Stefan Magnusson was attending funeral services about a dozen years ago for a friend and fellow firefighter who had succumbed to cancer when he realized he needed to do something.
"He was the third colleague I buried because of diseases connected to our work," Magnusson, a Swedish firefighter, said during a interview last week at Firehouse World in San Diego. "I promised him, and I know it was too late for him because he was in a box, but I promised him that enough was enough."
Magnusson and his colleague David Hultman with Skelleftea Fire & Rescue Services were in San Diego to promote their Healthy Firefighters initiative and the Skelleftea behavior model focused on adequate protection during the firefight and proper cleaning and decon afterward.
"There is nothing stronger in this world than someone who shows himself respect," Magnusson said. "And to have clean clothes and smart behavior is showing that I'm respecting myself. That's the strongest thing."
"The thing for us is we want to introduce the healthy firefighter way of behaving."
Behavior is a key word to emphasize because of the daily routine every firefighter goes through in both prepping and rehabbing gear. Even when a firefighter might be tired or hungry or simply wants to go home after a duty shift, there are ways to still protect themselves and their colleagues.
"To prepare bunker gear for laundry is quite a complicated process," Hultman said. "It's not so fun to do that in the middle of the night when you want to go home. So if you are going home as soon as you can, it loses the point to use something like a dissolvable bag or a garbage bag to store your gear."
Magnusson reached out to manufacturers across the world years ago, but they weren't interested in his ideas because they didn't see a market for them. But with all the new information available about cancer in the fire service, that's beginning to change.
"Even if you look around here," Hultman said as he stood among exhibitors on the Firehouse World show floor, "entrepreneurs are starting to focus on these products to help firefighters be more healthy."
One of the products Magnusson and Hultman demonstrated was a sturdy bag to house contaminated PPE that can be safely stored until being laundered. It is certainly a massive upgrade to the garbage bags Magnusson was using when he first began trying to alter his behavior.
"There were several years of trying things out and then going back to blueprints," Hultman said. "Eventually, we came up with a product that worked."
"As long as you can have something that works for you, that's the most important part."
Magnusson was met with some cultural resistance when he first began trying to change the way his colleagues behaved.
"When I started this 12 years ago, my colleagues and my friends looked me in the eyes and said, 'Are you really serious?'"
Some of those colleagues asked him if they really needed to wash their gear day in and day out. Some even believed that the public wanted to see an image of a firefighter with dirty gear and soot on them because that meant they were strong and doing their jobs.
"Nowadays, they would rather die than not wash their PPE because they know what it's all about," Magnusson said. "It's just a matter of knowledge."
One of the most important things to stress when it comes to changing the behavior and promoting cancer prevention is that it's up to every single firefighter to do their part. You're not only protecting yourselves. You're also protecting the men and women who work alongside you.
"To be a firefighter is not a one-man show," Magnusson said. "It's teamwork. For example, if we go out and fight a fire and I take care of my equipment and show myself that respect, but you don't think it's your concern, that means that you put your (contaminants) on me."
"That is never acceptable."
Hultman put it much more succinctly when talking about the responsibility he bears to not only protect himself but his crew members as well.
"I don't want to be the one to cause another firefighter's cancer," Hultman said.
Read more about the Healthy Firefighters initiative and its associated products here.
