PFAS In Turnout Gear

Turnout gear is supposed to be the last line of defense, so what happens when the fabric itself contains PFAS forever chemicals that were never clearly disclosed? This week, we pulled a crucial interview from our archives with Dr. Graham Peasley, the researcher who tested dozens of firefighter turnout gear sets and found fluorine consistent with PFAS treatments across manufacturers, enough that his lab changed how they handled the samples. We talk about what that discovery means for firefighters who wear the gear, touch it daily, and store it around the station and sometimes at home. 

We also slow down and make the numbers make sense. Parts per trillion versus parts per billion is not a trivia question when PFOA and PFOS have documented links to cancers and immune impacts at very low levels. We address the online pushback and the consultant op-ed culture head-on: how to evaluate sources, what “trace” really implies, and why uncertainty about skin absorption is not the same as safety. Along the way we cover real exposure pathways, from hand transfer to station dust, and how AFFF firefighting foam fits into the broader PFAS story. 

Then we get practical. We share straightforward steps departments can take now: keep gear at work, wash and decon consistently, rethink storage locations, and treat labeling and ingredient disclosure like essential safety information. We also dig into the hard end-of-life problem: landfilling vs high-temperature incineration, and why repurposing old gear into bags or blankets can create new risks. If you care about firefighter health, PFAS exposure, and fluorine-free turnout gear that still meets NFPA performance needs, this conversation gives you a clear place to start. 

Subscribe, share this with your crew, and leave a review so more firefighters can find it. What policy change would you implement first at your station?

DISCLAIMER

The views, information, or opinions expressed by guests during this podcast are solely those of the individuals involved and do not necessarily represent those of AFSO21's Weekend Wrap-up Podcast and its hosts. Furthermore, any views or opinions expressed by guests are their own alone and unless otherwise stated, do not reflect the opinions, beliefs, or official policies of any organization, institution, or employer they may be associated with or employed by. 

Transcript

Why PFAS Lawsuits Matter Now

SPEAKER_02 0:04

Welcome everybody. You're listening to APSO 21's Weekend Wrap Up Podcast. Here is your host, Kevin Ferrar.

SPEAKER_01 0:16

Welcome everyone to another episode of AFSO21's Weekend Wrap-Up Podcast. I'm your host, Kevin Ferrar. Folks, as many of you know, I'm an advocate for the elimination of PFAS that's per in polyfluoral alkyl substances, simply due to their toxicity. PFAS are considered a carcinogen, and unfortunately, many who are exposed to PFAS, well, they become ill, often diagnosed with some type of cancer. Because of the known health effects of PFAS exposure, there's been an increased concern about firefighters exposed to PFAS, especially from firefighting foam and turnout gear. In fact, just recently, multiple U.S. states have local municipalities that are actively suing manufacturers of firefighter turnout gear over undisclosed PFAS forever chemicals used in their products. The lead federal class action lawsuit is centralized in Butte Silver Bow, Montana, with cities from the following states joining as plaintiffs: Little Rock, Arkansas, Worcester, Massachusetts, Baltimore, Maryland, and St. Louis, Missouri. In response to these lawsuits, we here at the Weekend Wrap-Up Podcast felt it was needed to pull out from our archives an episode that talks about PFAS and firefighter turnout gear and what firefighters should be concerned with and what they should be doing to mitigate exposure to the forever chemicals. So get ready as you listen to Dr. Graham Peasley, who, after being asked to investigate, discovered undisclosed PFAS and turnout gear. Not in just one set of turnout gear, but from 30 sets of gear from different manufacturers. So much that Peasley became concerned for the safety of his staff and ordered them to wear personal protective equipment and decontaminate themselves after handling the gear samples. So from the archives of the weekend wrap-up, I present to you the October 2020 interview that helped change how firefighters wear their turnout gear and what to look for when purchasing new gear. Dr. Peasley joins me today to discuss his work as well as clarify some discrepancies recently published online. Before I introduce Dr. Peasley, let's pause for a few moments to hear from our sponsor, Fire Department Coffee.

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SPEAKER_01 3:58

Welcome back, everyone. Let's get started on what I anticipate is going to be a very revealing interview. Dr. Peasley, welcome to the weekend wrap-up.

SPEAKER_02 4:08

Thank you, Kevin. It's good to be here.

SPEAKER_01 4:10

Dr. Peasley, to my knowledge, you're not a firefighter, and it's it's obvious I'm not a scientist, but fortunately we seem to be on the same page regarding PFAS contamination and exposure. So, you know, for the listeners who aren't familiar with you and your work dealing with PFAS and firefighter turnout gear, can you please share how you personally became involved in researching PFAS?

SPEAKER_02 4:35

Sure. PFAS in general, I began researching long before we researched the relevant to the fire services. But about 10 years ago now, I was at a conference and I have a technique where I was measuring flame retardants. And the woman

How Peasley Started Measuring PFAS

SPEAKER_02 4:50

at the conference said, Well, if you could do that with fluorine, boy, you'd have something to study now. And I didn't understand what PFAS were at the time, so I listened to her though, and I I went and I found out I could measure fluorine. And I called her back the week after the conference and said, I can measure it. And she sent me a sample of textiles actually at the time. And I put it in front of the beam. And you know, little less than two hours later, we had a signal, and I understood that that was quite unique to having a PFAS on it. In fact, we had to get us we we had a positive sample. They sent us a pair of dockers, which in those days were floor fluorinated, and we saw it right away, and I said, Is this what we're looking for? And we said, Well, we've got to test something that isn't, and we had no control, we had no idea what to do. So I made a student take off his shirt and we ran his shirt through the beam and there was no fluorine. And so I said, Okay, so this we can see it on textiles. And that began a very long and complicated study between the current method, which is very chemical instrumentation specific, and is quite quite precise, but very, very tedious to do. And then we published several papers on that our new technique, which is spectroscopic, could look at these things quickly. And then the rest, as they say, is history. We just gotten more and more projects, bigger and bigger projects, and they included food packaging, they included more textiles, they included groundwater and soils now. And we're actually trying to expand into blood. So we're we're trying to measure everything, but it's that's where the our interest in PFAS began.

