With 70 items from dead firefighters strapped to his backpack, firefighter Thomas “Bull” Hill trekked from Key West to Tallahassee on foot in 2018. When he passed through Oakland Park, fire rescue captain Dan Debrecht shook his hand and thanked him for what he was doing to raise awareness for firefighters with cancer.
But there was something that Debrecht didn’t know — in just a few months, he would be diagnosed with brain cancer.
“When I told him thank you for what he was doing, I didn’t know that he was literally doing it for me,” Debrecht said.
Debrecht is just one of many firefighters who developed cancer because of exposure to hazardous waste. When a fire ravages a home or a business, it is common for materials to release chemicals such as benzene, formaldehyde and hydrogen fluoride through the process of offgassing.
“There’s a good way to put it — it’s not your house that burns, it’s all the cool stuff you put in it that’s usually burning,” Debrecht said. “The byproducts of that fire, with the asbestos and with the plastics, just all the different chemicals is how you get (cancer).”
While hazardous is often used as a catch-all term for any dangerous debris — such as a lamp tangled in the branches of a large tree after a tornado, poised to fall on a passing pedestrian — the technical definition is more complex. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency categorizes hazardous waste by four measurements: ignitability, corrosivity, reactivity and toxicity.
“Every fire that we go to, we’re exposed to hazardous materials. And a lot of what we’re finding in the soot itself are carcinogens, cyanide and carbon monoxide, and some other very toxic chemicals that we’re being exposed to on a daily basis,” Fort Lauderdale fire rescue battalion chief Christopher Davis-Partridge said. Davis-Partridge oversees the hazardous materials team.
Most household hazardous waste appears unassuming. It can be found nestled under kitchen sinks and stored in the back of garages. Motor oil, batteries, pool chemicals and pesticides fall under the category. But when the scalding heat of a fire reaches a 20-pound cylinder of propane gas, it could create an explosion that contaminates the soil.
Electronic waste, or e-waste, which involves products with minerals and chemicals, requires specific disposal methods, especially for older electronics that were manufactured with lead. Appliance waste like refrigerators contain contaminants like freon. There’s also construction and demolition waste, such as drywall and roofing materials.
Many of these items are not hazardous in small amounts. Lead paint, for example, is considered hazardous waste only if tests reveal a certain quantity of lead.
“The hydrogen peroxide that’s under your sink is hazardous if you drink the whole thing. But we gargle it around in our mouth,” Davis-Patridge said.
Firefighters wear personal protective equipment and a self-contained breathing apparatus when entering an IDLH environment — a zone that is immediately dangerous to life and health. Every inch of their bodies is wrapped in gear, including hoods that stretch over their ears and drape around the back of their necks. Anyone not essential to the operation waits in a safer area. Firefighters consider how quickly exposure to certain chemicals can cause damage, using measurements in parts per million or in a quantity of liquid.
“Chlorine gas has an IDLH of 10 parts per million. That’s how much chlorine it would take to permanently injure you or kill you,” Davis-Partridge said.
‘Shower of shame’
When an Oakland Park metal-plating factory caught on fire in 2016, a vat containing a highly carcinogenic product to strip metals spilled onto the floor. Debrecht crawled on his hands and knees through the liquid, making sure that nobody was trapped inside of the burning warehouse. After the fire was put out, he was scrubbed thoroughly with brushes while in his gear and took a portable “shower of shame.” He put his clothes in a red bag to be sent away for decontamination, then he showered once more at the station before returning home.
“I never would have thought of that fire again,” Debrecht said.
But a few shifts later, when his equipment was missing from his locker, the logistics chief told him that they needed to talk. Debrecht’s gear was shredded below the knees and elbows, eaten away by a toxic substance.
In 2019, a bill passed in Florida giving firefighters $25,000 after being diagnosed with cancer. That same year, Debrecht’s crew noticed that their captain was acting strangely after he walked into the station. He was making repetitive comments and felt a crushing pressure inside of his head.
“You could tell me to remember the number five and within a minute I had no idea what you asked me to remember,” Debrecht said.
He was rushed to the hospital, where doctors discovered a massive tumor growing on his brain. Within 24 hours, he was at the University of Miami to undergo a risky 13-hour surgery. He was told that he might become blind, unable to speak, or paralyzed on a feeding tube.
“It’s not immediate, but there are a handful of firemen that have gotten cancer from the same (metal factory) fire,” Debrecht said. “You can never prove which fire you got it from; it’s impossible in a court of law to prove. However, math being able to solve any problem, the statistics speak for themselves. We have a huge accelerated cancer rate over people outside of the job.”
