Hoods for Heroes - Part I

For most folks, especially those who are first responders, if they someone in pain or truly distraught, they won’t have the heart to just pass it by and go on with their shopping, run, picking up the dry-cleaning, etc. My two guests on this podcast, Jeff Rountree and Bill Hamilton, are “cut from the same cloth.”

This past May, while first-timers at promoting International Firefighters’ Day in Clay County, Florida, they found out about the scourge that is devouring great firefighters every single day – CANCER. Their background is the insurance business, so they were well aware of cancer and the toll it wreaks upon both the patient and those around him/her. But they had no idea of how strongly it was depleting the American Fire Service of great firefighters, of all ages.

Not ones to sit around and do nothing, they create and non-profit organization, “Hoods for Heroes.” Their goal is to present each and every one of the approximate 1.2 million firefighters in the U.S., with a newly designed, flash hood, with a processing that traps particulate matter from soot before it reaches the most vulnerable areas of our body, the thin layers of skin around the neck, ears and scalp.

The numbers of diagnoses are climbing. In a relatively recent study with the Boston Fire Dept., a firefighter were being diagnosed with cancer every THREE WEEKS! Moreover, the type of cancers being found in firefighters are either highly aggressive or new strains and type that oncologists and researchers have see little or none of, before this.

Listen as Jeff and Bill tell their story. See to whom they are turning to for help. Your employer just might be a perfect match!