Earlier this week, the Eugene City Council took action to support state legislation to expand health care coverage for firefighters. That’s after Eugene Springfield Fire Chief Mike Caven shared with the community that he’s been diagnosed with a rare blood cancer.
He’s participating in a fundraiser for cancer research – the Blood Cancer United Stair climb at the Columbia Center in Seattle in March.
Caven told KLCC’s Rachael McDonald his insurance doesn’t fully cover his cancer treatment.
Mike Caven: As our working environment gets more and more toxic, I think we're gonna see, potentially, more and more rare cancers. For us locally, and you may have seen in some of the other stories, there are four people who served as training officers who all have been diagnosed with blood cancer. And so that it doesn't feel like an anomaly.
Rachael McDonald: And how are you doing?
Caven: I feel very fortunate. Like anybody, it's kind of scary in the beginning, and there's a lot of uncertainty. In my case, you know, my treatment is through corporate charity, and that doesn't last forever. That kind of leads to the pointing towards legislation to cover our treatment. But, I feel fortunate that I'm able to look forward to and participate in a pretty challenging stair climb to help raise money for it.
McDonald: Well, on that topic, how are you preparing for that?
Caven: So it's always important to start early. Like any firefighter, we're wildly competitive and so you kinda look at ‘where should I be, and how hard am I gonna push myself?’ Fortunately, I live in the hills and so I'm able to get a lot of hill climbing in. We have our drill tower. Members of our department have participated in this fundraiser since the beginning. There's 13 of us that will do it this year. As it gets closer and you really start aggressively training in all of your gear and your air pack. The staff at Ya-Po-Ah and the residents at Ya-Po-Ah Terrace have been incredibly accommodating to let firefighters tromp up and down those 18 stories a few times.
McDonald: That sounds like a perfect place to practice.
Caven: It does. They're a great group.
McDonald: Just touching again on what it is about, these kinds of blood cancers and firefighting. Are there things that can be done to reduce the risks to firefighters of being exposed to these types of chemicals and toxins?
Caven: Yeah, you know, the fire service did a really good job for a long time avoiding science. Fire science and fire suppression, we love it. The science that studies the risk, we avoid it. And then when cancer really started to show up, we've been learning and growing ever since, and we have multiple sets of gear. We have staff who pretty much their full-time job is to decontaminate that for us. There's emerging technologies in how to do that.
We're still working to get PFAS, which is a pretty big buzzword across the country, out of our firefighting gear.
Our most recent set still has it in it, but generally, they'll say it's isolated from our skin, for the time being. The next wave, which is starting to show up in the market, does not have it. And these were chemicals used to, you know, help with repelling water and, and other things.
The reality is, especially in the fire environment, the superheated environment is where we differ from other industries and why we feel like extra protection is necessary. In some industries, you're a known exposure. In the fire service, I mean, everything, house fires are incredibly toxic now.
And so you take all of these petroleum-based chemicals or all these new compounds, these batteries, you superheat them, you contain those gasses. You don't know what chemicals are made. And when your body temperature rises, your dermal absorption, regardless of how well we try to protect ourselves, it doesn't work. And, we learned that when I was researching my own case to prove causation and you look at, for training officers, you're in a burning building effectively all day, sometimes for days.
And when your body temperature increases, your dermal absorption, no matter what you do, it's 400% higher. So these chemicals, dioxins and PFAS and all the fancy, chemical compounds are circulating in our blood and damaging our stem cell DNA, which is then what leads to these blood cancers and other solid tumor cancers which are prevalent in the fire service.
"I stepped into this space to raise money for that, to raise awareness, not as a campaign of anything else. But, I think it's important the community knows our firefighters have a dangerous job." - Eugene Springfield Fire Chief Mike Caven
McDonald: Well, anything else you think is important to mention?
Caven: The interest has been, I would say it's sometimes annoying, but I stepped into this space to raise money for that, to raise awareness, not as a campaign of anything else. But, I think it's important the community knows our firefighters have a dangerous job.
There's a lot of risks that we take in the moment to take care of them. But the long-term cumulative impacts, whether it's cancer or behavioral health issues, it's important for them to know their firefighters are still here, they're still gonna show up, they're trained, they want to take care of the community.
Hopefully, my wife doesn't hear this, but even with this happening, it's still the best job in the world.
