I'm Flora Lichtenen, and you're listening to Science Friday.

Today in the podcast, forests and fires.

As pests and diseases take down trees across the country, resistant trees are sowing seeds of hope.

But first, how well do we understand the risks of firefighting?

I think that if we're going to ask young women and men to do this extremely dangerous work,

they have a right to know all of the risks, not just the immediate risks, but the long-term risks that they're facing.

Fighting fires is, of course, an inherently dangerous profession.

But it's not just the immediate risks of going into burning buildings or dropping into a burning forest.

There are also long-term health hazards that come with being exposed to smoke and chemicals and other toxic substances.

The World Health Organization classifies the profession of firefighting as carcinogenic.

So in 2018, the National Firefighter Registry for Cancer was created by Congress to help us understand those risks better.

It's been in the news recently because with federal budget cuts,

the registry went offline and then went back up this week. Here with me to discuss this and why it's important are my guests. Murphy Woodhouse is a reporter who's been covering this story

for the Mountain West News Bureau and Boise State Public Radio in Idaho. He's also a former

wildland firefighter. Dr. Sarah

Janke, director of the Center for Fire, Rescue and EMS Health Research at NDRI USA in Kansas.

Welcome to you both to Science Friday. Happy to be here.

Really, really happy to be here. Sarah, let's zoom out for a second. I mean, how well understood is this link

between cancer and firefighting? So there's enough science to say with scientific certainty,

we know firefighting is linked to the development of cancer. So it's a group one carcinogens. So

that's good news. And about 80% of research that's been done on firefighter health has been done in the last

15 to 17 years. The downside is most of research that's been done on firefighter health has been done in the last 15 to

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