SPEAKER_01 6:13

Okay, out outstanding. Well, you know, Dr. Peasley, before we discuss the the elephant in the room, and hopefully I'm I'm pronouncing his name, Dr. Kristowski. His op-ed is as I look at it, you know, I want to take a few minutes to talk about parts per billion versus parts per trillion, as hopefully this will be important later in the podcast. So in in 2016, the EPA established individual lifetime health advisory for of 70 parts per trillion for PFO and PFAS, PPFOS, which converts to, and assuming my fuzzy math is correct, 0.07 parts per billion. Is is that correct?

SPEAKER_02 6:55

That's correct. It's a factor of a thousand between trillion and billion.

SPEAKER_01 7:00

Okay. So we're gonna we're gonna keep that to the side for now, listeners, and we're gonna we're gonna circle back to that. So Dr. Peasley, you know, as I mentioned, the elephant in the room, and what many in the fire service community, on especially on social media, are talking about seems to be Dr. Kutowski's op-ed on the fire rescue website. And fire rescue stated, you know, the doctor, he's a consultant for for Lion. But you know, for me, after after reading through his op-ed, it seems, at least in my eyes, it it came across as an attempt to discredit your stellar work regarding PFAS and firefighter turnout gear. And in no way, you know, I'm not accusing Dr. Kartowski of anything. However, many have reached out to me and stated, you know, they think when they think of consultants hired by companies, and you know, you know, transparency, I'm I'm a fire protection emergency service consultant myself. They think you know consultants are perceived as being biased, you know, that they're working for that company, everything is geared directed towards that company. What are your what are your thoughts on that?

SPEAKER_02 8:09

I think any listener or investigator should always consider the sources. And we know, especially in this day and age, that the sources aren't all that they appear. It's pretty easy to put together something on the web and pretty easy to get something written up and published in in in terms of opinion pieces. You can say anything you like. And the ground truth thing is hard to do, especially if it's a scientific issue and it comes with parts per billion and parts per trillion. But you have to there's some basic research you can do. And this opinion piece I wasn't aware of until it came out. It it didn't particularly faze me until they try to sort of cloud the issues. And several of the things Dr. Kurtowski says is correct are correct. But then you start with something that's correct and then you extend well beyond where its correctness lies. And everybody's guilty of this. We all want the position to be represented, so they present represent a position. And well, if you assume that the Mississippi grows at so many centimeters a year, it's clear in a hundred years we'll have a bridge to Mexico or to uh Cuba. And that's not true. Something else happens, but you could make an extension that it it is not sensible from the material presented. And this particular opinion was written and I had to look up who it was, and he's never published on PFAS before, and in fact hasn't published much at all. And so this is this is not something that I worry about in terms of my my science because he doesn't do my science and he doesn't in fact do any science. He's a played consultant. And so I think that you should be aware that he's paid to say this. They're great points. I can repudiate them as they come up and we can talk about, you know, discuss them. Sure. I think that anybody who engages in somebody who has skin in the game, you know, if they're going to be interested in selling you something, a salesman will always have something to sell you. I think this is a sales pitch, and you are certainly well within your rights to listen to it and take to consideration. But then just do your own ground-truthing. If you're gonna buy an expensive pool or an expensive car, you're not gonna just believe the sales pitch. You're going to look it up on the web, you're gonna go to Blue Book, you're gonna do something to me. And so in all cases, just take a look at the data that's out there. And since it is the firefighters, you know, the the firefighters are the ones that are at risk here, I think that they have it upon themselves to look and sort of judge for themselves. My study was independent. I was not paid by any type of fire gear company or any chemical company to say what I did. In fact, they'd prefer I wouldn't. But I was contacted by a firefighter spouse who said that this stuff is in the gear. Is it true? And I measured it and it was in the gear. It's made with this material to keep it waterproof, and so it is a functional feature of it. Oh, well, it doesn't come off then. Well, it does come off. We proved that, and it comes off with exposure and with sunlight and with wear and tear, and it comes off at measurable amounts. They are small, they are trace amounts, they are part per billion, but a part per billion, as you said, is a thousand times more than part per trillion. But then the argument is, well, part per billion isn't dangerous to humans. Part per trillion is when you drink it in the groundwater, and that's very true. Uh, you have to have that lifetime exposure is that you're assuming that you drink the water every day for the rest of your life at 70 part per trillion, that will have measurable health effects and there will be bad. Since you don't eat your turnout gear, then, and you shouldn't, that's a good uh good lesson for your listeners if they're if they're ever attempted to. Please don't lick the turnout gear.

