^{Date Published: 05 Jun 2009 9:58am}

The final report of a retrospective study of cancer in operational Queensland fire fighters carried out by the Monash Centre for Occupational and Environmental Health (MonCOEH) in the School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine at Monash University has been released.

The main findings were:

• Overall cancer incidence in male active fire fighters was not higher than expected.
• The incidence of malignant brain tumours was not higher than expected in male active fire fighters.
• Melanoma incidence was found in a borderline statistically significant excess in male active fire fighters. The incidence of other malignant tumours was not higher than expected in male active fire fighters.
• For benign brain tumours, there was a doubling of the expected number in men, but this was based on only 3 observed cases (versus 1.5 expected) and was not statistically significant. The employment records indicated that none of these cases had ever worked at Atherton.
• Further analyses of the male active fire fighters, limited to those who had worked for more than 12 months and those who had worked in full time employment, resulted in similar patterns of cancer incidence, with no statistical excess in any type of cancer.
• Overall cancer incidence in women who were active fire fighters was not higher than expected. As the numbers of individual cancer types in women were small, no further analysis of cancer subgroups could be performed.
• This study indicates that there is no excess in the overall rate of cancer (for men and women) nor is there an excess rate of any type of cancer (in men) among Queensland fire fighters in the period 1995-2006. In addition, similar patterns of cancer incidence were found when restricting the analysis to those male fire fighters with more than 1 year’s service or when restricting the analysis to fulltime fire fighters only.

This study was undertaken because of a previous finding of an excess of brain tumours among fire fighters in the Atherton Fire Station. A Queensland Health report recommended investigating the feasibility of a wider study of cancer rates among fire fighters in Queensland, in particular to identify whether brain tumours, testicular cancer, prostate cancer or non-Hodgkin lymphoma are in excess in this larger group. In addition, the research looked at other specific cancers that had been found at increased incidence among fire fighters in previous Australian and international studies.


Read the full report

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