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Background Increased mortality from cancers and other diseases has been reported in USA, Canadian, and Nordic firefighters. However, UK firefighters are understudied. Aims To determine whether UK firefighters suffer increased mortality from cancers and other diseases when compared with the general population. Methods Mortality from cancer and other diseases in Scottish male firefighters between 2000 and 2020 was compared with the general Scottish male population and expressed as standardized mortality ratios (SMRs) (with 95% confidence intervals, CI). Results Significant overall excess cancer mortality was found for Scottish firefighters compared with the general population (SMR 1.61, CI 1.42-1.81). Scottish firefighters were nearly three times more likely to die of malignant neoplasms (unspecified sites) (SMR 2.71, CI 1.71-4.00). Excess cancer mortality was also found for several site-specific cancers, including prostate (SMR 3.80, CI 2.56-5.29), myeloid leukaemia (SMR 3.17, CI 1.44-5.58), oesophagus (SMR 2.42, CI 1.69-3.29) and urinary system (kidney and bladder) (SMR 1.94, CI 1.16-2.91). Mortality from neoplasms of unknown behaviour was over six times greater in Scottish firefighters (SMR 6.37, CI 2.29-12.49). Additionally, significantly higher mortality was found for: acute ischaemic heart diseases (SMR 5.27, CI 1.90-10.33), stroke (SMR 2.69, CI 1.46-4.28), interstitial pulmonary diseases (SMR 3.04, CI 1.45-5.22), renal failure (SMR 3.28, CI 1.18-6.44) and musculoskeletal system diseases (SMR 5.64, CI 1.06-13.83). Conclusions UK firefighters suffer significant excess mortality from cancer and other diseases when compared with the general population. Preventative health monitoring and presumptive legislation are urgently required to protect UK firefighters’ health.

Firefighters suffer an increased risk of cancer from exposures to chemicals released from fires. Our earlier research has found that fire toxicants not only remain on firefighters’ PPE, but are also tracked back to fire stations. The UK Firefighter Contamination Survey assesses firefighters’ risk of developing cancer due to occupational exposure to fire toxins. Over 4% of surveyed firefighters were found to have a cancer diagnosis, with the age-specific cancer rate up to 323% higher (35–39 year olds) than that of the general population. Firefighters who had served ≥ 15 years were 1.7 times more likely to develop cancer than those who had served less time. Firefighters were at least twice as likely to be diagnosed with cancer if they noticed soot in their nose/throat (odds ratio (OR) = 2.0, 1.1–3.5), or remained in their PPE for more than four hours after attending a fire incident (OR = 2.3, 1.1–5.2). Also associated with an increased likelihood of cancer was: eating while wearing PPE (OR = 1.8, 1.2–2.7); failing to store clean/dirty PPE separately (OR = 1.3, 1.0–1.7); working in a station that smells of fire (OR = 1.3, 1.0–1.8) or not having designated (separated) clean and dirty areas (OR = 1.4, 1.1–1.7); using an on-site washing machine to launder fire hoods (OR = 1.3, 1.0–1.7); feeling that cleaning is not taken seriously at work (OR = 1.5, 1.2–2.0).

Firefighters’ personal protective equipment (PPE) is a potential source of chronic exposure to toxic contaminants commonly released from fires. These contaminants have also been found in fire stations. However, little research characterises the routes via which fire contaminants travel back to fire stations. The UK Firefighter Contamination Survey provides information on firefighters’ PPE provision, decontamination, and storage practices. All serving UK firefighters were eligible to take part in the survey, which comprised 64 questions. A total of 10,649 responses were included for analysis, accounting for roughly 24% of the UK’s firefighting workforce. Results revealed that most firefighters (84%) de-robe contaminated PPE/workwear after re-entering the appliance cab. There was a significant decreasing tendency to send PPE for cleaning after every incident with increasing seniority of role, length of service, and fire attendance frequency. Around one third of firefighters cleaned PPE after every incident. A number of issues were linked to external professional cleaning services, e.g. shrinkage, fit, turn-around time, and stock of reserve/pooled PPE. PPE storage was found to be a potential source of cross contamination, with almost half of firefighters (45%) indicating clean and dirty PPE is not stored separately. More than half of firefighters (57%) stored fire gloves (an item sent for professional decontamination by only 19% of firefighters, and never cleaned by 20%) within other items of PPE such as helmets, boots and tunic/trouser pockets. The survey’s results can be used to target gaps in decontamination measures within UK Fire and Rescue Services.