Parts Per Trillion Vs Billion

SPEAKER_02 11:40

But uh what if you don't drink it, if you don't put it into drinking water? Well, there's two issues with that. One is that all the turnout gear will go into the turn will go into drinking water because we dispose of it in landfills. And that means all that chemical will come off in a landfill sometime. But that's a generation ahead. Your kids will be drinking it, but not you. Well, that bothers me the first point. But the second point is that if it's on the material and rubs off, and in our paper we described for the first time ever, my students were handling the gear and they measured the fluorine coming off on their hands. Which means, you know, most firefighters aren't going to wear nitrile gloves to handle gear. Nobody ever has, nobody ever told them to. And I'm not recommending that at the moment. I'm just saying that be aware that that's the source of these chemicals. It's on your skin. If you wash your hands before you eat and after you eat, and before you touch your face and before anything else happens, you're probably not going to ingest much. You're not going to inhale much of this. But does it go through the skin? And nobody knows. There are old published studies by companies that say it doesn't go through skin, it's all perfectly safe. But we've heard that from DuPont before, and it's not true. It will go through skin, but I don't know how far and how fast. Maybe it's not significant, and that's what we're in the process with several other groups trying to do studies on skin. But if this goes through the skin, then it represents a source of material that could get into the firefighter's blood. I don't know if it's bigger or or less than the source of material that gets in from A triple F. The aqueous foam forming foams, Class B foams are a tremendous source of this stuff. We see it in all the drinking water in the country because of the military base's use of it. But the fire civilian fire departments use it. And if you're occupationally exposed, could it get in from skin absorption? Could it get in from ingestion, accidental ingestion? Absolutely. And those things we don't know are bigger effects or lesser effects. All I'm saying is that this is a potential source and needs to be studied. And oh, by the way, why are we using this? And that's the that's the last kicker. I mean, in the paper, we uh we we don't say stop wearing gear. That's the last thing we say. You need to wear your PPE to stay safe. You gotta you gotta tell your listeners to that. But if you know that the gear is especially a highly technical piece of apparatus to keep you safe, it's keep you safe at 300 degrees in a flame, then be aware it's treated with chemicals that are keeping you safe and keeping you dry in this case. And could it be made with other chemicals that aren't hazardous that will keep you just as dry? And the answer is yeah, there are the ways to make this stuff that doesn't involve PFAS and seems to have no other dangerous chemicals involved. So why couldn't we use materials like that? And that's where the argument falls back to the manufacturers. What's the reason? And there are no reasons for the outer shell. There are a couple of rules in an FPA, we can make out of shells that are N FPA compliant, 1971 compliant. And that's been shown because a company's already done it. But, and this is where we're trying to do, we're trying to get market forces to move towards fluorine-free. Why wouldn't we? Well, there's a rule that you can't get rid of the inner liners at the moment because they have to be made out of Teflon. Oh, but Teflon's perfectly safe. Well, once again, in the grand scheme, that's a good statement. If you ate a Teflon roll, it would go passing right through you and you would be relatively safe. Wouldn't be good, I wouldn't recommend it. But there are things involved in the manufacture of Teflon that are A, bad for the environment, and B, stick to the material that's made. And we discovered that coming off the moisture barriers as well. And so there's but those PFAS are safe. There's no such thing as a safe PFAS. Nobody's demonstrated that they're safe. We have in fact demonstrated that all PFAS have some toxicity, and we just haven't finished the studies on all of them. So all the ones we looked at are toxic and all of them are persistent. And my guess is that in a few years we'll have enough evidence to show even the short chain ones that they claim are safe are in fact maybe what we call a regrettable substitution. They may be more toxic. Who knows? And a little bit every day, does that add up to a single exposure to ACF? I don't know. Those are questions that still need to be answered, and we don't try to answer them all in the paper. But we just want to make people aware, and now the right people are aware. NIOSH is actually conducting a study on it, and that's the good study to be done. And we are conducting skin studies and things like that. So we'll know more in as time goes along. But I think in the meanwhile, it's good to get that information out to the firefighter. They have the right to know what risk is. They they're good risk analysts as it is. They're going to determine whether the structure fire is going to be handled this way or that way. Why don't we just give them they know how to decon after fire to get rid of those combustion products? Those costs for combustion products are terribly toxic. And we know that, so we know how to minimize our exposure to them. So now we tell them one other thing to minimize your exposure to. You know, this gear, while we still make it this way, is going to be coated with material that comes off. You really do want to wash it, you really do want to decon from it, you really don't want to be lounging in it when you don't have to be. And that's that's not a huge change in policy. It's just something to be aware of, and people are doing that. And if we discover later on that's uh overly precautionary, we don't need to, it hasn't cost a lot of effort at this point. But my guess is that nobody's gonna be able to prove this stuff is safe, and it it is is there. And so yes, we saw it in parts per billion level on the coat, and we were able to extract even more than that of the light

Responding To The Consultant Op-Ed

SPEAKER_02 16:40

chain stuff. We were able to get part per million levels, which is a million times greater than the part per billion. But again, we don't drink it, so it was but all this stuff comes off on your skin, and if it goes through, then we have an issue, or if you ingest some of it, that's a that's a concern, and I think the firefighters need to be aware of that and just react accordingly. It's it's not stop business, it's it is to make policies to keep you guys as safe as possible, and that's the purpose of it.

SPEAKER_01 17:07

Sure, exactly. And and getting into these calculations, you know, in in the op-ed, you know, Dr. Kartowski talks about they found tiny trace levels of PFOA, less than one part per billion. And you know, I always say to the layperson, that sounds like you know the amount found was somewhat insignificant, but once you know we start doing the the conversions, and it sounds like my my math is is correct, that that comes out to about 14 times more than what the EPA's lifetime health advisory was. And even you know, I went through I went through your your work and found you know there was a a used 2014 firefighter pant thermal liner that was tested and uh it indicated 850 parts per billion of PFA, and converting that that sounds like about 12,000 times more than the EPA's 70 part per trillion lifetime health advisory. If that's correct, I mean, and that sounds significant. Should knowing that, you know, as you talked about the material does discard, you know, like dust and and things, you know, it's and we obviously we we're not gonna lick the turnout gear, but when it does get wet, it gets on our skin or you know, our face. Yeah. Firefighters, instead of pulling out, you know, a tissue or whatever, they'll just wipe their face with the the sleeve of their arm. So should we, as firefighters, be concerned for our health and safety when using firefighter turnout gear? And and and I totally get it, you know, we the what we have today is what we have today, and we, you know, uh we don't have a replacement yet, so we got to use what we have. But is there is there valid or significant concern for their health and safety, you know, with with this gear, knowing that that amount of PFOA found is is pretty substantial.

