NASHUA, N.H. — A push to expand benefits for firefighters who have been diagnosed with cancer is nearing the finish line on Capitol Hill, years after New Hampshire updated its laws.

Firefighting and cancer have long been linked, but laws and health coverage have been slow to catch up.

Last week, the Honoring Our Fallen Heroes Act passed as part of a major defense spending bill. If signed into law, the measure would expand coverage for families of firefighters who die of or become permanently disabled from cancers related to their service.

Lt. Chris Wyman of the Merrimack Fire Department lost his wife, Jessica, a Nashua firefighter, to occupational lung cancer in 2023. Her loss became part of the push for change.

“I had to take a deep breath a couple of times and go up and tell our story, tell Jess’ story over and over and over and over again so that the legislators both at the State House and at the federal level understood the impact, understood the pain, understood the hardships the families have to fight to do,” Wyman said.

New Hampshire passed a law in 2018 making cancer a presumptive work-related illness for firefighters. In 2023, the law was expanded to be more inclusive to put less of a burden on cancer-stricken firefighters to have their claims covered.

The debates that already unfolded in New Hampshire are now happening at the national level. The Honoring Our Fallen Heroes Act just passed the House and still has to clear the Senate. U.S. Rep. Maggie Goodlander, D-New Hampshire, said the work of protecting first responder health is far from over.”

“We have a long way to go to make sure that the protective gear that our firefighters are wearing is not actually causing cancer itself, to make sure that our firefighters get the kind of cancer screenings, the kind of medical attention on the front end so that they’re not discovering stage 4 lung cancer after years of service,” Goodlander said.

https://www.wmur.com/article/federal-legislation-cancer-firefighters-121525/69733305