VIDEO: When you visit most fire stations, you’ll find a weight room where firefighters can stay fit, but in five Minneapolis fire stations, you’ll also find saunas. The idea is that if firefighters spend time in a sauna after they respond to a fire call, they will sweat out some of the cancer-causing toxins that could have entered their bodies from the smoke.
Steve Shapira is the founder of the Minneapolis Fire Foundation, which helped raise the money to buy the saunas. He’s also a cancer survivor who is trying to protect firefighters like himself. “Hopefully prevent someone from walking down that same road that I’ve had to go down through,” Shapira said. But does it actually work? Dr. Zeke McKinney is a physician at HealthPartners and has spent a few years collecting data from Saint Paul Firefighters who started using saunas a few years ago. “I don’t think it’s conclusive, but the data is starting to be suggestive at best,” McKinney said. McKinney says he plans to publish his study later this year, and he believes more research is needed to investigate if saunas can truly prevent cancer in firefighters.
