U.S. Forest Service officials have known that equipment worn by wildland firefighters contains potentially dangerous “permanent chemicals” for years before the agency publicly acknowledged the problem, according to internal communications obtained by ProPublica.
Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, also known as PFAS, have been linked to adverse health effects, including certain cancers and developmental delays in children. For years, PFAS chemicals have been commonly used to treat heavy equipment worn by municipal firefighters to repel water and oil.
Federal officials have said little about whether the compound was also found in the thin heat-resistant clothing worn by wildland firefighters. In February 2024, when ProPublica was reporting on the dangers of wildland firefighting, including cancer risks, the news organization asked both the Forest Service and the Department of the Interior whether federal wildland firefighting equipment contained PFAS. Both agencies gave nearly identical responses, writing that there was no “specific concentration measurement data to show that PFAS are present in protective clothing or equipment.”
But email communications obtained by ProPublica show that as early as 2021, government officials warned of the presence of PFAS in pants used by wildland firefighters. In April 2022, a senior Forest Service official asked his colleagues whether they were required to tell firefighters that PFAS had been detected in their equipment.
According to the email, the agency decided not to share the information immediately, instead waiting for the results of studies on whether PFAS can be absorbed through the skin.
The emails were made public last week in response to a Freedom of Information Act request filed in 2022 by George Broyles, a former Forest Service official who has long studied smoke exposure in firefighters and has repeatedly expressed concern about the Forest Service’s reluctance to acknowledge cancer among its employees. “They’re just obfuscating it,” Broyles said. “This is a continuation of the same thing: ‘We’re going to stick our heads in the sand and hope no one notices.'”
The Forest Service declined to answer questions about its records, the presence of PFAS chemicals in its equipment or the health status of its firefighters. In 2024, the Forest Service said in a statement to ProPublica, “The Forest Service is deeply committed to not only understanding occupational risks for our employees, but to mitigating these risks.”
The Home Office did not respond to questions about PFAS.
By 2021, public awareness of the prevalence and risks of PFAS had increased. Earlier that year, Congress ordered the National Institute of Standards and Technology, an agency under the Department of Commerce, to investigate whether firefighting gear contains PFAS. The agency’s researchers have begun collecting a variety of samples of hoods and gloves worn by municipal firefighters fighting structure fires, as well as wildland firefighting gear.
In April, a Forest Service equipment specialist sent an email to one of its suppliers, TenCate, which makes fabrics used in wildland firefighting equipment, according to the documents. At the time, the company’s “Advance” fabric (a Kevlar blend) used in some of its pants was treated with a finishing product called Shelltite. “Question,” asked a Forest Service expert. “Is there any PFAS present in the Shelltite finish of Advance fabrics?”
TenCate managers quickly responded with documentation confirming that one of the finishes contained a type of PFAS that was applied to repel hydrocarbons and gasoline. The director also said that Ten Kate is “in the final stages of development” for a finish without a compound.
TenCate did not respond to repeated requests for comment from ProPublica.
PFAS are a broad class of chemicals. According to an email sent by TenCate to the Forest Service, the company’s finishes used PFAS in forms with six or fewer fluorinated carbon atoms. Experts say these “short-chain” PFAS chemicals are less harmful than other chemicals, but some can remain in the environment for years and in humans for months. Its full impact on human health is unknown.
Although all firefighters have a significantly higher risk of cancer than the general population, the health status of wildland firefighters is less understood than that of firefighters fighting fires in buildings and other structures. This is primarily the government’s responsibility. As ProPublica reported, the Forest Service has known for decades that wildfire smoke contains carcinogenic elements, but the government has backed away from studying the effects on wildland firefighters. Researchers have found elevated levels of some PFAS in the blood of structural firefighters, but less is known about these chemicals in wildland firefighters.
Structural fire departments often require oil- and water-repellent clothing, but experts say that’s not necessarily necessary for wildland firefighters, who often wear the same gear for weeks in remote areas.
