For years, firefighters at Seattle’s Station 31 have worried that the place where they barbecue steak and try to sleep between calls might be making them sick.
Red flags were first raised in the early 2000s, after a string of firefighters were diagnosed with cancer. But a subsequent study found no link between the station and the illness. Studies have shown that firefighters, in general, are at greater risk of getting cancer than the general population because of their routine exposure to carcinogens.
Nonetheless, the fear has remained, and Station 31 is still known as “Cancer House.”So when firefighter Steve Roberts — a healthy man who has summitted Mount Rainier twice and has no family history of cancer — developed brain cancer, forcing his retirement in March 2016, the desire for answers acquired a new urgency.