In a recent commercial aired at half-time during last Saturday’s Notre Dame Football game; The University of Notre Dame puts the Fire Service on notice that they’ve been studying our fire gear and something is amiss. See here. and below. We’ve reported fairly-widely on this topic, and we even broke this story almost 3 years ago (here) when Diane Cotter, the spouse of a cancer surviving firefighter from Worcester, Mass, stumbled into a rabbit-hole filled with chemical soup. Diane had discovered that fire gear textile manufacturers were using PFAS, a chemical known to cause cancer, to impart water and heat resistance to the fabrics. If you really think about it, how on earth can we wear this gear and have repeated use and exposure to high heat and water without the fabrics themselves breaking down. Turns out, thick and heavy coatings of PFAS chemicals are impregnated into the fabrics of fire gear, so much so that as much as 35% of the fabric itself is made up of PFAS chemicals. Ponder for a moment… What happens to water when it’s thrown into very high heat? It turns to steam, right?  What happens to most liquids and or solids when they’re … Continue reading Notre Dame University Pushes the Modern Fire Service to be Better.