Providing N95s for Wildland Firefighters is a Step Forward, but We Must do More to Protect Them from Smoke
Wildland firefighters manage, suppress, and prescribe fires on our nation’s public lands, protecting all of us. Yet it is becoming ever clearer that we as a nation are failing to protect them.
Tenacious reporting from the New York Times recently detailed the staggering impacts of wildfire smoke inhalation on wildland firefighters’ physical, mental, and financial health. Impacts can include respiratory distress, cardiovascular effects, and increased risk of cancer. Given what we already know about the risks posed by wildfire smoke inhalation, it’s a failure that for the last several decades, the federal government has not provided any suitable respiratory protection for wildland firefighters.
Agencies took action last week to move towards correcting this failure. Thanks to a change to longstanding guidance issued through the National Interagency Fire Center, the Forest Service will now provide N95 masks to wildland firefighters alongside other standard equipment. Notably, N95s will also be available to federally contracted firefighters, who don’t have the same access to benefits and workers compensation as federal employees performing the same job. These changes were motivated by a House Oversight hearing that called attention to the Times’ reporting, the health and safety risks of wildland firefighting work, and the need for more robust protections.
Equipping our nation’s wildland firefighters with masks is an important acknowledgement at the highest levels of government of the occupational hazards that smoke exposure poses, and a recognition of the need to provide firefighters with more options to protect their health from wildfire smoke.
However, N95s are being issued for voluntary use and for light duty tasks only. N95s are flammable, which is obviously problematic on the fire line. N95s may also impede breathing during the arduous task of wildland firefighting, which could decrease performance (especially as extreme heat becomes more common and as fire seasons lengthen). This means that use of N95s in wildland firefighting, while a move in the right direction, is limited.
We must do more. Specifically, the federal government should go beyond providing N95s and invest in developing personal protective equipment (PPE) that is specifically designed for the unique hazards and demands of wildland firefighting. As noted in a previous FAS publication, the Department of Homeland Security was once funding efforts by an industry partner to develop a respirator to meet firefighters’ unique needs. The status of these efforts under the current administration is unclear, but Axios covered the work as recently as September 2024. At that time, the five-year project was still ongoing. Whether through continuation of this project or through another mechanism such as a prize challenge or grant program, the federal government should make innovating appropriate PPE for wildland firefighters a priority.
In addition to developing sufficient PPE, the federal government should work to better understand the risks posed by long-term exposure to wildfire smoke, communicate those risks, and protect those working alongside fire in the built and natural environments. Additional actions that the federal government should take to protect wildland firefighters include:
- Studying the long-term impacts of wildland firefighting on human health. While research on the health impacts of wildfire smoke is robust and growing, there is still a need for more studies focused specifically on the impacts of wildfire smoke inhalation on wildland firefighters (especially in the long term). Congress has been taking steps in this direction; for example, the introduced Modernizing Wildfire Safety and Prevention Act (which FAS endorsed) directs agencies to conduct a human health risk assessment for worker exposure to smoke in the built and natural environments. Unfortunately, reported cuts to agency staff have delayed work already underway to track firefighter health. States can and should step in; just recently, for instance, California launched a collaboration among UCLA, UC Davis, and CALFIRE to study the relationship between cancer risk and firefighting.
- Developing technologies, tactics, and practices that reduce the amount of time that wildland firefighters spend at the highest exposure moments without sacrificing the quality of wildland fire management.
- Improving benefits for wildland firefighters, including for contractors. Federal wildland firefighters face a suite of well-documented challenges including low pay, inadequate housing, and mental health concerns. Recommendations in chapter 6 of the Wildland Fire Mitigation and Management Commission’s report remain relevant today as bipartisan solutions to ensure the American firefighting workforce is world-class.
Policymakers, agencies, and innovators should ensure that current and former firefighters and their representatives (including unions) are deeply and proactively engaged in developing solutions that improve their workplace conditions and quality of life.
Demonstrating a serious commitment to improving the mental and physical health and safety of wildland firefighters is not just the right thing to do: it is also essential to hiring and maintaining sufficient staff to tackle the scale and pace of the wildfire crisis. We hope that providing N95s is just the beginning of an overhaul in how we support the tens of thousands of wildland firefighters who serve in federal agencies.
Wildland firefighters manage, suppress, and prescribe fires on our nation’s public lands, protecting all of us. Yet it is becoming ever clearer that we as a nation are failing to protect them.
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