SPEAKER_02 19:04

Yeah, I'm going to expand upon that just a little bit and say it's not just PFOA, but we found a whole bunch of other stuff as well. So the PFOA is what is regulated and what we know causes cancer, and what we know causes four other types of disease. It also uh causes immune suppression, and we know that. So immune suppression is not a good thing in anybody, especially not somebody who's exposed to a lot of other elements. And so I think that that's the biggest concern. Yes, PFOA is very toxic, and you are right to be concerned about it. It comes in several different forms. It can come from ACLF, it doesn't come from combustion products, it it unless you're in a burning Teflon factory or something. It's it's not going to be in the combustion products widely. But it does come from ACLF exposure, it does come from your drinking water if you've had A triple F anywhere nearby, and it does come from the gear. Now you don't lick the gear, you don't eat the gear. The fact that it's 12,000 times above the health advisory limit means that there's a fair amount there. You certainly wouldn't want to put that in the landfill because it's all going to get in the drinking water, and a single coat could contaminate far more than a swimming Olympic-sized swimming pool, or 400 of them, in fact. So, what happens if we put this all in the landfill? That's where it ends up. So those are bigger questions. The real question for the firefighters, what happens when I wear it? What happens when I take it on and off? What happens if my kids get into it? Those are things that I would be very worried about. And I would say the precautionary principle is this is work gear, this is designed to keep you safe, it belongs at work, it belongs to be washed separately from everything else, and as long as it's not to be worn when you don't need it. If you're not actively on a call, don't wear it. And that type, those are sort of simple policies. Yeah, it's a pain to put it on and off, but if you're interested in your health, I think that would be a very simple precaution for now. And those are the types of things we're trying to get to. The numbers can be confusing. We can always measure different gear. The the fact that this was a 2014 gear, you know, the companies assured me they all switched in 2012. Well, not exactly. And the fact that the chemical that they make the go-up with now is made with both C6 and C8 precursors, those are chemicals that are not PFOA, but they turn into PFOA with exposure. Oops. And so that means they're legal to manufacture, but they aren't technically PFOA. But after they oxidize in the air or in the bloodstream, they'll turn into PFOA. And that's that's not good. Then, you know, the more recent stuff may be made with C6, but nobody has shown that C6 is safe. In fact, the Europeans are now banning C6. It'll take them another six years to do so. But the C6 is going to get banned there. We're going to find some wonderful correlation with C6 and disease. It lasts in the blood longer than C8 as a sulfonate, a little less as an acid.

How PFAS Can Leave The Gear

SPEAKER_02 21:40

And there are going to be studies saying we shouldn't be using that either. So I'm I'm concerned with treating this whole thing. And again, it gets back to the point of do we need it? Is it essential use? Firefighting is an essential service. Firefighters are essential. To keep them safe is essential in my mind. I think we shouldn't waste our firefighters. We should have them in protective gear that works. There is nothing about PFAS that makes this gear essential. There's nothing essential about PFAS in the gear. You can make a perfectly safe garment without it. And that's been demonstrated. The company has already made one. So why are we arguing about this? Why wouldn't we just take the precautionary approach of not buying the company line? And you know, it's it's the sales rep of the chemical companies, not anybody else who's pushing this. And so we could live without that chemical for all the reasons that we're trying to pass along to our children of what we put in a landfill, but also what we're exposed to on the job. And if this isn't necessary, why are we even talking about it? We just should switch. And that's what I'm hoping to drive and say, look, if there's a company that'll make it without, I think we should order those things from the company, and why not? Because that will be the market force way of driving it. We could wait till it regulates. Europe regulates everything. America doesn't really regulate this. This is all self-regulatory. And there will be lawsuits and things that will help drive people away. But I think it's more important. I'm not worried about those. I'm worried about just getting the best thing in front of the firefighters so they have the choice. You can say you can have this gear with PFAS and this gear without. This is a known carcinogen. This one doesn't have carcinogens built into it. You still have to decon an ether suit because the combustion products are carcinogenic. And that that's your real worry, but that's why you wear the SCBA and things like this. This one was just insidious because people didn't know it was there. And that's what we're trying to point out.

SPEAKER_01 23:22

So you you mentioned about disposal, and it's that's it's it's very interesting in that you know I'm I'm retired from the the Air Force, and you know, we had you know well over 10,000 firefighters just in the Air Force that had turnout gear. And we, you know, back a few years they switched over between proximity turnout gear to structural. Well, once that gear reaches its 10-year retirement life, they have to they have to dispose of it. And so if we if we can't if we can't simply put it in a garbage can and take it to a landfill, which a lot of places do, how do we how do we properly dispose of that so it doesn't leach into the the ground in drinking water?

SPEAKER_02 24:08

That's an excellent question, and there's not a lot of answers yet. The correct way to get rid of this, the only way known at the moment, is high temperature incineration. So you send it to a high temperature incinerator, and the Europeans have those and they use them quite frequently. The US hasn't never really done that. We have so much land in the US that we typically bury our trash, and that has led to all sorts of unfortunate things coming out of our landfills. But the high temperature incineration is costly. Who's paying that? You know, it costs to buy it. Are you going to pay more to get rid of it? Uh so we typically will send it to the academies where they're teaching people how to become firefighters. We send it to Mexico. Well, great for that gift, guys. Um I think there's all sorts of ways it can be gotten rid of. None of them are particularly appealing at the moment. I would love to have a program to get this textiles not in the landfill, treat the hazard as waste and then dispose of it with an incineration. Uh again, people are not terribly proppy with incinerators. What happens if they're not high temperature? They're old ones and they don't work well. Well, that's a that's a bit of an issue too. But I think that that's what we're again, that's that's all that's a long-term worry. And there can be regulations on what would go in the landfill and things like that. Might have to be pay money to go to a contaminated landfill, contaminant landfill. Michigan's got a lined landfill, they put hazardous waste in. But so far this hasn't met the category of that because nobody's talking about how much comes off. But there are literally a pound of material built into these suits. And that's, you know, you just said 10,000 in the Air Force, but there's there's a 1.2 million firefighters in the US. And each of them has a suit or two. And not talking about the volunteers and the military. I mean, it's there's a lot of suits out there, and they're all going to hit the landfill if we're not careful. And so that's that's uh that's a much bigger discussion than you and I. And we have to think about that in the in terms of ecology too.

SPEAKER_01 25:52

Well, another thing I don't know if you're aware of, you know, I've seen on on the internet and everything, some companies, small companies out there, they're they're actually repurposing old turnout gear. And they're making they're making bags, they're making blankets. And uh, you know, what what are your thoughts on that? I mean, I was shocked when I saw it, and you know, after reading up on PFAST, I'm like, why are we doing this?

SPEAKER_02 26:19

I mean, it's it's it's because they didn't know it had a chemical on it. They assume that we're they're supporting the fire surfaces, and I lord that, you know, that's a great thing to do. They can sell it and make money for the it's like selling the pink t-shirts. Why wouldn't you wear a pink t-shirt and say, I support breast cancer? Right. I mean, that's that's the type of thing you do. And here's somebody repurposing use turnout gear. And you first off you think about, well, there's also combustion products. Well, it's washed. Okay, but this PFAS is structurally intact in it, and as it uh gets aged, especially the age gear, we found out had more coming off. So yeah, used in a handbag. Oh no. So I I sent I sent the the clip I found a couple ads and I sent it around to some of my exposure scientist friends, and there were quite a few OMGs coming back on the on the on the on the text and things like that. It's like, you know, this we we've we've done this to ourselves again and again. Remember back, and one of the exposure scientists we talked about is about the flame retardants, and we used to put them into polyurethane foam, and that's fine because it's in a seat cushion, you don't eat the seat cushion. Well, guess where we take old polyurethane foam? We used to put them into gymnastic pits that they were mosh pits that the gymnasts and these are all prepubescent girls that jump into the pit, and this is an endocrine disruptor, it destroys their reproductive organs.

