Firefighters Who Battle Toxic Blazes to Get Health Tests

Local firefighters who battle hazardous material blazes will undergo extensive medical tests in the coming weeks as health officials attempt to gather more data on the long-term effects of exposure to toxic substances.

The Huntington Beach Fire Department’s hazardous material team will be given the tests first, and Anaheim’s team may follow suit, officials said, adding that it was the fire last month at an Anaheim pesticide warehouse that spotlighted the need for more information.

After the June 22 fire at the Larry Fricker Co., acting Anaheim Fire Chief Darrel Hartshorn said, “We cast kind of a jaundiced eye on information from the past that our breathing apparatus was enough to protect us.”

Program Fairly New

Added Larry Taylor, captain of Huntington Beach’s Hazmat team: “The program of handling hazardous materials is fairly new throughout the nation.”

Because it is a mostly uncharted area, doctors testing for potential accumulation of toxic materials in the body face several obstacles, according to Philip Edelman, director of the regional poison control center at UCI Medical Center in Orange. They often do not know what toxic substances they are looking for, and it is difficult to assess what levels are in the system, he said.

Even when the information is available, it is not clear what it all means. Still, Edelman emphasized the need for testing despite the lack of information to compare it against.

“Just because we can’t interpret certain data doesn’t mean we shouldn’t collect it,” he said.

Battery of Examinations

The program that Huntington Beach will implement and Anaheim is considering provides firefighters with a battery of examinations called metabolic base-line testing that includes 40 to 50 blood measurements, cardiac and pulmonary stress tests and a review of the individual’s medical history, Edelman said.

The tests would then be followed by an annual checkup as well as post-incident tests after major toxic fires, Edelman said.

Of the county’s three hazardous materials teams, the Orange County Fire Department’s Hazmat is the only one that already has a metabolic base-line testing program for its team members, Edelman said.

In Huntington Beach, Taylor pointed to an increase in the number of toxic fires that his team’s nine Hazmat members--with another nine in training--respond to: an average of 10 calls per month, compared to an average of three per month when they first started.

Expense a Consideration

In Anaheim, because the team is in its “infancy,” Hartshorn said that officials have not yet decided on a program, but that the expense is a consideration. The metabolic base-line testing program costs $400 to $500 per person, Edelman said, and the annual follow-up about $100.

“It’s very difficult to test someone for a specific chemical in the system,” Edelman said. Cancer-causing PCB (polychlorinated biphenyl), for example, deposits itself in a person’s fat a few days after contamination and cannot be measured with a blood test, he said.

Even when the information is available, he said, interpretation is a problem.

“The (current) literature doesn’t give you a lot of information as to what that means,” Edelman said. “(We) don’t know what the toxic threshold is for the population or for that individual.”

Hartshorn agreed. There is no question, he said, that the firefighters have been exposed to toxic materials, but what level is unknown.

“How do you measure that? What is acceptable and what is unacceptable?” Hartshorn asked. “I don’t know. This is a new business for us.”