Kehoe’s experiences as a firefighter will allow him to play a crucial role on a new two-year Centers for Disease Control and National Institute for Occupational Safety grant awarded to CSU’s Luke Montrose. Montrose is an assistant professor in the Department of Environmental and Radiological Health Sciences, and plans to investigate the reproductive health effects of working as a male wildland firefighter.

Beginning this fall, the interdisciplinary study will recruit 100 active male wildland firefighters in the Rocky Mountain West and analyze semen samples before, during and after the wildfire season. The project will also deliver a targeted messaging strategy for sharing reproductive health information with those in the wildland firefighting field.

“I am very passionate about protecting wildland firefighter health and well-being,” Montrose said. “Our intention as a research group, at a time when wildfires are getting worse and we need more firefighters than ever, is to be good stewards of risk communication and to help firefighters feel like they are able to do their job in a way that does not sacrifice important things like being able to create a family.”

Smoke exposure health effects

Montrose’s lab previously found that wildfire smoke exposure altered the sperm of mice. The team will apply the same technique to the samples from this study to see if those changes also occur in human males.

“Contrary to other areas of research that typically will initially focus on males, research on environmental exposures that cause fertility-related issues have been almost exclusively studied in females until recently,” Montrose said. “But research is increasingly showing that a male’s health around the time of conception is very important.”

As wildfires continue to increase in size, length and severity, Kehoe and his colleagues are becoming more concerned about their health. Men make up about 90 percent of active wildland firefighters, although the number of women joining the profession is growing.

The study prioritizes making participation easy and convenient for firefighters. Participants will collect samples when they are off work using at-home collection kits. No travel or clinical visits will be required; the data will immediately transfer to the participant’s phone via a Bluetooth device that analyzes the sample. The samples will be analyzed for sperm count, motility and evidence of epigenetic changes.

As part of the Wildland Fire Medical and Public Health Advisory Team, a national wildfire coordinating group, Montrose is helping to identify the most critical research priorities needed for wildland firefighter health and well-being now and over the next few years. He also built Colorado’s first and only simulated wildfire smoke exposure system, which is housed at CSU and began operating this month.

Real-world communication

CSU co-investigators on the reproductive health study include Ashley Anderson, associate professor in the Department of Journalism and Media Communication; Tiffany Lipsey, a clinical exercise physiologist, research associate and director of the Heart Disease Prevention and First Responder Evaluation Programs in the Department of Health and Exercise Science; and Kayleigh Keller, assistant professor in the Department of Statistics.

Anderson is leading the part of the study that will recommend communication approaches for sharing reproductive health information with wildland firefighters. Messaging related to the health impacts of smoke exposure has historically been generic and needs to improve, Anderson said.

“Wildfire smoke communication is a critical topic that is becoming more important all the time,” she said. “But it needs to be more targeted, relevant and specific to certain populations — it needs to reach people where they are to make a difference.”

Lipsey is leading the study’s recruitment effort and hopes the work will result in tangible ways to make wildland firefighting safer. “As a former medic, I understand what it’s like not to sleep, and about difficult things you see on the job and take home with you,” said Lipsey, who is also working on the Firefighter Cancer Cohort Study, a national effort to track the health of 10,000 firefighters over 30 years. “Having been there gives me insight into some of the stressors this population has.”

For Kehoe, who joined Montrose’s lab as a freshman and is considering pursuing medical school, it all comes back to a love of firefighting and the camaraderie he shares with his colleagues. “Awareness is really important,” Kehoe said. “I hope to see this research inform evidence-based approaches to improving firefighting and better protecting the health of the people I work with — they are family to me.”