SPEAKER_01 27:32

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 27:33

That's not good. And it you took this as science to make a paper to say we should do that. And you know, you sort of cloud of dust every time the gymnasts used to dump into these pits, and it's the same, you know, the professional football players now on turf grass, they get the the black dust coming up when they breathe it. This these are things we do to ourselves, and the turnout gear is one more avenue of it. There's nothing inherently wrong with making fire safe materials, and making it dry was important. It doesn't get water weight in the material. But making it dry is not the overriding, the only thing that turnout gear does. And I think you can still get turnout gear that does everything else, and you can keep it dry with you know more standard chemicals that aren't the A, more expensive, and B uh potentially very hazardous, I think, when they come off.

SPEAKER_01 28:17

Well, Dr. Peasley, you know, you I I heard you talk about you know the European nation, you know, regulations and everything. And and regarding you know, firefighter health and safety, in in 2018, the state of Washington, the Governor Jay Insley signed into law legislation that requires anyone selling firefighter turnout gear containing PFAS to notify the buyer. Well, hearing that, do you believe other states, and it sounds like it's it's an obvious, you know, do you think other states or other nations should draft and pass similar legislation for this?

SPEAKER_02 28:50

I think that's a very clever idea because it it just says there's a risk there, guys, know it up front. And it doesn't prevent you from buying it. It just says, you know, if I have a choice, do I want the carcinogenic one or the not? And you have to evaluate whether it works for you in your situation. You know, I understand there are different levels of of fires you face and things like this, but you know, the the the standard turnout gear is meeting a very conform, very high standard in the US, and I think we should continue to keep that standard. But I think that the worry is we may be, we may have not looked at the individual ingredients. And I think having an ingredient list is important. California has done that, and in fact, California is adding that same law that Washington did to their laws too. So once California does it, that's 20% of the nation. That starts getting lots of attention. And I think I think other states will follow suit. It's unfortunate the federal government can't do regulations like that, but I think it's it's good enough to have states that have large market forces like California, and they have a Prop 65 warning. It says if you have P4 or PFOS in your product, you have to declare it as potential carcinogen. And you know, the turnout gear has been accepted from that, and it's not going to be in the new law. And they, you know, you have to put a label on it saying it contains carcinogenic materials. You you may not get cancer because it may not get into you, but it may also be now that you try to dispose of it, do you cut the label off and hide it when you dispose of it? No, you're throwing the carcinogenic chemical in the landfill. And that will be, those are the types of laws that will pass that will get people thinking about, well, where should it go when I'm done with it? And that's the last thing you want the fire departments to have to deal with. I mean, you've got enough regulations and restrictions and and paperwork to fill out as it is. The last thing you want to do is now I got it, and now I've got this stuff piling up in the back room. What do I do with it? We really would like somebody at the legislative end to say, look, there should be a policy to buy this stuff back, or it should be the the company that sold it to you should take it back.

