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Incident Commander Deputy Jay Fleming briefing the media<\/p>\n
Massachusetts has failed to sign a bill banning flame retardants into law despite endorsement of lawmakers and pediatricians and concerns over safety.<\/p>\n
Jay Fleming is a booming\u00a0Boston<\/a>\u00a0firefighter who has climbed the ranks since 1978. He has two engineering degrees, a no-nonsense manner and thick accent.<\/p>\n For the last seven years, he has applied his considerable wit to banning flame retardant chemicals in\u00a0Massachusetts<\/a>, which might sound counter intuitive to those not steeped in the byzantine logic of American chemical regulation.<\/p>\n \u201cFirefighters are like the canary in the mine,\u201d said Fleming. \u201cIf there is a problem with these chemicals, we\u2019re going to get it,\u201d said Fleming. \u201cWe\u2019re exposed to the highest level.\u201d<\/p>\n Fleming has watched colleagues die of cancer since he started in the department. His father was also a firefighter. He died of lung cancer in an era when few firefighters wore masks, let alone the rebreathers available today.<\/p>\n But now, that diagnosis feels less exotic than news his peers get \u2013 findings of kidney, bladder and thyroid cancers. The legislator who once carried the bill to ban fire retardants, former firefighter and senator Ken Donnelly, himself\u00a0died of brain cancer<\/a>\u00a0at just 66. Fleming blames flame retardants, some of which have already been designated as likely to cause cancer and which have been found to disrupt the endocrine system, according to the\u00a0National Institutes of Health<\/a>.<\/p>\n Already, new generations of the products have been introduced since concerns were first raised about their safety, effects on the human body and persistence in the environment.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen they started to transition to this plastic stuff [in the home], it just produced smoke that was a lot more irritating,\u201d said Fleming. Firefighters never said to \u201cadd flame retardants, they just said address the plastics problem, because it\u2019s killing us [from the smoke while fighting fires] \u2026 The solution to adding chemicals to the furniture was to add more chemicals to the furniture.\u201d<\/p>\n Fire retardant chemicals were first\u00a0proposed by tobacco companies<\/a>\u00a0as a solution to fires started by cigarettes in the 1970s. Rather than reformulate their products, they suggested, society could reformulate everything else.<\/p>\n Today, all manner of materials are treated with flame retardant chemicals, often required by law, including\u00a0children\u2019s p<\/a>yjamas<\/a>, upholstery for\u00a0plush furniture<\/a>\u00a0and car seats.<\/p>\n At the same time, studies have shown children exposed to flame retardants are more likely to have\u00a0poorer social skills<\/a>. Exposure in utero could have\u00a0lower the overall IQ<\/a>\u00a0and working memory. Some studies have shown disruption to\u00a0thyroid functions<\/a>\u00a0and a possible link to cancer. The chemicals also bioaccumulate in the body. Flame retardants have been found at \u201cconsiderable\u201d levels in\u00a0freshwater<\/a>\u00a0and in\u00a0midwestern bobcats<\/a>.<\/p>\n But all this time \u2013 despite the endorsement of pediatricians, firefighters and lawmakers \u2013 Massachusetts has failed to sign a bill into law.<\/p>\n Opposing the bill, despite its many backers, has been the American Chemistry Council (ACC).<\/p>\n