By Megan Burrow, NorthJersey.com
During fire training exercises twice a year at Kennedy International Airport in the 1970s and ’80s, Charles O’Neill, a retired Port Authority police officer who worked out of Newark Airport, would repeatedly spray simulated aircraft fires with firefighting foam over the intense weeklong sessions.
O’Neill and his colleagues would use the foam to fight five or six simulated fires a day, as part of their required fire and rescue certification. Once one blaze was extinguished, they would set it up and do it again.
The equipment worn as they sprayed the foam was one-size-fits-all, O’Neill said, and after “one guy sloshed around in that stuff,” the next person would change into the same suit.
O’Neill, 78, was diagnosed and treated for prostate cancer 20 years ago. But it wasn’t until recently that he made a possible connection between his cancer diagnosis and the equipment he used during his long career in the fire service.
“We just did it because it was our job. Nobody ever said, ‘Be careful or don’t get it on your skin,’ none of that was explained to us,” said O’Neill, who retired in 1997 from the Port Authority Police and served for more than 20 years as a volunteer firefighter in New Milford until the mid-90s. “Now, from what I understand, the exposure to those chemicals could do that to you.”
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