Toxic Hot Seat

Everyone has a fear of fire, right?

No one wants to burn up in a fire.

And if you can stoke that fear, it's easy to leave

a law in place.

To convince somebody

that something that you've been led to believe for all

these years is protecting you, isn't protecting you?

And if you change it, children are going to burn up

and die horrific deaths.

Who wants to change that law?

I loved every day I went to work.

Every time you go out that door, you're going out

there for one reason, and that's to help somebody.

And there's no better feeling in the world.

I distinctly remember

the smell of the soap when I

washed my hands,

the smell of the turnout coats

with the smoke when I

entered in this firehouse,

looking out the back windows in the dormitory

at nighttime, hoping that I was going to get a fire.

I know it sounds sort of strange, but I wanted to

test my skills.

Being a firefighter, you don't think

about the negative aspects of the job.

You keep yourself in shape.

You get sort of a--a feeling that you're infallible.

I mean you--you just--

there's nothing that you can't do.

You're not gonna get sick.

You take care of yourself.

You eat right.

But I got bit in the ass, to put it bluntly.

It was January the 5th.

It was a winter morning.

I was out for a run.

About the last mile, I got to the point where I

couldn't run anymore.

And that had never happened to me before.

I actually stopped and I walked.

I felt really bad.

Got back into the gym, went to the bathroom,

and started urinating.

I was peeing just blood.

And within a week I had a CT scan and was told that

in my right kidney, I had transitional cell carcinoma--

a rare form of cancer, normally found in one

in 100,0000 people, and normally found

in people that work in the chemical industry.

I was referred to a doctor at UCSF.

He asked me what my profession was, and I told

him I was a firefighter here in San Francisco.

And he goes, "Do you realize that you work

in the chemical industry?"

And I said, "Well, I've never really thought of it

that way, but I guess I do."

When you walk into a room, there could be 100-130

different toxic chemicals in the air.

You're dealing with flame retardants that are used

on just about everything--

clothing, textiles, furnishings.

In the old days, that stuff didn't exist.

During my treatment and recovery, another

firefighter here at Station One came down

with transitional cell carcinoma.

And then a third firefighter.

And during this period of time, too, it seemed like

every month somebody else would be diagnosed

with some form of cancer.

Every month we'd be going to another funeral

of somebody else that had contracted it that had

retired and died.

So, it was--

it was an eye opener.

I mean, the realization was there that we were faced

with a major problem.

If you're going to change the standard,

that the standard should be changed to

require more chemicals.

You can't get from A to Z

because they've left out...

What do they have to do with an arson...

Why would you have to...

The 2008 Pulitzer was for a series

we did called "Hidden Hazards,"

which was about

deadly baby products,

dangerous baby products.

Anything from cribs to this

Godzilla back here

with lead paint on it.

At the end of that story, a lot changed, thankfully.

It was the biggest reform movement

in the country to protect children and their products

in a generation.

It was exciting to see that kind of result happen.

We were working on a completely unrelated story

that had to do with chemicals but not flame retardants.

And I often, when I'm interviewing people,

will ask at the end, "So, what didn't I ask you?"

Or, "What's interesting?"

And almost everyone we talked to said, "Well,

what you really should be looking at is flame retardants."

All couches seem to be different.

Virtually every American home has flame

retardants in their couch.

And when you talk to people, people are surprised

that there's flame retardants in couches and chairs.

You know, they're just surprised by that fact alone.

And, you know, these are chemicals that aren't

measured by parts per billion or parts per

million in a couch.

It's measured by pounds and ounces.

It was the late '90s that

the first studies were coming out raising alarms

about flame retardants in terms of flame retardants

accumulating in people and wildlife

in places around the world that you would never

in a million years think flame retardants.

Suddenly, they had become controversial.

And they weren't before. I don't think they were before.

It started in Sweden,

with scientists finding

that these chemicals were

building up in breast milk

and then being passed on

to the next generation.

They were out there, and nobody really knew much

about them or what they were doing

in the environment.

And I think, it was a problem in general

for environmental health researchers initially is,

why a lot of people didn't want to touch flame

retardants is fire.

People dying in fires.

The idea that, shouldn't we do whatever we can to

prevent people from dying from fires?

And it's hard to argue against that.

That mindset. This is the world we live in.

This is one of the consequences of modern

living is having all of these chemicals in our body.

And if we want, you know, all of these conveniences--

if we want safer houses, if we want nonstick pans,

if we want jackets that repel water, all these

different kinds of things--

there are side effects or there are consequences that

we just have to live with.

And, you know, in terms of one school

of thought, just because they're in our

bodies doesn't mean that they're causing any harm.

And, yeah, you'll hear that.

I don't see people whose arms and legs are falling

off, so, therefore what's the big deal?

There's one thing to say that

flame retardants are building up in the environment.

They're building up in people.

And that is alarming.

They're building up in breast milk?

I mean, that's alarming, right?

But, again, it's if they work, well, then it's

a little bit of a different--if they're all--

you know, if there is truly a huge threat of fire that

we all face, and they're protecting us from that

threat on a daily basis, then it's sort

of a different story.

When we waded into this topic, you know,

at the outset it did appear very complicated.

And sometimes you do feel like you're a referee.

Because, you know, you have the industry on this side,

you have some activists on this side.

There's allegations going back and forth, and you do

feel like you're going in there and saying,

"Wait a second. I'm just trying"--

you're trying to figure out the truth.

We weren't out to get the chemical industry

by any means on this.

You know, we're not advocates.

We're not.

We're not on one side or another here.

We were trying to get to the bottom of this question

and this legacy, really, that's been

around since the seventies.

And why do we have these chemicals in our lives?

Why do we have them in our furniture?

Why do we have them in our bodies?

There we so many layers, it was like peeling

an onion, you know, there were so many layers to this