Is It Alzheimer's, or Carbon Monoxide Poisoning?
The NFPA Podcast
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...
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The Construction Fire Problem
The NFPA Podcast
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...
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The Assault on Safety, Part 2
The NFPA Podcast
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...
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The Assault on Safety, Part 1
The NFPA Podcast
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...
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Making LA More Resilient
The NFPA Podcast
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...
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The Act that Transformed Fire Safety
The NFPA Podcast
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...
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Big Storage, Bigger Questions
The NFPA Podcast
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...
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The LA Wildfires
The NFPA Podcast
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...
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Artificial Intelligence and the Fire Service
The NFPA Podcast
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...
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A New Dawn for Smoke Alarms
The NFPA Podcast
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...
info_outlineFor the next five NFPA Podcast episodes we are replaying "The Survivors," an award-winning podcast series NFPA first published in 2017. In Part 2, impacted by the death of their two boys, the van Dijks go through the painstaking process of healing their physical injuries from a home fire. U.S. burn care experts weigh in on the prevalence and outcomes of these injuries and underscore a disconcerting trend across the nation.