FIREFIGHTERS must “draw a line in the sand against flat-Earthers” in Downing Street and at the top of fire-and-rescue services who are still ignoring the overwhelming evidence revealing a link between fire-fighting and cancer, their union said today.

Delegates at the Fire Brigades Union’s (FBU) 2023 conference in Blackpool overwhelmingly backed a series of resolutions which demanded routine health monitoring of all front-line staff across the emergency service.

The call came after ground-breaking FBU-commissioned research by the University of Central Lancashire (UClan) earlier this year revealed that firefighters are dying of cancer at 1.6 times the rate of the general population, while those aged 35-39 are three times more likely to have the disease than others.