New legislation would provide cancer health care coverage for NY volunteer firefighters

WATERFORD, NY — “There’s a lot of plastics, oil based chemicals that go into both the houses and the products we buy,” said John D’Alessandro, Firemen’s Association of the State of New York Secretary. “When you couple that with the fact that houses burn much hotter these days it causes the emission of many toxins that we didn’t see years ago,” he said.

D’Alessandro said that’s why his organization is pushing for what’s called presumptive cancer health care coverage for volunteer firefighters like himself.
He’s been with the Halfmooon-Waterford Fire District for nine years.

“Things like liver cancer, pancreatic cancer, cancers of the blood, those are all things that are a direct result of constant exposure to various toxins,” D’Alessandro said.
As a safety measure D’alessandro said the Halfmoon-Waterford firefighters are required to clean their uniforms and gear after every structure fire.

But that doesn’t guarantee that firefighters won’t develop cancer.

The New York State Senate voted unanimously Tuesday for a bill that would provide the cancer coverage.

The assembly must consider its own version of the bill.

But that’s where similar measures have become stalled for the past two years.

“One of the things that members of the Assembly have brought up.is the potential cost to local municipalities,” D’Alessandro said

But he said nearly 90 percent of New York’s firefighters are volunteers, which saves the state more than three billion dollars each year, according to the organization’s own study.

Assemblyman Steve, McLaughlin (R-Melrose), who is a co-sponsor of the Assembly’s version of the bill, said it limits who would be covered.

“This bill focuses on interior firefighters, they have to have been serving for 5 years they have to have passed a physical,” McLaughlin said.

D’Alessandro said cancer can hit the firefighter and loves ones hard, like the family of the late Wynantskill firefighter John O’Bomsawin who died in 2015.

“So they sent him for bone marrow biopsy and it came back that he had multiple myeloma,” said John’s wife Alicia.

“The one thing they didn’t volunteer to do is get cancer,” D’Alessandro said.

Paid firefighters already have cancer coverage in New York.

More than 35 other states provide volunteer firefighters with presumptive cancer coverage.