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Wattie Watson: Professional Firefighters Union National Secretary on ACC cover for firefighters with work-related cancer · Early Edition with Ryan Bridge

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: The Greenswan firefighters to have automatic acc cover where they
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: get cancer from inhaling carcinogens. So they put a member's
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: bill in the tym, and the Firefighters Union says they'll
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: keep fighting it until it becomes law. Watty Watson is
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: the National Secretary of the Professional Firefighters Union and joins me, Now,
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  Speaker 1: Ella what he good morning?
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  Speaker 2: Sorry, I've got a cold this morning, so not a
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  Speaker 2: great voice for your listeners.
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: That's okay. So at the moment, what happens if a
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: firefighter gets a bit of cancer and wants some a secs?
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, what happens now is a long drawn process. The
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  Speaker 2: firefighter has to do research, try and document the types
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  Speaker 2: of fires that they've attended, the numbers of fires that
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  Speaker 2: have attended, when they undertook training, et cetera, to try
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  Speaker 2: and demonstrate when they were exposed to the cart egens. Normally,
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  Speaker 2: those cases are rejected and so then we have to
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  Speaker 2: go through a review and sometimes an appeal process.
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  Speaker 1: Why are they rejected?
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  Speaker 2: I'll finds reject it. It just seems to be the issue.
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  Speaker 2: And c a firefighters union, which is fully funded by
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  Speaker 2: a membership, we spend a lot of money fighting those
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  Speaker 2: and most of the time. At the end of a
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  Speaker 2: legal process, we do get covered.
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  Speaker 1: Firefighters learned from this as time has gone on. And
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  Speaker 1: do they keep a log of every fire in every
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  Speaker 1: possible carcinogenic event.
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  Speaker 2: No, and it's not actually necessary. What the research shows
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  Speaker 2: us is that it's the accumulation of exposures. Firefighters can
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  Speaker 2: never be fully protected because the uniform that they wear
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  Speaker 2: when they're fighting fires, that yellow uniform that everyone sees,
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  Speaker 2: has to be able to breathe, otherwise they would die
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  Speaker 2: from metabolic heat build up, and so they absorb it
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  Speaker 2: through the smoke, through the skin, and then it's just
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  Speaker 2: a cumulation of that generally results.
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  Speaker 1: In the kencer. So how common is it for a
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  Speaker 1: firefighter to develop cancer? Does it exceeds normal levels? Oh?
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  Speaker 2: Absolutely, depending on the cancer. There's a huge amount of
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  Speaker 2: research around the world and studies into it's one of
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  Speaker 2: the most studied occupations for occupational cancer. Sometimes it's five
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: to ten, even one hundred times more than the general
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  Speaker 2: population to get a particular case.
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  Speaker 1: Okay, so this proposal is in the ten If parties
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  Speaker 1: get on board, this could get through the House before
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  Speaker 1: the election. However, you don't think they're going to get support.
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  Speaker 1: You're not going to get support. Why do you think that?
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  Speaker 2: Oh no, I do think gets support. We're going to
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  Speaker 2: work hard to get that support. We're calling on all
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  Speaker 2: parties to put their politic ing aside, the partisan politics aside.
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  Speaker 2: I don't know why anyone would not support the spill.
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  Speaker 2: The Australians that have it every where, the Canadians have
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  Speaker 2: very similar, the Americans. It's just gone through in more way.
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  Speaker 2: It's only for New Zealand firefighters have that access to well.
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  Speaker 1: Waddy, look after yourself, get well, have some lemon, honey
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  Speaker 1: and ginger. And thank you so much for your time,
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: Wattie Watson, who is the New Zealand Professional Fire Unions
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  Speaker 1: National Secretary. For more from Early Edition with Ryan Bridge.
• 3:04
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