Series: Firehouses As Cancer Clusters ~ by David Steinman of Healthy Living
Part One
Diane Cotter, accidental activist, becoming next Erin Brockovich
Becoming an activist was the last thing on Diane Cotter’s mind in 2014 when her high school sweetheart and husband of 32 years,Paul, a firefighter with the Worcester, Massachusetts, fire department, developed prostate cancer.
Yet, she was left with no choice but to fight. Not simply for Paul’s own difficult recovery from a deadly malignancy. Diane’s mission was to save other firefighters by finding the truth of what caused Paul’s cancer.
Part 2
Dangerous History
By 2012, PFOA was designated a Substance of Very High Concern in Europe. There, gear manufacturers were made aware of the decision to restrict the amount of PFOA to 25 parts per billion (ppb) and precursors to 1 part per million (ppm). By 2015, its manufacture was eliminated in the United States. But when Paul got his cancer, PFOA was still being used, and his turnout gear had been manufactured seven-years earlier.
“It was all so mind boggling,” Diane said. “PFOA was linked to prostate cancer according to numerous articles in medical journals. That was well known, at least in the scientific world. That was what could have caused Paul’s cancer, and we never knew.”
Part 3
‘Ammo, Please’
How Lion, Steadfast, Tencate, and Milliken & Company lied to America’s firefighters
Part 4
DuPont Buys Your Lunch And Gives You Cancer ~ With blind loyalty from the Union (IAFF) for dessert
The 2018 afternoon session of The International Association of Fire Fighters (IAFF) Cancer Summit in Lake Buena Vista Florida, began when Pat Morrison, assistant to the general president, told the audience, many of whom had cancer or knew others with it, to thank the sponsors, DuPont, Tencate, and the rest of the turnout gear manufacturers, who provided their lunch.
“let’s thank our sponsors for lunch…. DuPont, Gore…..”
Part 5
Cancer Spouse Against Corporations ~ And their pocket firefighter union
In an age when print magazines are dying off, Fire Fighter is mailed to some 300,000 members and posted online, its purpose education.
There hadn’t been a single article that ever appeared on the hidden hazards in turnout gear. But leafing through the pages of the union’s quarterly publication, the ads for turnout gear and personal protective equipment line the pages. Globe, Drager, Tencate, Innotex. The same companies that banded together when Diane Cotter first made firefighters’ personal protective equipment (PPE) a safety issue were also the major advertisers — and a change Lamar noted as an enormously corrupting influence.
According to a report at Bloomberg Law, the IAFF report some $476,161 in revenues from companies and persons with ties to the turnout-gear industry from 2016 to 2019. Of this total, the report noted $421,400 was specifically designated “by the union as sponsorship, exhibitor, or advertising revenue.”
Without their union to protect them, the crusade was even more starkly being led by a single woman.
Part 6
Truth On Fire
Rejected and defeated, Diane Cotter rose from ashes to discover carcinogens in firefighters’ turnout gear
Diane’s request to test her husband’s turnout gear hadn’t even earned a response from the International Association of Fire Fighters (IAFF). None of the labs thought they could do it. Testing heavy gear like that was too much money because they would have to set up new methods, they said. That famous attorney who had taken on Dupont for the same chemicals, Robert Bilott, hadn’t responded either to help, and she needed that help, too. But she still held out hope and felt the fire of her mission.
Part 7
Particle Accelerator For Firefighters ~ Accelerated the case for PFAS
When Dr. Peaslee’s study was published in Environmental Science and Technology Letters it was one of the biggest moments in Diane’s crusade; a published study confirmed her suspicions that DuPont had led the IAFF into a misinformation campaign. It was now fact that the fabric used in firefighter turnout gear tested positive for the presence of PFAS. The equipment manufacturers had lied to their own customers, the men and women who fight fires on our behalf. Instead of wanting to help the men and women who put their lives on the line and trusted that their gear was completely safe, DuPont, Tecate, Lion, and other gear manufacturers put corporate financial interests ahead of them.
