Pregnant firefighters across the nation are struggling with their departments’ reproductive health policies.
Pregnant firefighters across the nation are struggling with their departments’ reproductive health policies - and a nonprofit created in Washington is working to change that.
Maia Brown has been a firefighter in Washington for 14 years. She said when she first started working, the thought that her career had any effect on her reproductive health never came to mind.
“But as time passed, something inspired me to look into it,” she said.
And when she did look into it, Brown said she found that most of the research focused on male firefighters.
"But it didn't seem like too far of a stretch to imagine that if it's affecting the men, it's affecting the women too,” Brown said.
The exposures at play include toxins from fighting active fires, heat, stress, sleep disruption, chemicals in cleaning supplies, and exhaust in the apparatus bay, to name a few.
So, back in 2018, Brown started a website, meant to be a placeholder for the research she could find.
“Over time it's evolved,” she said. “There's become such an incredible community of people that are also invested in this.”
It evolved over the years to the Beltane Guild. (“Beltane” means “bright fire,” with the word also being rooted in an ancient festival that, in part, symbolizes fertility).
The Beltane Guild’s board is made up of an attorney who deals with labor laws, OBGYNs, and firefighters, who not only help women in the industry across the county, but also present at conferences and consult with departments.
"The fire service has done an incredible job recruiting women over the past few decades, there's now an estimated 90,000 firefighters across the nation,” Brown said. “The problem is, for some departments, the policy and work practices haven't caught up.”
Brown said many women call the Beltane Guild, saying, “I don’t have a policy with my department, and I don’t know what to do; I don’t know if I am being treated fairly.”
She recalled many examples, from women across the country, like one who called after requesting modified duty, such as training responsibilities rather than field work.
“And she was put on her own sick and vacation leave for over a month while they quote ‘figured out what to do with her,’” Brown said. “That’s an excessive amount of time to be placing someone on their own sick and vacation leave.”
Brown added that actions like that sound like discrimination against pregnancy, pointing to the Pregnancy Discrimination Act.
"You can't just ask somebody not to work because they're pregnant, there has to be a reason behind it," she said.
Other departments, Brown said, have claimed undue hardship, saying if all eight women, for example, in the department got pregnant, they “couldn’t possibly accommodate.”
"The problem with that being that when you are looking at the way the law is written, it's about the here and now,” Brown said. “It’s not about the hypotheticals of all 8 women getting pregnant at the same time.”
And a culmination of these types of stories led to the “Gold Standard Policy” being created by the Beltane Guild. The policy was crafted by 20 women who are firefighters in Washington, plus research doctors.
"Not only is it research and law-based and comprehensive, but it's also based on the experiences of a lot of female firefighters in the industry," Brown said. "Pregnancy, I think, used to be this rare exception in the fire service, and we just haven't really caught up to the reality that we're in a modern workforce."
The policy includes laws and best practices for pre-pregnancy and fertility to adoption/fostering, pregnancy, and post-partum. It is not only laws and science in the policy; but it also includes a "general toolkit" for fire chiefs and departments.
"Suggestions, like maybe checking in on mom and baby after the baby's born. Things that seem commonsense, but when you work in a male-dominated industry, sometimes they're just overlooked," Brown said. "But we are a firefighter family, and those things are important to make us feel like part of the team, so I just really love the way it fills in all the cracks and also hits all the big topics too."
Some departments already have strong reproductive health rules, like the Bellevue Fire Department, which offers bereavement leave for miscarriage and exemptions for mandatory hiring while expressing breast milk. Or Seattle Fire, which has fertility benefits and paid parental leave that does not come out of sick or vacation time. Others have only recently brought policies up to date, like Gig Harbor Fire Department.
"It's an obligation on our part when we recognize these issues to take steps to try and mitigate them," Tom Wescott, Deputy Chief of Health and Safety at Gig Harbor Fire Department, said. "So, we owe that to the people that come into this career field."
Gig Harbor's policy was adopted two years ago, and it was largely modeled off the Gold Standard Policy from the Beltane Guild. Wescott said when he first started in the industry, decades ago, there was nothing of the sort to refer to.
"It would have been handled probably in a lot of places on a case-by-case basis," he said. "We didn't know what we didn't know, I guess, or we didn't give it the proper effort maybe back then, but we should've."
Is a state law mandating that fire departments adopt a comprehensive policy necessary?
"That would be great," Brown said. But she added that the push can also come from within.
"I would love to see more leadership from our larger departments, from our fire service entities really pushing this forward as a matter of extreme importance," Brown said. "Female firefighters are not asking for special exceptions, we are not asking to not work. We are asking to continue working safely."
Brown said she does believe departments are working in good faith, but a lack of information over the years has led to incorrect or unlawful decision-making, but said it is "definitely fixable," it will just take time.
"We all accept an inherit amount of risk taking on this career; we know that we are at higher risk of cancers, mental health issues, among other issues, and now we know our reproductive health is also affected," she said. "That being said, it is the most rewarding career I could have ever hoped for."
The guild has also raised $25,000 to date to give firefighter families that need help with fertility.
