National Firefighter Registry for Cancer: Join the Effort to Understand and Reduce Cancer in the Fire Service
The National Firefighter Registry for Cancer (NFR) is officially open for registration! Developed by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), the NFR is the largest effort ever undertaken to understand and reduce the risk of cancer among U.S. firefighters.
The NFR is actively recruiting all U.S. firefighters – paid and volunteer, active and retired, with and without cancer to help researchers better understand and reduce cancer in firefighters. This includes:
- Active, former, and retired firefighters
- Career, paid-on-call, and volunteer firefighters
- Structural firefighters
- Wildland firefighters
- Industrial firefighters
- Military firefighters
- Instructors
- Fire investigators
- Other fire service members
Participation is voluntary and registration takes about 30 minutes. By matching the information provided by participating firefighters with cancer diagnosis information from state cancer registries, NIOSH will be able to study the relationship between firefighting and cancer outcomes over time. The NFR helps researchers match information provided by participating firefighters with cancer diagnosis information from state cancer registries. This matching process will allow NIOSH to study the relationship between firefighting and cancer outcomes over time.
In support of this important initiative, UL’s Fire Safety Research Institute (FSRI) developed the online course, Comprehensive Cancer Risk Reduction Strategies for the Fire Service in collaboration with researchers at NIOSH. The course provides an interactive review of evidence-based measures that can be implemented to protect firefighters during an emergency response, in the fire apparatus and at the fire station, identify several knowledge gaps that remain, and motivate firefighters to participate in the NFR. The course also includes a thorough demonstration of how to register in the NFR.
For information about the research behind the course, the peer-reviewed journal article, Hierarchy of Contamination Controls in the Fire Service (published in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene) provides a framework that supports decision-making based on implementing feasible and effective control solutions in occupational settings.
Read the letter in support of the NFR from Steve Kerber, executive director and vice president at FSRI.
