National Firefighter Registry for Cancer
The registry will help researchers better understand and reduce cancer in firefighters.
The National Firefighter Registry for Cancer, administered by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), is open all U.S. firefighters, with or without cancer, no matter their length of service. It was established at the direction of the Firefighter Cancer Registry Act, which passed by Congress in 2018 to better understand the link between firefighting and cancer.
The registry will help researchers better understand and reduce cancer in firefighters by matching the information provided by participating firefighters with cancer diagnosis information from state cancer registries. This matching process will allow NIOSH to study the relationship between firefighting and cancer outcomes over time.
The registry is a part of understanding the possible long-term health effects of this career. We encourage anyone who has or is working in wildland fire to sign up.
In addition, the Interior Department and USDA Forest Service have begun working together, as directed by the National Defense Authorization Act of 2023, to conduct a comprehensive study on long-term health effects for wildland firefighters. The agencies have started the planning process for this study with NIOSH and the Department of Labor.