For career fire departments, smoking ciggarettes doesn’t seem more pervasive than other places. Many departments haven’t allowed smoking while on duty for quite a long time, and we work 24 to 48 hours per shift.
As to the pfas and cancer, you’re right about a lot of what we end up breathing in and smoke we get on our skin from firefighting, but you don’t actually need that study done to already know that pfa’s cause cancer. That’s been covered by other studies outside of firefighting equipment to know that pfas are cancer causing. Further, it’s been proving that pfas can be absorbed through the skin, and finally, it’s been proven that firefighters have had higher levels of pfas in their bloodstream.
So it’s not that firefighters have more cancer and they’re just claiming it’s because of the pfas. It’s that they know pfas cause cancer and that our bunker gear is leeching pfas into our body’s.