Firefighter’s Death is Stark Reminder of Job’s Growing Dangers

Longtime Mill Valley resident and Alameda Fire Department Captain Scott Carnevale died last month at the age of 42, an untimely loss that rippled throughout the fire department in his hometown. Carnevale died after a 10-month battle with esophageal cancer.

“[He] always [had] high spirits,” said Mill Valley firefighter Jesse Pasquale about running into Carnevale in town after his diagnosis. “You could never tell that he was sick. In fact, he seemed to be kind of defying the odds; that one person in a thousand who actually gains weight on chemotherapy, staying strong, surfing, [and] mountain biking.”

While Carnevale had persevered in his battle with cancer, he was certain that his job had caused his cancer, believing that his on-the-job inhalations resulted in his illness. Carnevale’s doctors backed his conclusion that his esophageal cancer was likely caused by inhalation of smoke and toxins while acting as a firefighter, and a number of studies and a recently updated California state law support the premise as well.

Carnevale became a vocal advocate for protecting firefighters from the smoke and toxins they ingest while battling blazes, and his death on Jan. 3 has sparked a dialogue in his field about the risks of their profession.

“With each year that passes, our protective equipment gets better, and our medical monitoring gets better, and our ability to diagnose gets better, and we become a physically healthier profession,” said Jeff Davidson. “But also with each year that passes, we face [new] threats from [products like] the plastics, the foam mattresses, the glue in the light weight wood construction. All of this stuff compounds our problems from an exposure standpoint.”

That sentiment is shared beyond local firefighters.

“We are seeing the rates of cancer in firefighters continue to rise even though we have the best protective gear known to man,” California Professional Firefighters President Lou Paulson told The Island of Alameda following Carnevale’s death.

Carnevale started as a volunteer firefighter in Mill Valley before moving on to the East Bay and eventually making his way through the ranks at the Alameda Fire Department. He became a captain in 2007.

Soon after he contracted cancer, Carnevale helped to organize and encourage a department-wide participation in the Personal Exposure Reporting (PER) system, a decades-old system that allows firefighters to report, document, and track their toxin exposures. The system not only helps to solidify any potential issues they may have with a workers’ compensation claim, but can also help track the causes of their diseases. 

The data could potentially be deployed to allow fire department management to create tactically smarter protocols when their firefighters approach known toxic situations.

In making his case for the connections between on-the-job exposure and his cancer, Carnevale had both state law and a host of medical studies on his side.

In 1982, then-Gov. Jerry Brown signed into law the nation's first public safety cancer presumption safeguard. The law made it a presumption that all active firefighters who contracted cancer held a legal presumption when pursuing future worker's compensation benefits that their cancer was contracted while on the job. In 2010, that law was expanded by the Dallas Jones Cancer Presumption Bill, AB 2253, which built upon the presumption by increasing the statute of limitations in light of recent discoveries that cancer may manifest itself a long time after leaving the job. 

A University of Cincinnati study concluded in the Journal of Occupational & Environmental Medicine in 2006 that, despite improvements in equipment, firefighters’ gear still fails to protect them from the cancer-causing agents encountered on the job, leading to a higher risk of cancer in firefighters.

In 2008, a report from the University of Athens in Greece’s Department of Forensic Medicine and Toxicology found that because “a wide variety of synthetic materials is used in buildings (insulation, furniture, carpeting, and decorative items), the potential for severe health impacts from inhalation of products of combustion during building fires is continuously increasing.” The study noted that most fire-related deaths are not caused by burns, but as a result of the inhalation of toxic fumes produced during a material’s combustion.

The Mill Valley Fire department participates in the PER system, but local firefighters said that Carnevale’s passing has reinvigorated their interest in utilizing it. Several Mill Valley firefighters have not been on recent calls that have raised the specter of exposure to toxins. Therefore, many have not used the PER system. But several said they planned to dig further into the details of the reporting mechanism for future use, especially in the wake of Carnevale’s death.

“Whenever the bell rings, whether it is a medical response or a fire response, we have to take the appropriate measure of care, because the exposure is there on every call that we go on,” Davidson said.

“Everything you see on the news, we see first,” Pasquale added. “The only way to not be exposed to it is to not respond to a call.” 

For Carnevale, our Mill Valley firefighters and their brethren nationwide, that isn’t an option. Davidson said Carnevale will be remembered for raising awareness about the dangers of his profession and for his unrelenting dedication to the job.

“He was all about service and helping people,” Davidson said. “And there was never a ‘no’ bone in his body. H he was always there for people whether he knew them as friends and family or he didn’t know them as strangers in his capacity as a firefighter. He was just always about helping and about service.”

In lieu of flowers, food, and other gifts, Carnevale’s family has requested a donation be made in Scott’s name to the Scott Carnevale Memorial Fund for cancer research.  Payment can be made by check to Wells Fargo Bank, N.A., 18 Miller Avenue, Mill Valley, CA 94941 or online at scottcarnevale.com. All proceeds received by the author for writing this article will be donated to the Scott Carnevale Memorial Fund.