Part 8
Firefighters Risks Their Lives Before Fire ~
Wearing 14,000 times over safe levels of carcinogen PFAS
“Our turnout gear contains staggering amounts of the PFAS chemicals. When I say staggering, I mean at a minimum, fourteen-thousand times the new maximum levels for PFOA. DuPont is one of the makers of the fabrics used in the outer shell portion of turnout gear. For years they have been immersed in every aspect of firefighter cancer, from funding cancer research, guiding student thesis’s on ‘soiled gear’ to funding cancer symposiums, advising us over and over to wash our gear and avoid diesel fumes. They deny ever using PFOA. They use slick language to stating they never have used PFOA in the process of making personal protective equipment. They tell us if it is there, it will be in ‘trace amounts,’ as a by-product of production. Those words play on the ignorance of the fire service who does not yet understand that the PFAS chemicals used lead to formation of PFOA and other toxic chemicals.”
Part 9
DuPont, Tencate, And Lion Play Chemical Whack-A-Mole With firefighters’ health
The problem for the turnout-gear manufacturers with the Peaslee study is that his team found so much PFAS in firefighter turnout gear other than simply perfluoroctanoic acid (PFOA) and perfluoroctanesulfonoic acid (PFOS). His study proved that the chemical industry and turnout gear manufacturers were playing a dangerous game of chemical whack-a-mole with firefighters’ health
Part 10,
New President And Guardian Angel Fight For Toxic Safety Of 1.3 Million Firefighters
Diane and her husband Paul were beginning to see the ripples of what they hoped would be a tidal wave of change that they had worked for after he was diagnosed with prostate cancer while at the height of his professional career. She had a new ally too. Incoming IAFF president Ed Kelley had his own personal reasons for concern over the hidden hazards in firefighters’ turnout gear. Like altogether too many firefighter families, he also has experienced cancer in his own family. Kelly could totally relate to Diane’s concerns, and he has also spoken movingly of children’s cancer. He says he is aware that the rates of children’s cancer among firefighters are higher than the population average, and this deeply troubles him, he told HealthyLivinG.
A Husband’s Statement ~
Dear David,
Thank you for the spotlight you have placed on Diane’s relentless efforts of this great deception. When this began with my cancer diagnosis in 2014, the only thing she was looking for was truth. She never set out to investigate corporations, institutions, and legislation let alone orchestrate the first ever study of chemicals used in firefighter turnout gear with the help of her Last Call Foundation team and Notre Dame University nuclear physicist, Dr. Graham Peaslee.
A study that should have been conducted years ago by the NFPA 1971 Standards Committee and fire service who blindly turned the safety reins over to the corporations that purchased their way in.
During the past four years I’ve witnessed my wife shunned, omitted, excluded and ridiculed by leaders within the fire service. I’ve seen men take credit for her work who wanted nothing to do with her.
Over the last four years she has requested seven Department of Justice notifications for an investigation into anti-trust and conflict of interest we feel are at the root of this cancerous deception, yet all were denied. By both the Obama and the Trump administration.
She’s written New Project Initiation Requests or TIA’s for the NFPA specifically for this issue, and was rejected. She’s written NFPA proposals specific to this issue that led to the NFPA Task Group for SVHC of which she is a member in a group led by chemist Jeff Stull who supports industry’s dialogue of deception:
In the course of her advocacy she has made connections within the legislative body in Washington DC. I watch in frustration as she grovels monthly for requests that go unanswered for Congressional ‘Special Hearings’ into this subject with heavy focus on the IAFF labor institution leadership of Harold Schaitberger and the industry heavy NFPA.
While assisting legislators to write laws going forward for PFAS protection of firefighters, we are asking for the look back into who knew what and when did they know it.
She will not rest until it is done.
Thank you David,
Sincerely,
Lt. Paul Cotter (ret) Worcester MA Fire Department