An American Journal of Industrial Medicine study shows that from 1984 to 2014, male firefighters were at a 66% greater risk than the general Florida population to develop testicular cancer, along with significantly increased risk of developing skin cancer, prostate cancer, thyroid cancer and late-stage colon cancer. Female firefighters were 254% times more likely to develop brain tumors and have a high risk of thyroid cancer and melanoma.
Despite the odds, doctors successfully removed 85% of Debrecht’s tumor. The other 15% was too close to essential areas such as the pituitary gland to be extracted. Some members of Debrecht’s fire crew stayed in the hospital for five days to support their captain.
Debrecht’s cancer returned in 2023, but after six weeks of radiation, it remains dormant at stage one. Although he has some double vision and minor concentration issues, he is still active at age 60, enjoying biking and gym workouts almost every day. He retired from firefighting in 2020 and currently works as a flight medic.
Debrecht carries no resentment about his diagnosis, calling it the “swiss cheese theory,” meaning that during that factory fire, all the holes lined up in the right way for him to have developed brain cancer.
“It was just our bad day,” Debrecht said. “You can take the precautions knowing that (cancer-causing waste) can be in there, but just because it’s in there doesn’t mean we don’t go in. We didn’t know if there were workers inside or not.”
The World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer classified firefighting as group one in 2022, meaning that firefighting as a profession is carcinogenic to humans.
“Another factor in this is changing the culture of the fire service,” Fort Lauderdale fire rescue assistant chief Lesly St. Fleur said, referencing new initiatives to prevent cancer and an emphasis on always wearing protective gear.
The “clean cab concept” involves redesigned fire trucks with updated ventilation systems and places to store contaminated equipment outside of the vehicle. Specialized exhaust systems inside of fire stations also remove carcinogenic fumes.
“Riviera Beach Fire Rescue, they have saunas in their fire station because that’s been proven to remove a lot of the toxins from your body,” Davis-Partridge said.
The toxic threat isn’t limited to the firefighting process, however. Disposal and cleanup of the burnt remains of buildings present their own hazards, debris that must be disposed of properly.
Cleaning hazardous waste
When refrigerators are scorched and television screens are charred, it’s time to call in a team of experts.
Ashbritt is an emergency response, logistics and disaster debris contractor based in Deerfield Beach. The company has worked alongside the Federal Emergency Management Agency to remove debris from disaster sites all over the country. In Florida, they recently assisted with cleanup efforts after Hurricane Helene and Hurricane Milton, and they are experts at disposing of hazardous waste. However, receiving aid after a disaster is not straightforward.
“We’re only allowed to collect debris based on the severity of the storm,” said Ashbritt senior vice president Brian Thomason. “If the storm is catastrophic in nature, then the state and the local governments can petition FEMA for allowing us to go on private property to do private property debris removal.”
When the paperwork is complete, Ashbritt sends an assessment crew to begin the tedious process of sorting through the scorched remains of someone’s home. They take contamination samples from soil, ash and water that drips from broken pipes.
“You’re being very conscientious of any remaining personal items that could be salvaged,” Thomason said.
But after a fire, almost nothing can be saved. All debris is usually considered contaminated, as it’s impossible to tell what the burnt items are, and what has been burnt into the ground. Even the soil must be removed, then filled in with more dirt to prevent erosion.
Ashbritt sends in bulldozers and excavators to remove debris, which can take anywhere from days to weeks. The area is tested again to confirm that the contamination is gone.
One of the biggest hazards after a fire is friable material, so an Ashbritt personnel keeps the debris wet at all times.
“Anything that could be picked up by wind or that can float in the air could be considered a friable material,” Thomason said.
The puffs of soot that linger when touching ash could contain asbestos, and breathing it in has been linked to mesothelioma and the lung disease asbestosis.
When friable materials are placed in a truck to be hauled to a disposal facility, they must be “burrito wrapped” in a polyethylene plastic sheeting material so nothing wafts out of the vehicle as it moves. FEMA monitors the process from cradle to grave, documenting the materials from the moment they board the truck until the moment they are about to be dumped at a landfill.
Hazardous waste may sometimes travel hundreds of miles to be taken to a large Class 1 Subtitle D landfill. Florida does not contain any of these specialized disposal facilities. Gases are properly removed from their containers and the pollutive properties of chemicals are diluted through a process called scrubbing. Hazardous waste is usually incinerated.
According to Thomason, a single disaster event can produce four to five times more debris than the entire town would make in a year. After Hurricane Ian in 2022, Ashbritt cleared over 4 million cubic yards of debris in Collier County.
“You’re dealing with somebody that, at one moment, was just living their life, and then the next moment, everything’s in shambles,” Thomason said. “You’re trying to do the best job that you can to help them get back to normalcy as soon as possible.”