“From a wildland firefighting perspective, I see no reason to treat equipment with PFAS. Oil repellency is not really necessary,” Brian Ormond, an associate professor of textile engineering, chemistry and science at North Carolina State University, said in an email. “Not receiving PFAS treatment may be a safer option.”
The presence of PFAS in pants became a topic of discussion around 2021 at a risk management committee made up of senior officials from multiple agencies, including the Forest Service and the Department of the Interior, according to a former fire official with direct knowledge of the dynamic. The official said committee members want to know “is it a big deal, a small deal or no deal?”
In April 2022, a full year after TenCate reported to the Forest Service about the PFAS treatments used in its fabrics, a government official named David Haston raised the issue again. Haston, then the Forest Service’s deputy director of operations, emailed a colleague to ask if TenCate’s fabric still contained PFAS in its finish. Tencate asked, “Can you tell me if this is a danger to the people wearing these clothes? Do we have a duty to notify our employees?”
The email was forwarded to David McRae Schulte, a Forest Service equipment specialist, who said he asked the company if it was ready for PFAS-free fabric. “They said they would look into it and get back to me,” the expert wrote. “I hope it happens sooner rather than later.”
Five months later, in September, McCray-Schulte wrote a letter to Forest Service officials saying she still hadn’t heard from Ten Kate. McCray-Schulte said in an email that he would contact the company again, but added that the Forest Service had decided to wait until the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health completed its studies, including a study on whether PFAS is absorbed through the skin, “before making any decisions.” In the same email, Broyles asked colleagues whether he should answer questions about PFAS that he asked on behalf of a labor advocacy group called Grassroots Wildland Firefighters. All other officials agreed not to inform the grassroots about PFAS right away. “They need to send a formal request to the FS for this information,” the agency’s physiologists wrote.
The Forest Service never told civilian wildland firefighters that their pants might contain PFAS, according to multiple wildland firefighters and government officials familiar with the contracts and purchases.
“To me, this shows that the agency’s upper management has never prioritized the health and well-being of our actual firefighters over the years,” said Reba Duncan, president of Grassroots and a former Forest Service fire chief. Duncan pointed out that many wildland firefighters wear pants even in the off-season. “They knew this. They knew about other threats to health and well-being, but they chose not to act proactively and share the information with their employees. It appears we only learn of it when they are forced to provide information.”
In recent years, under pressure from labor groups and lawmakers, the federal government has begun recognizing cancer among workers, and the Forest Service distributed masks to wildland firefighters last year in response to a New York Times report. However, it is not yet possible to fully account for the risks. There is no mention of cancer in the government’s preparation guide for new wildland firefighters, created in 2022. When ProPublica asked the Interior Department if it planned to update the guide, a spokesperson directed the news outlet to a blog post about research on workplace hazards that did not mention cancer.
In January 2023, nearly two years after the Forest Service learned about the PFAS treatment, TenCate finally responded to Maclay-Schulte. “To our knowledge, there have been no adverse health effects from wearing ADVANCE with Shelltite or Supershelltite,” the company’s senior director wrote. However, the company also informed the agency that it is now producing a PFAS-free finish for pant fabrics.
It is unclear whether the government has started purchasing pants with the new finish or continues to purchase pants with PFAS.
In 2024, NIST released a study on PFAS in firefighting equipment that Congress mandated in 2021. The study found that some wildland firefighting equipment contained PFAS. Most contained small amounts of chemicals. However, NIST wrote in its study summary that “there were some cases that showed significantly higher levels.” Heather Stapleton, an exposure scientist and professor at Duke University, said the study showed levels in certain samples “similar to those reported in structural firefighting equipment.”
The investigation did not identify the companies that procured the equipment, and NIST did not respond to questions from ProPublica. But the NIOSH study that Forest Service officials have been looking forward to in determining how to act is still ongoing.
