Carbon monoxide is known as the silent killer, but it doesn’t have to kill you to have permanent consequences. There is growing evidence that long-term exposure to CO, at concentrations that are too small for a typical household alarm to detect, can have serious and permanent impacts on human health, including cognitive decline, neurological issues, organ damage, and other ailments that are often misdiagnosed as unrelated chronic diseases. Today on the podcast, we talk to Charon McNabb, the founder of the National Carbon Monoxide Awareness Association, about her own experiences with long-term CO exposure, what the public needs to know, and efforts underway to reduce this under-the-radar health hazard. 

LINKS Watch a Fire Protection Research Foundation Webinar about the latest carbon monoxide research

Learn more about the National Carbon Monoxide Awareness Association

As the weather in the Northern Hemisphere starts to shift to spring and construction season gears up, we revisist an episode from 2021 about the costly ongoing problem of fires in buildings under construction. In the United States, there's a fire in a building under construction or renovation every hour and a half, according to NFPA data. On this podcast, Angelo speaks with Kevin Carr (4:15), NFPA staff liaison to NFPA 241, Standard for Safeguarding Construction, Alteration, and Demolition Operations, to learn more about construction site fires and how to prevent them. Plus, a safety executive with a large Maryland-based construction company and the chair of the NFPA 241 technical committee weigh in on why they think NFPA 241 is underutilized and how that could change (22:24).

Links:

Read more about the latest edition of NFPA 241 and NFPA trainings related to construction site fire safety: https://www.nfpa.org/safetyfirst

This is the second part of our series looking at how fire and life safety codes are being delayed, erased, and watered down across the United States. On this episode, we talk to Ohio State Fire Marshal Kevin Reardon about some of the challenges he's facing in his state, strategies to counter misguided legislative efforts, and why the fire service needs to get more involved if we are to reverse this dangerous trend (1:36).  Then, NFPA Southeast Regional Director Robby Dawson chats with building code officials from Texas and Iowa about their local code enforcement experiences, the broader challenges facing building officials, and how NFPA can help (32:11). 

LINKS: Read, "The Assault on Safety," the cover story of the Spring 2025 issue of NFPA Journal.

There is a serious threat to safety happening now that isn’t getting nearly enough attention, according to many state fire marshals and fire service leaders. Across the U.S., anti-regulatory sentiments and well financed lobbying efforts are persuading lawmakers to weaken or erase the longstanding fire and life safety codes intended to keep the public safe. 

Today’s podcast is the first of two parts on this important issue, which is the also the topic of the cover story of the Spring 2025 issue of NFPA Journal. This week, we speak to Butch Browning, the executive director of the National Association of State Fire Marshals, about why safety codes are being delayed and dismantled, the effect it is having, and what fire and safety officials can do to reverse this dangerous trend.

Links:  Read “The Assault on Safety,” the cover story of the Spring 2025 issue of NFPA Journal.

As the Los Angeles area wildfires exploded in early January, a nonprofit organization called MySafe:LA leapt into action, disseminating timely information to guide residents through the chaos. But public messaging is just one of countless ways the group has worked to boost safety in greater LA. Over almost 20 years, MySafe:LA has grown into one of the most unique and comprehensive public/private safety and resiliency organizations in the U.S. Today on the podcast, we talk to David and Cameron Barrett, the husband-and-wife duo who founded and run MySafe:LA, about their organization, its role during and after the LA wildfires, and how safety-minded citizens in other cities can build their own programs to boost resiliency where they live.   Links:  Check out the MySafe:LA website Check out the Safe Community Project website Check out the group’s wildfire preparedness page Check out the new podcast Rebuild:LA See NFPA’s Outthink Wildfire, and its community risk reduction resources

In 1973, fire killed and injured more people in the United States than in any other industrialized nation in the world. The next year, Congress passed the Federal Fire Prevention and Control Act, a landmark bill that made significant investments in fire research, training, and education. Within a few decades, the U.S. had transformed from a fire-prone outlier, to arguably the safest country in the world. 

Today on the podcast, we talk to Dick Gann, one of the most prolific fire researchers in U.S. history, about a new paper that he co-authored that commemorates the 50th anniversary of the Fire Prevention and Control Act. We discuss the legacy of this legislation, and explore several of the research achievements — many of which Gann himself was directly involved with — that have dramatically improved fire safety in the United States over the last half century. 

LINKS:  Read the NIST Report, “A Legacy of Fire Safety” 

Read the NFPA Journal article by Jesse Roman about why the Fire Prevention and Control Act is still more relevant than ever

Modern warehouses and distribution centers are huge. Some have footprints larger than 60 American football fields and are filled with densely packed racks up to 100 feet tall. When a giant building like this catches fire, what can firefighters do?    Today on the podcast, we talk to a veteran firefighter and a fire protection engineer who just co-authored a detailed report on the many challenges that the fire service faces in responding these storage fires. We find out what we know, what we need to find out, how modern warehouses are changing, and what fire departments should be doing now to prepare for fires in these giant facilities.    LINKS: 
Read the full Fire Protection Research Foundation report: “Identifying Challenges to Fire Service Response in Storage Settings.”  

In the last week, huge swaths of metro Los Angeles have been devastated by wildfires fueled by parched vegetation and hurricane force winds. The images and videos of once vibrant neighborhoods reduced to smoldering ash are, in a word, horrifying. Today on the podcast, we try to make sense of what is happening in Los Angeles and what may come next. I talk to NFPA’s wildfire expert Michele Steinberg about the speed of the fires, the response, the lack of water, the evacuation, and the critical decisions that must be made next to ensure that LA is prepared for future wildfires. 

LINKS

Visit MySafeLA, a community organization that has been helping spread critical safety messages to residents on the ground in the LA area

Read Michele Steinberg’s latest NFPA Journal column urging Congress to act to help alleiviate the U.S.’s wildfire crisis

You could make the argument that artificial intelligence was the most consequential new technology for fire and life safety in 2024. Several fire departments began dabbling with AI this year, and some even hope to have operational AI in the coming year.

As we head into 2025, we thought it was a good time to revisit our most listened to episode of 2024, Jesse's interview with Preet Bassi, the CEO of the Center for Public Safety Excellence, about how artificial intelligence technologies could impact the fire service. How might fire departments use AI? What are the dangers? What guardrails need to be in place to ensure that the technology is reliable and safe? We pose those questions and many more to Preet. 

Links: Read the Winter 2024 NFPA Journal cover story on how fire departments, and others involved in life safety may soon be using artificial intelligence 

This summer, long-awaited changes to the standard that sets the performance requirements for smoke alarms went into effect, marking a new era for the technology. For the first time, smoke alarms must now pass a test to show they are resistant to nuisance alarms triggered by cooking smoke. On today’s podcast, smoke alarm researcher Thomas Clearly from NIST joins to discuss the evolution of smoke alarm technology, the challenges of nuisance alarms, and how effective this new generation of smoke alarms are at reduceing nuisance alarms from cooking (4:44). Then, on Code Corner, engineer Shawn Mahoney discusses what NFPA standards say about smoke alarm placement (38:25).