their lungs from smoke. Fire officials say they haven't found 
lightweight respiratory equipment that is effective and safe for the crews, who 
have to trek uphill wearing 60 pounds of equipment. 

Equipment: Standard gear usually includes a hosepack, helmet, goggles, boots 
and a fire-retardant jumpsuit. 

Air Purifier: Fire crews at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory wear 1-pound 
air purifiers. The smoky air passes through filters that eliminate tiny soot 
particles that can lodge in lungs. Gases such as carbon monoxide, however, are 
not filtered out. National and state fire officials remain wary of the 
purifiers because they don't provide full protection from smoke. 


Polynuclear Aromatic Hydrocarbons: These Compounds, believed to be 
cancer-causing agents, attach to particles of soot in wild-land fires. Experts 
are uncertain whether the compounds cause genetic damage in blood cells. 

Sources: USDA Forest Service Intermountain Research Station, California 
Department of Health Services and Johns Hopkins University School of Hygiene 
and Public Health, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory 

