Fighting fires has evolved, but federal safety regulations haven’t changed for nearly half a century. Now the Occupational Safety and Health Administration has proposed new safety standards. It’s great news for professional firefighters, but volunteer departments say the new rules could bog them down with expensive and irrelevant regulations. Hundreds of US firefighters die every year, and job-related cancer is far and away the biggest killer, according to Sean DeCrane with the International Association of Fire Fighters union. He places some of the blame on outdated federal safety rules that protect firefighters, enacted in 1980. “It’s long past due that the firefighters that are out there responding every day are provided some protection by the federal government when it comes to workplace safety,” said DeCrane. “If these regulations had been in place 40 years ago, we would have saved hundreds, if not thousands, of firefighter lives,” DeCrane said. “Just from early detection of cardiovascular disease, or understanding of exposure to toxins and carcinogens, proper training, proper equipment.” But while all of that sounds great to the professional firefighters DeCrane represents, most fire departments in the U.S. are not professional. According to the National Fire Department Registry, more than 4 out of 5 departments are all volunteer, or mostly volunteer. And for volunteer firefighters, the added money and time necessary to comply with OSHA’s new proposals are not welcome.
Source: KCUR News
