In the annals of firefighting, few events stand out as starkly as the Palisades Fire in Los Angeles. This wildfire, which raged through Pacific Palisades in January, was not just a battle against flames; it was a harrowing confrontation with an enemy that left an indelible mark on both the landscape and the brave souls who fought it. The fire, which ranks as the second-most destructive wildfire in Southern California history, consumed over 23,000 acres and destroyed 5,000 structures. For firefighters like Joseph Field, who has been with the Los Angeles Fire Department for over 25 years, it was a nightmarish ordeal unlike any other.

Field, who manned a 10-inch hose line during the fire, described the scene with a sense of awe and dread. “As far as the eye could see, homes were on fire, everywhere,” he said. Despite his extensive experience, nothing had prepared him for the intensity of that night. He stood between a house that hadn’t caught fire yet and another that was already engulfed in smoke. The smoke was so thick and toxic that even with goggles, his eyes felt like they had been wiped with sandpaper. “You’re using basically a cloth hood to kind of help a little bit, but you’re taking in a lot of smoke,” he recounted. “You’re just eating it. You’re constantly eating it.”

The wind, a relentless adversary, blew the hose water back onto him, making it nearly impossible to gain ground. “Finally, you just start to lose it. [The fire] starts to get into the house, despite your best efforts,” he recalled. Field fought the fires for seven days straight, went home for a day, and then returned for another eight days. “We’re not used to getting our butts kicked on a fire,” he said. “This fire, for the most part, kicked all our butts.”

The Palisades Fire was not just a localized disaster; it was a wake-up call for the entire firefighting community. The sheer scale of destruction and the toxic cocktail of chemicals released into the air raised alarming questions about the long-term health impacts on firefighters. Field is among 300 firefighters participating in a study to monitor their exposure to cancer-causing chemicals after the LA fires. Researchers from the Wildfire Conservancy and the University of Arizona have collected blood and urine samples from firefighters with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, the LA Fire Department, and other smaller departments. They have also collected contaminant-absorbing wristbands worn by the firefighters to measure their exposures.

The preliminary results from the ongoing investigation are deeply concerning. The first set of data revealed that 42 firefighters who worked the LA fires had significantly higher concentrations of certain chemicals called PFAS in their blood. While it is not yet clear whether these changes will be linked to health problems, the findings are a red flag. Additionally, an analysis of heavy metal exposures showed elevated levels of key metals, including chromium, arsenic, and cobalt. A separate study by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found a brief 110-fold increase in air lead levels during the LA fires. Many of the affected buildings were built before 1978, when lead paint was still commonly used, adding another layer of complexity to the health risks.

At the peak of the Palisades Fire, more than 6,000 firefighters were deployed. “These are 9/11-scale exposure events for firefighters,” said Matt Rahn, executive director of the Wildfire Conservancy. Exposure to carcinogens in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, attacks has been linked to heightened cancer risk. According to the New York City Fire Department, 3,500 firefighters have cancer related to their work at the World Trade Center. “We need to understand better as to the air and the soil and the water contamination that are specific to LA,” said Dr. Kari Nadeau, chair of the Department of Environmental Health at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. “I don’t want to say that anything is the same as LA, because LA will be LA.”

The statistics are stark: Two-thirds of firefighters die from job-related cancer, according to the International Association of Firefighters. “It’s a pretty stark statistic, but it’s the reality of what we deal with in the fire service as a result of our occupational exposures,” said Derek Urwin, the association’s chief science adviser. “Any exposure to products of combustion increases cancer risk, and [the Los Angeles fires] were obviously quite substantial exposures.”

Wildland firefighters are also regularly exposed to carcinogens; at least 29 have been linked to this type of fire, according to a 2024 study by US Forest Service researchers. Wildland firefighters who battle blazes that spread into urban areas are exposed to even more hazardous emissions from the burning of both natural and human-made fuels. Then, after the initial incident, these firefighters encounter “off-gassing,” the release of harmful gases from everything that combusted in the rubble, which can last days or even weeks. All of this makes the Southern California fires, with their mixture of toxicants, more complicated than either wildland or structure fires, according to Jooyeon Hwang, an associate professor and occupational health researcher at UTHealth Houston who has researched the health risks to firefighters from wildfire smoke.

“We really do not understand fully yet about the long-term effects of these exposures to the carcinogens,” Hwang said. “We definitely need more studies.” It can take decades for cancer to develop after exposure to carcinogens. “Let’s say you are exposed to these carcinogens at age 20. Then, maybe at age 40 or 50, you might find those cancers,” she explained. In addition to helping firefighters understand and predict their cancer risk, the Wildfire Conservancy is studying interventions that can be put in place now. It’s not feasible for wildland firefighters to wear full-face respirators with filter cartridges and battery packs while hiking with 40-plus pounds of gear in terrible conditions, so they may have only a bandana or shroud to protect their airways. “That’s not a respiratory protection device. It’s letting everything through except big chunks of ash,” Rahn said. Plus, the respirator cartridges aren’t certified to protect against the type of smoke encountered by these firefighters. Even high-quality N95 masks become unusable very rapidly. “All the cartridges that are out there are certified and tested against single-gas challenges,” Urwin said. “The issue with smoke is, it’s an extraordinarily complex mixture of many, many gases. And the issue with just relying on a respirator is, we don’t know how effective they are against smoke exposures, if at all.”

For the past year, conservancy researchers have been conducting field tests to evaluate the effectiveness and functionality of different types of respiratory devices. They want to consider firefighters with stubble, sunscreen, ash, soot, smoke, and sweat. The conservancy is also investigating clothing that contains an added barrier to filter out tiny particles. In lab tests, researchers have seen up to a 95% reduction in skin contamination from firefighting with the use of these clothes.

When Field came home after the first seven days of fighting the Palisades Fire, he soaked his brush coat in a bucket of water and detergent. “It looked like oil, sludge,” he said. “All those carcinogens, get ‘em off you.” When he got some downtime recently, he took a drive through the Pacific Palisades, back to another street of homes that his team had showered with water. “There were homes that, if we had not put a stand on those homes, they definitely would have burned down, and if those homes burned down, they would have burned a lot more homes,” he said. “We actually did save a number of homes.” That, he said, was good to see. He’s not focusing on whether the cost of saving those homes might mean cancer down the line. “I don’t try to build too much into stuff like that,” he said. “When I’m faced with that kind of stuff, then that’s another story, and I’ll deal with it when that happens.”

The Palisades Fire and its aftermath serve as a stark reminder of the hidden costs of firefighting. The bravery and selflessness of firefighters like Joseph Field cannot be overstated, but neither can the long-term health risks they face. As researchers continue to study the effects of carcinogen exposure and develop better protective measures, the hope is that future firefighters will be better equipped to face these challenges. The fight against wildfires is not just about extinguishing flames; it is about protecting lives, both during the fire and long after the embers have cooled.