EV firefighting program gets the ax at HHS
The Trump administration has halted a federal program to protect firefighters from dangerous chemicals, including those emitted by burning electric vehicles.
The firefighter health program was swept up in the administration’s massive restructuring of the Department of Health and Human Services. Its demise threatens efforts to keep firefighters safe from cancer-causing chemicals as hard-to-control blazes become more frequent and intense, writes Ariel Wittenberg.
Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. cut a whopping 18 percent of his department’s workforce, effectively eliminating multiple programs, including ones to help local health departments respond to extreme weather as well as prevent lead poisoning.
The Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health — which includes the firefighter program — was particularly hard hit, with nearly all of its departments eliminated, Ariel reports.
For Tim Ferretti, a vehicle demolition and salvage safety consultant, that means his trainings for firefighters responding to burning EVs will now lack a critical component: a CDC researcher who collects air and soil samples to test for dangerous chemicals.
“I’m up in arms and angry about it,” Ferretti told Ariel. “It is a dirty, nasty business in emergency response and demolition, and we need all the help we can get.”
Ferretti said that steps to protect firefighters from certain chemicals are taken only after they’ve been exposed to them — and dying from them — for decades.
“But with electric cars, [the government] was trying to be ahead of the game and stop a potential problem before it becomes a chronic issue,” he said.
Cancer is one of the leading causes of death for firefighters. The nation’s 400,000 career firefighters have a 9 percent greater chance of being diagnosed with cancer and a 14 percent greater chance of dying from it compared with the general population.
Labor groups, unions and health experts have expressed alarm at the near-total elimination of the department’s occupational safety and health programs. Some 450 groups wrote a letter to Kennedy, Trump and congressional leaders last week urging the reversal of the “misguided” cuts. And Edward Kelly, the president of the International Association of Fire Fighters union, said he spoke with the White House to urge the administration to reverse course.
The administration said the overhaul is necessary to end chronic illness in the country by eliminating environmental toxins, but it did not articulate how that goal can be achieved without staff or programs.