He said it once and then two or three more times in thanking us during our club meeting on Wednesday (Nov. 30).

Brandon Hausbeck, a training and safety officer with the Saginaw Fire Department.

That the 20 protective firefighting hoods our club  helped it purchase with one of our fundraisers will in all likelihood prevent some of the department’s  firefighters from getting cancer and possibly dying from it.

 

Talk about a rewarding and sobering comment in one sentence. 

 

He then donned what one looks like, made of state of the art fire-resistive material that protects the neck, ears and head from heat. 

 

But, more importantly, has a particulate liner that helps to keep cancer-causing particulates (a by-product of all fires) from contacting the skin where it is the thinest. 

 

In a proposal sent to our club to consider funding this, the fire department wanted to purchase 20 of them at a cost $105 each, for a total of $2,100. We met that full request successfully.

 

“Cancer is a big thing with firefighters, with the gasses and particulates firefighters are exposed to,” Hausbeck said. “This is a big gift health and safety wise.’’

 

He earlier held up what the new ones were replacing, a flimsy and thin white thing that looked like it wouldn’t protect much of anything.

 

Our club raised the money through a cash raffle held in the fall, so thank you also to all of you readers out there who bought tickets.

 

Now here is the sobering news. 

 

Currently the Saginaw Fire Department has 40 firefighters, 10 on duty at any one time, and each of these new hoods are only used by one person. They are not passed around and shared. So really they needed 40 of them.

 

And Hausbeck also reported that actually every firefighter should have two in their possession because they need to be washed (to remove the toxins) after every fire and if they get a call before theirs has been washed and dried they don’t have one.

 

Hopefully in posting this story other organizations or deep pocket people might help rectify that.

 

Hausbeck estimates they should last nearly 10 years, “Maybe a little less because Saginaw has a lot of fires.”

 

And he feels they are so effective that the only next step in protecting firefighters would be full body garments that would protect other thinner areas of the skin on a human body.

 

A check on the Internet reports the two most common causes of cancer in firefighters are breathing toxic fumes and absorbing  carcinogens through the skin. 

 

And cancer is the No. 1 cause of death in firefighters due to the smoke and hazardous chemicals they are exposed to in the line of duty. 

 

Firefighters can be exposed to hundreds of different chemicals in the form of gasses, vapors and particulates.

 

Researchers have found that more than 2/3 of firefighters – 68% – develop cancer compared to about 22% of the general population. 

 

And when it comes to 9/11 and Ground Zero 1,100 of the firefighters there developed a cancer caused by its toxins and 44 of them have died so far.

 

In 2019, our club helped the City of Saginaw Fire Department purchase four thermal imaging devices to quickly locate people trapped in burning structures.