Practical Steps To Cut Exposure

SPEAKER_02 30:40

Okay, but I'm not sure what they're gonna do with it either. And so, you know, there's there's no clear-cut, easy solution for what happens unless we have some sort of national program to take care of that. And I think that everybody's dealing with it. The companies will tell you, well, fire gear is not the only thing that's fluorinated, and they're absolutely right. There's a lot of athletic wear that's also fluorinated. The outer coats used to be fluorinated, but they're now all moving away from it, interestingly enough, because they were picketed back in 2014. And so all the Columbia jackets and Nike and all those places are now moving away from uh for uh fluorine. They managed to find waterproofing without it. If they can do it, I'm pretty sure our turnout gear manufacturers can do it too. And so if we if we get rid of it, that's the first step, and what's already buried is buried. But I think that it's going to be, you know, step by step, we reduce the exposure for all of us, both our families and and our uh firefighters, because the idea that we don't use ACF anymore that's fluorinated is catching fire. The army has now phased it out, all but aircraft carriers and submarines that will be phased out by 2024. We're not using the A triple F anymore. And that will be a huge change in our drinking water. And just as getting rid of this gear will remove another step, it doesn't remove other sources. I mean, you might have uh industry that still uses PFAS, and it might be in your drinking water, but not up at other people's. But step by step you take this approach of removing it and increasing education, and labeling is a big part of education. Every time you put that new gear on, it it's pretty nice to have a new set of gear, and you you look at the labels because it tells you how to wash it and how not to do this to it, and you know, all warrantries avoid if you put a pair of scissors to it, right? But it's it's one of those things that it and you have specialists who deal with this. So I think having it there suddenly starts people's mind thinking that, you know, I don't think I want my kids playing with this in the trunk of the car. I got a firefighter here who works two jobs and he keeps a set in his car. And he's like, I think I'm not gonna do that anymore. And yeah, I know it's I know it's not, but you know, if you're gonna ask them for a set at each place, and that's what's your that's your your price now. And that means you're not carrying it around, you're not letting the kids play with it, and and you know, making other products out of it. It's a wonderful idea. Let's do it with the the insignia or something that isn't gonna be as toxic. And I think that I don't I don't want to squash entrepreneurs or people that are making handbags out of this. But that's but that's not my major concern. I'm more I'm more concerned about the health of the people dealing with this stuff. And and the firefighters are somebody that you know, why weren't we told about this? Why why why isn't it just labeled anyway? Well, they don't want to worry about this, and it's perfectly safe. It's trace amounts. Well, no, no, and no. It's not perfectly safe, and it's not just trace amounts, it's it's there, and health effects occur with trace amounts. So the fact that it's trace amounts of bad stuff. And oh, by the way, there's other things besides P4. There's maybe for every P4 molecule, we're finding maybe a hundred other fluorinated molecules, so it's a hundred times worse. So all those numbers multiply by a hundred, and then suddenly you realize why I'm concerned about this. I can't prove that all 100 fluorine molecules are dangerous. Maybe, maybe some of them are safe, but we haven't found one that's safe yet. Uh so I'm I'm gonna be I'm gonna be pretty proactive and say, look, I don't want I if my son were in the fire services, I would ask him not to be put in this stuff because that's what I would prefer. I would want him to be safe. I want him to wear the best gear out there, and they do make excellent gear. There's no doubt about that. But there's not a single chemist among the companies that make this gear. They buy the cloth from another material that builds it, and they even they don't buy the chemicals. They buy the chemical from a chemical company up the food chain. And the only one who's at fault here is the one pushing this chemical up the food chain because these uh manufacturers of cloth and the manufacturers of gear, they just believe what's being told to them, and they were told it was safe. Well, should question what you get told, and I think that's true for all of us. You should question me, go look up with the literature. I've I've got everything reported in literature, and you can reproduce the test studies, and people have. So that's the that's not the issue for me. I think the issue is that now what do we do about it? And I'm not going to tell the fire services how to do it. They're you're the experts on how you run a station, how you run a department, and you know what's the procurement procedure and the disposal procedure, and what are the policies for the guys, you know, having the rookies uh mop the floor a little bit more to get the dust up. Yeah, that might be a new policy. And yeah, sorry, rookies. Uh but it's one of those things that that happens. And if it keeps us all a little safer, that's a pretty low-hanging fruit. We are about to publish a study on the how on the dust in the fire stations, and that's gonna be pretty awful. There's there's this PFAS and all the dust. Wow. So I think that there's a I th and it's associated with where the gear is stored. Oops. And so I think this is going to be, you know, storage and usage patents and things like that are going to be ones that you want that you want to uh affect some sort of general policies and not and not try to be specific and rate for rules to come down from the government. That's never gonna happen quickly. But you educate the the firefighters who are in charge of procurement and in charge of training and say, look, do we have an option here? And the answer will be options will become available. And it's not gonna happen overnight, and it shouldn't be more expensive, it should be cheaper, actually. Uh so but the suits may not look as pretty, or they may they may get dirtier with quicker. No, all the better for the companies, they'll sell more of them. Uh but I think it's it's one of those things that we have remember the mentality when we had to wear the the SCBAs the first time. I mean, there were guys who are tough, they weren't gonna wear it. That got changed. It took a generation, but everybody's now wearing it because you know it's it's don't be stupid. And uh we know we know smoke is dangerous. I'm not gonna say this is as dangerous as smoke. It isn't, I don't think it is, uh, but I think it is an unknown risk that we're uh you know unknowingly exposed to. Why is it there? Uh and is can we do something simple to get rid of it? And you know, just buying other just buying without it would be something simple we could do. And it's done. In 10 years we're all done, and we don't have to worry about this anymore.

SPEAKER_01 36:53

You know, you you mentioned earlier about an ingredient listing for these. And you know, we we see it in we see it in food, you know. We go through the grocery stores and you you know we always look at the labels and they're like, oh, it has you know it contains this or that, and we we base our decisions whether we want that product or not. Is an ingredient list necessary or you know, it sounds like it's important when it comes to products used in the firehouse? You know, we a lot of the a lot of the safety data sheets that I found for HRF or high expansion foam, it's got a high percentage of unknown toxicities in the ingredients. And you know, we we don't know what those are, but do you think it's you know for the end users like firefighters or who you know, whoever uses these products, is it important and should manufacturers be providing that ingredient list so end users or the buyers can make a decision whether they want that particular product or not?

SPEAKER_02 37:54

Absolutely. I mean, this is just it it doesn't add a great deal of expense. The the owners of the material, the manufacturers have to know what they're putting into it. They may not know the toxicity, and that might add expense. So they may not be able to produce toxicity reports, but they certainly know what chemicals

Disposal Risks And Incineration Reality

SPEAKER_02 38:10

they use. It's just a list. They have to buy new ones when they run out, right? Yeah. So they have that list already on electronic format. They don't want to tell you because if there is a carcinogen later identified, maybe when they started making it wasn't known. But now somebody says, oh, that particular chemical causes cancer, then we live in a very litigaceous society and people will come after you and say, I got this cancer because I was touching your gear. And that's that's the way the US regulates. It sounds a little appalling, but we wait for a cancer to happen and then somebody sues, and then no longer that chemical is being used. Yeah, we haven't banned any chemicals in this country. So I think that labeling lore is a very low-hanging fruit. It doesn't cost a lot to the manufacturer, and they have to declare it. And if they discover in their declaration that they were using an ingredient they didn't know, and why are they using it, then they can start planning now about, you know, it's in there, but I'm planning ahead. My plan B is to phase that out and make it what we call greener chemistry. And so those labeling laws have had that effect. And it's a it's a very simple law, it doesn't send people to jail, it doesn't allow people to sue. It just says declare what you're making it out of. Oh, well, it's proprietary, I don't want to tell you. Well, you can tell us in general, and you can tell us, you know, you could make these things out of asbestos if we wanted to. They don't, thankfully. But we know asbestos is bad, but asbestos is legal. You can make anything out of asbestos still. The reason you don't is that the mesothelioma lawyers will get you on late-night TV and they will sue you out out of existence. And, you know, that's one way of regulation that works. I mean, there's no more asbestos used in this country because of it. Europe banned it, and they also don't have asbestos. Which one is quicker? Well, quite frankly, skewing somebody is quite quick. We can the paper we put out on fast food packaging, every fast food packaging that we mentioned in the paper, all 20 of them, the companies switched away from PFAS within 18 months. And I don't think there's a single war uh rule that any government could have passed, of course, that is quicker than that. They just didn't want any association. They they sell hamburgers, they sell French fries, they sell pastries. They don't want any association with chemicals that are bad. Just make it go away. And it turns out going back to the other paper was cheaper. They just the paper manufacturers loved it. They said, Great, we sold more. Yeah. Everybody sw everybody switched their their gear out next time, and it was easy to do. And so it was also a lot easier than when you have a whole built textile industry around this fabric. But you know what? It's just innovate, guys. You can come up with something new and different and works just as well, if not better. And the end result will be that it's gonna be some work for some people to transition. I know that, and I'm not forcing anybody to do it. I certainly don't want any harm to come to these companies, I want them to be in business and and stay as productive as they are now. Absolutely. But you know, I I would I would, as a firefighter, really demand my health comes first, and it does. Yeah. And I think that the more people talk about it, there's a little bit of outrage about the rules of how these things are made. And I think you know, the fire services should look within. The issue I have is, I mean, the you have a National Fire Protection N FPA agency that certifies gear, and I think that's essential. You get to look at what's in it. Um you have firefighters on that and people in service who understand what the requirements of a gear should be. Technical experts, which sounds like a reasonable addition, until those technical experts have competing interests. And so when you have chemical companies sitting on your panels to decide that their chemical is safe to use in your gear, I think you have a conflict of interest. And I'm not saying they're not experts, but they know where their paycheck's coming from, and if you buy more of their chemical, that helps the company. And I think that they should be non-voting members, certainly, and they should be consultants, as as as rights would have it. And you know, independence is a wonderful thing to have, and I think the the firefighting association has made good decisions and has excellent gear, certainly, but they're letting chemicals slip through, and because they're not chemists in per se, and the chemical experts they're having are often employed by the companies that make the chemicals, which gives you a slanted perspective as to what their safety will be. Am I being over cautious? Maybe, but I'd prefer to be on that side than not cautious enough. And there's no way that putting parts per billion or hundreds of parts per billion on your skin of a carcinogenic chemical is a good thing. It might wash off, you may be fine, but what if it doesn't? That's that's an issue, and we will find out more as we go in the next couple of years. Um and it could be worse than we thought. But my my hope is that it isn't. I hope it isn't a big gear issue. But why is it going in the landfill anyway? So if we get rid of it in general, it'll help all of us. And the nobody in any industry has come back with why is it necessary? It isn't. You can get waterproofness out of other chemicals, and the they should know that, and they are still working on it in response to that one.

