In a message dated 02/20/2000 2:14:23 PM Eastern Standard Time,
[log in to unmask] writes:

<< Am impressed by the risk and sacrifice.

 Notice the disability, discrimination, and workers' compensation issues
 threading the article.
  >

This was a fear for us when I was a firefighter fifteen years ago.  People
thought that AIDS was the thing to fear contracting, but Hep C is more easily
contracted.  The AIDS virus, so we were taught, quickly dies when exposed to
air.

It's not like the clean environment of an emergency room.  You don't always
have time to take "universal precautions" assuming that the person you are
treating has an infectious disease.

I saw a lot of firefighters take chances for the sake of a patient in the
street.  I took chances myself -- we all did.  There's a part of your brain
knowing that you're taking a risk but you're there and you just do what you
have to do.  Two minutes after you start artificial respirations on somebody,
or have their blood on your hands while you're applying pressure to a wound
or a pressure point, a fellow firefighter appears with the mask and gloves,
but you're already exposed.  It's the nature of the business.  It's probably
better coordinated now, but then it wasn't -- at least not where I was.

Paramedics are ready with universal precautions because that's the nature of
their business.  Even then though, they work in the same conditions.

I think most of us just chalked it up to the general risk associated with
being firefighters.

If you get sick you need to be able to demonstrate where it happened, and if
you can't pin it down, the Worker's Comp people have an open door to refuse
your claim.
They can say it might have happened off the job too.  It's not like if you
hurt your back.  You might wake up one morning in the firehouse and have
terrible pain, but you're not sure exactly what happened.  You can always say
on the paperwork that you did it while you were racking hose in the hosebed
of the fire engine, or picking something up -- whatever.  But it's harder to
be specific if something shows up months down the line and you don't know
where it happened.