Underwear for firefighters means to prevent cancer

The Defender Brief by 9 Alarm Apparel

A Massachusetts textile maker has teamed with firefighters to make cancer-preventive underwear.

In October 2021, I shared John Oliver's Last Week treatment of PFAS, the highly carcinogenic chemical that is used to make non-stick cookware, as depicted in the movie-based-on-a-true-story Dark Waters, and which can now be detected in the blood of most Americans.

At that time, Oliver lamented that PFAS is not even on the list of toxins that water quality tests look for. Indeed, as I stated in an update to that post the same month, I sought my water quality report at home in Providence, Rhode Island, and there was no mention of PFAS.

There has been progress since. Both the U.S. EPA and the European Union are moving forward with plans announced in 2021 to regulate PFAS. (But see Tom Perkins, US Water Likely Contains More "Forever Chemicals" Than EPA Tests Show, Guardian, July 6, 2022.)

In my house, we replaced our Teflon-coated cookware with a Rachel Ray set we hope is PFAS-free. I took the Teflon stuff to metal recycling, but probably, I acknowledge, it will contribute to the problem in the short term, as landfill waste is leeching PFAS into the earth.

There's a long way to go. In late June, NPR reported, "the EPA put out a new advisory warning that even tiny amounts of some of PFAS chemicals found in drinking water may pose risks." And "[s]cientists are finding PFAS everywhere." A so-called "forever chemical," PFAS persists in the environment, practically never breaking down.

Firefighters are especially vulnerable to PFAS exposure, and testicular cancer is an especial risk. Reminiscent of once seemingly miraculous asbestos, PFAS is used in fire-suppressive gear as well as the firefighting foam in which firefighters can find themselves literally swamped. Firefighters filed a wave of lawsuits in February, CBS News reported, claiming cancer resulting from PFAS exposure.

In a welcome sliver-of-hope development, Massachusetts textile makers announced in tandem with the February lawsuits the sale of PFAS-protective underwear for firefighters.

Precision Sportwear is making "Defender Briefs," a product created by Northampton, Mass., firefighter Levi Bousquet and his company, 9 Alarm Apparel. They told WBZ that Defender Briefs "block 99% of cancer-causing agents from reaching the skin." Precision is located in Fall River, Mass., and 9 Alarm Apparel in Belchertown, Mass.

9 Alarm is marketing the underwear with the slogan, "Protect the Boys."

Lawyer-artist offers savory tort slogan

I just discovered this line of products from "LawPhrases: Wearable Law."

Creator and Texas "lawyer-slash-artist" Charles Fincher also possesses the mind and pen behind LawComix.

No official connection to The Savory Tort, but I like his style.

American soccer traces roots to textile mills

In the first pandemic summer, I watched and adored the limited TV series, The English Game, which depicted the birth of modern soccer, or association football, in the context of industrialization and labor organization in the 19th century.

Fall River Rovers, 1917

For Boston.com, sports writer Hayden Bird now reveals a similar heritage for U.S. soccer in the communities of once abundant mills in my current home region, eastern Rhode Island and the Massachusetts south coast.  Bird explains in the piece:

[T]he early 20th century boom in American soccer is intertwined with the textile industry. The exponential growth of mills in the late 19th century (following the decline of the whaling industry) led to large scale immigration as skilled laborers were funneled in....

Answering the call were people who already had textile experience: those from Lancashire and the valley of Clyde. These regions, as historian Roger Allaway points out, “in addition to being the heart of the English textile industry also was the area of England in which association football [soccer] had most taken root among working class people in those same years."

And because of this, "textiles brought immigration and immigration brought football."

Bird's coverage embedded this video, which YouTuber soccermavn describes as "[p]erhaps the oldest extant professional U.S. soccer footage—snippets from the 1924 U.S. Open Cup final, played on March 30, 1924" in St. Louis, where the Vesper Buick hosted the Fall River, Mass., Marksmen.  The Marksmen prevailed 4-2.

The article is Hayden Bird, American Menace: When Fall River Ruled U.S. Soccer, Boston.com (June 21, 2018).  Hat tip @voteunion (Aaron Wazlavek), J.D.  See also Dan Vaughn, The Ghosts of Fall River, Protagonist Soccer (Oct. 29, 2018).