SPEAKER_01 42:58

We we talked about cancer off and on through throughout the the interview here, and you know, in in this particular op-ed that that we've been talking about here, the author states the connection between PFAS and cancer is extremely weak. And I I I sort of took that personally because you know, as a firefighter, I've been repeatedly exposed to the products containing PFAS, and I've spoken and befriended a lot of firefighters diagnosed with cancer. And finally, you know, the VA and doctors are are recognizing that PFAS increases risks of cancer and everything with that. You know, so you know, some claim that we as firefighters, because of the whole PFAS and firefighter turnout gear and products that we use, that we're we're sort of acting out of fear. And the information we have access to is misleading, unsupported, and therefore readers have unnecessarily caused a panic within the fire service community. Are we as firefighters being nonsensical? you know are we are we jumping the gun here or is there some you know do we have valid concern between PFAS you know no matter where it comes from and and cancer and it's not just firefighters I I look at the overall population.

SPEAKER_02 44:17

No I think it's a great question Kevin and you have the right to know what determines your health. Nobody's gonna be perfect and predict what your health outcome will be. But if you look at the fire services

Repurposed Gear Bags And Hidden Hazards

SPEAKER_02 44:30

in general cancer rates are elevated significantly above the general population and you guys are very well aware of that. And it used to be cardiac events used to kill the firefighter the most and that was because you were lugging heavy equipment up and down ladders. But where did that that took over that took second place in 1975 or something like that. And ever since then cancer rates have been growing and it's largely because the fires are more toxic. There are more plastics and more carcinogens that will win the flames so then we put breathing apparatus on and again safer for the environment safer for the firefighter in that environment. So now why don't the cancer rates start going back down or at least leveling off and they don't they continue to increase and so there are other things we're obviously exposed to there could be all sorts of predispositions towards cancer and things like that that come from chemicals we don't know about. PFAS is hundred percent associated with cancer that's been proven beyond a doubt in a court of law that PFOA and PFOS cause testicular and kidney cancer. Bang. 69,000 people gave their blood to prove that and DuPont paid $671 million because of it and they're still playing. And that's that's the outcome of that C8 study back in 2012. Now we just mentioned PFOA and PFOS that's two of the 4,000 or 5,000 chemicals that are called PFAS in general we didn't do the studies on the other 4,900 and 6009. That's just the two that they did and it took them 10 years and $20 million to prove that we know that the other chemicals have very similar properties but they go to different organs. So my gut feeling would be if it's going to an organ it can do damage there. We don't know what the damage is and we don't know which one is strongest to it's very hard to prove what causes cancer as you know it's often your your immune system responds to cancer and stops it most of the time, but not all the time and when it takes hold and your immune system becomes compromised you are more susceptible to genetic forms of cancer. For example breast cancer and prostate cancer are both genetically linked to a gene that turns on or off. But if you have a healthy immune system you don't get cancer. What happens if this chemical doesn't attack and cause cancer what happens if it attacks your immune system and then your body doesn't recognize or becomes less adept at fighting cancer then you get all sorts of weird ones. So there's a study published several studies published not on firefighters but on transplant patients that after they get a after you get a liver transplant or a lung transplant or any sort of organ transplant they're going to put you on immunosuppressants because they don't want the body to reject the new organ, right? And it saves your life and so you do that. And then they did a uh you know a study of 10,000 or 2000 transplant patients and they said what what cancers do they get 10 years later? And they are higher cancer levels and they get of all things leukemia multiple myeloma soft squamous all these types of uh soft cell cancers which remarkably are the same things that firefighters are getting leukemia is number one right and multiple myelomas up there kidney cancers up there like PFOA but it doesn't have to but people say well prostate cancer is there and that that's not associated with PFOA and they're absolutely right it isn't but could it be associated with a genetic predisposition that's now being triggered by the reduction in in this this is a cancer is a complicated disease and I don't pretend to understand it.

