Firefighters who battled the Grenfell high-rise fire in 2017 are being diagnosed with cancer at an alarming rate.
Britain’s Daily Mirror reports that roughly a dozen firefighters, some as young as 40, have been diagnosed with cancers such as leukemia and colon cancers. Many firefighters were in their gear for ten hours during the fire, spending many hours in the smoke-filled building.
The research dovetails with research the firefighter’s union has undertaken that found a correlation between how long firefighters wear PPE in fire situations with elevated rates of cancer. The union is asking the government to declare all cancers faced by firefighters as job-related.
The Grenfell fire killed 72 people in London in a 24-story tower.