PFAS (per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances) are a large class of synthetic chemicals widely used in consumer products and industrial processes. The scientific literature on PFAS has increased dramatically in the last decade. Many stakeholders, including regulators, scientists, non-governmental organizations, and concerned individuals could benefit from an efficient way to access the health and toxicological literature related to PFAS. To create a systematic evidence map of the available peer-reviewed health or toxicological research for 29 PFAS. A protocol for conducting this systematic evidence map was initially published on Zenodo (Pelch et al. 2019c), then peer reviewed and published in Environment International (Pelch et al. 2019d). PubMed database was searched through January 25, 2021. Studies were screened for inclusion and exclusion according to the Populations, Exposures, Comparators, and Outcomes (PECO) statement. Inclusion criteria were intentionally broad and included any human, animal, and/or in vitro study that investigated exposure to one of the 29 PFAS of interest and a human health or toxicological effect. Selected study details were extracted from included studies as described in the protocol. Study appraisal was not conducted. The included studies and extracted meta-data are freely available in the online, interactive systematic evidence map at https://pfastoxdatabase.org. Over 15,000 studies were retrieved from the PubMed literature searches. After manual screening, 1,067 studies were identified and included as investigating the health or toxicological effect of one or more PFAS of interest. There were 505 human, 385 animal, and 220 in vitro studies. Summary tables of the extracted data and overall observations are included in this report. The PFAS-Tox Database is a useful tool for searching, filtering, and identifying peer reviewed research on the health and toxicological effects of the included PFAS. In this summary of the evidence map we provide

Systematic evidence mapping offers a robust and transparent methodology for facilitating evidence-based approaches to decision-making in chemicals policy and wider environmental health. Interest in the methodology is growing; however, its application in environmental health is still novel. To facilitate the production of effective systematic evidence maps for environmental health use cases, we survey the successful application of evidence mapping in other fields where the methodology is more established. Focusing on issues of “data storage technology”, “data integrity”, “data accessibility”, and “transparency”, we characterise current evidence-mapping practice and critically review its potential value for environmental health contexts. We note that rigid, flat data tables and schema-first approaches dominate current mapping methods and highlight how this practice is ill-suited to the highly connected, heterogeneous and complex nature of environmental health data. We propose this challenge is overcome by storing and structuring data as “knowledge graphs”. Knowledge graphs offer a flexible, schemaless and scalable model for systematically mapping the environmental health literature. Associated technologies such as ontologies are well-suited to the long-term goals of systematic mapping methodology in promoting resource-efficient access to the wider environmental health evidence base. Several graph storage implementations are readily available, with a variety of proven use cases in other fields. Thus, developing and adapting systematic evidence mapping for environmental health should utilise these graph-based resources to ensure the production of scalable, interoperable and robust maps to aid decision-making processes in chemicals policy and wider environmental health.

BACKGROUND: Although the implementation of systematic review and evidence mapping methods stands to improve the transparency and accuracy of chemical assessments, they also accentuate the challenges that assessors face in ensuring they have located and included all the evidence that is relevant to evaluating the potential health effects an exposure might be causing. This challenge of information retrieval can be characterized in terms of "semantic" and "conceptual" factors that render chemical assessments vulnerable to the streetlight effect. OBJECTIVES: This commentary presents how controlled vocabularies, thesauruses, and ontologies contribute to overcoming the streetlight effect in information retrieval, making up the key components of Knowledge Organization Systems (KOSs) that enable more systematic access to assessment-relevant information than is currently achievable. The concept of Adverse Outcome Pathways is used to illustrate what a general KOS for use in chemical assessment could look like. DISCUSSION: Ontologies are an underexploited element of effective knowledge organization in the environmental health sciences. Agreeing on and implementing ontologies in chemical assessment is a complex but tractable process with four fundamental steps. Successful implementation of ontologies would not only make currently fragmented information about health risks from chemical exposures vastly more accessible, it could ultimately enable computational methods for chemical assessment that can take advantage of the full richness of data described in natural language in primary studies. https://doi.org/10.1289/EHP6994.

Background While systematic review (SR) methods are gaining traction as a method for providing a reliable summary of existing evidence for health risks posed by exposure to chemical substances, it is becoming clear that their value is restricted to a specific range of risk management scenarios - in particular, those which can be addressed with tightly focused questions and can accommodate the time and resource requirements of a systematic evidence synthesis. Methods The concept of a systematic evidence map (SEM) is defined and contrasted to the function and limitations of systematic review (SR) in the context of risk management decision-making. The potential for SEMs to facilitate evidence-based decision-making are explored using a hypothetical example in risk management priority-setting. The potential role of SEMs in reference to broader risk management workflows is characterised. Results SEMs are databases of systematically gathered research which characterise broad features of the evidence base. Although not intended to substitute for the evidence synthesis element of systematic reviews, SEMs provide a comprehensive, queryable summary of a large body of policy relevant research. They provide an evidence-based approach to characterising the extent of available evidence and support forward looking predictions or trendspotting in the chemical risk sciences. In particular, SEMs facilitate the identification of related bodies of decision critical chemical risk information which could be further analysed using SR methods, and highlight gaps in the evidence which could be addressed with additional primary studies to reduce uncertainties in decision-making. Conclusions SEMs have strong and growing potential as a high value tool in resource efficient use of existing research in chemical risk management. They can be used as a critical precursor to efficient deployment of high quality SR methods for characterising chemical health risks. Furthermore, SEMs have potential, at