Labeling Laws And Procurement Pressure

SPEAKER_02 47:50

But I know that when you have a definite link to some cancers and you have a link to hypertension and thyroids and preclampsyopregnancy induced hypertension and ulcerative colitis it's affecting multiple organs and that's just C8 alone. What happens if we get C6? What happens if we do the sulfonates what happens if we do the the ethers that are now being generated what happens if we have these long molecules that we know are even worse that are the precursors. So those are all chemicals we don't know what the action are we don't know what the mixture in the body would be. So yeah I think that the link between cancer and PFAS is undeniable and well established anybody wants to look up the CH study or go see dark waters that'll they'll describe some of the some of the diseases that were found and the how the industry thought they were getting around it. The chemical industry got scalded pretty badly on that one because they they've lost several hundreds of millions of dollars of lawsuits now because in the drinking water it kills a lot of people and so we're not drinking this stuff maybe it's safe on your skin I'd be I wouldn't take the dollar bet on that thing. I would I you know if I've got the world's best drying agent it's the world's best surfactant it keeps the the the water away from you and and oils and water separate well the human body and the skin in particular is a very carefully designed membrane to keep water and oil separate. This is the world's best surfactant it's designed to go through that thing. What if? And that's the that's the most concerning part. And so what if we're exposing ourselves unknowingly to the compounds so we should look at every compound that we're exposed to in life and sort of say what's necessary what's convenient it's sort of convenient that the this is the best drying agent ever but what happens if we took the second best this time and it works under you know as as it passes an FPA 1971 it works keeps the gear dry yeah then why wouldn't I live with something that doesn't have a known carcinogen in it as opposed to one that we know does exactly well Dr.

SPEAKER_01 49:48

Peasley this is this is your opportunity to to talk about any issue you feel is is of utmost importance regarding you know PFAS turnout gear firefighter health and safety so with that do you have anything on your mind that listeners from literally around the world would appreciate hearing you speak about I first thank you listeners for their service.

SPEAKER_02 50:10

I mean this is this is for the firefighters and I'm doing this because uh people reached out to me and I was impacted by what I saw and what I heard and and what I measured. And I think that you guys deserve to have a voice. I think that you are excellent at making your own decisions. So I'm not going to tell you what decision to make but I'm gonna get the information with which you need to make that decision. And I don't want to be interpreted as being anti-government or anti-company or anything like that. I'm just being pro-firefighter at this point. I want people to understand what they're using and how it's keeping them safe but how it may also be a potential risk. And you know just minimize risk when you can I'm not asking for dramatic changes. I think you guys should decide what changes are feasible and which aren't and you should do that right at the at the street level more or less what what a captain thinks he can do with his crew is entirely where the decision should be made of what can be done and what's safe and what's expedient in terms of getting to a fire with with your turnout gear on all that sort of stuff is well beyond my decision level. But now that we know this I think you should continue to educate yourselves and just be proactive in talking about it. Well I heard Peasley say this. How true is that and other some of the other people I heard somebody else say this and you know you can you you've got lots you've got the internet you can look this stuff up and you have to use some sort of reasoning skills and you have to listen to people and be civil there's nothing wrong with this. I have nothing against the companies that sell turnout gear. They're trying to make a living and they're producing good gear. There's nothing wrong with that and they're mostly they're all American that's pretty cool. Right? So we want to support that but I think that they've been duped. I think they've bought the Kool-Aid and they haven't, you know, they don't realize it all the time and they really don't want to realize it there's liabilities and things like that. But I think the correct step forward as well is very apparent to them and the companies are going that way. It's not even the manufacturers of the clothing the manufacturers of the textiles were told it was perfectly safe. It's the same companies that told the A triple F is oh it's as safe as soap. And so the Air Force guys are still wearing nothing but their their pants on to put this stuff out and they are getting A triple F exposure like crazy. Yeah. And so that was that's that's the mistake being made at and it's way up the food chain from any of the companies selling this stuff. So I have no particular problems with companies trying to run around and hire consultants to cover their and that's that's that's their business and I understand that. What I want the firefighter to do is realize I'm not gunning for any company. I'm not gunning for I don't have my own I don't have my own line of gear to sell I'm afraid but it's one of those things that and I I wouldn't I wouldn't tend to be a textile expert. It's one of those things that it's

PFAS Links To Cancer And Closing

SPEAKER_02 52:50

where a little common sense can go a long way and we have it in droves in the fire services you've got a lot of guys who who know right from wrong and when to go into a building when not to so just keep applying it to your gear keep applying it to all your equipment and to you know these chemicals we all are told are safe well who's telling you and and how safe do we know it is and you can certainly go overboard and become a germophobe and be frightened of everything. That's not the average person and I'm not trying to encourage people to hide in a closet and and and stay in the dark but I would like them to I would like them to question you know if a sales rep is telling you something where's their degree? I I don't I don't know they've been told something and they've got a meme graph sheet saying look here it says it's safe. That's nice and you know a couple of the fire chiefs have already started doing this they said but it says here it's quoting a study from the company that makes the chemical and they asked for a different study and they got a different one from another company that made the chemical and I was like you know and the and the it wasn't the chief but he's uh the procurement officer and he he read it and he said this is this is your competitor's sheet oh I didn't know oh it is so so it is yeah but it says it's safe right uh yeah all of your competitors say it's safe isn't that nice and so just be confident of what you know and and learn and there are lots of organizations and and you don't trust me any more than you can throw me similarly just do your own homework and and read the papers read what you can ask questions I there's lots of people that will answer questions not just me but I I happen to appreciate what the fire services have done and I'd like to support them in what they're doing. So I'll end with that and say thank you for your thank you for allowing me to say all this Kevin.

SPEAKER_01 54:31

Sounds good well you know Dr. Peasley I mean that this has been an amazing opportunity to hear from you you know listeners learn a little bit about you know your background your research what your team has done and what you know we consider a significant issue affecting literally millions of firefighters as you said across the globe. So again thanks for taking time out of your busy day to speak with me and the weekend wrap up listeners and again we appreciate it.

SPEAKER_02 54:56

Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 54:58

Well that's going to do it for this week here on AFSO 21 radio the weekend wrap up you've been listening to Dr. Graham Peasley a man I admire who is tirelessly working on research to ensure future generations of firefighters around the world are protected from harmful chemicals he and his team recently found in firefighter turnout gear. So listeners be safe support your local firefighters and emergency responders and check out our parent company APSO 21. Until next time folks I'm out of here