WASHINGTON – US Senators Charles Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand have secured $2.5 million for the National Firefighter Cancer Registry as part of the bipartisan spending agreement, which is expected to pass Congress shortly.
In June 2018, Congress passed legislation creating the registry, which is managed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Jim Brugger is a Poughkeepsie city firefighter who has been battling prostate cancer. He is in full support of the registry. “I think that it’s awesome that we are going to have a registry where they can actually track who has cancer, what type of cancer they have, how long they have been on the job, what possibly where they exposed to so we can get a better handle for the future of preventing this,” he said.
Brugger, who is 59, has been on the job for over 22 years.
He has undergone treatment for his cancer in hopes that it has been arrested.
