KITCHENER Occupational cancer is the leading cause of line-of-duty deaths for firefighters, according to the International Association of Fire Fighters. “I’d be surprised if you find a single fire department out there that hasn’t had people that have contracted some form of cancer within their working group” said Kitchener Fire’s Public Information Officer, Tom O’Hara. “Quite often there is people dealing with that” Local fire officials said the risk of developing cancer will always exist because of the nature of the work, making it difficult to prevent exposure to toxins from fires. “Certainly with modern building materials, increased use of plastics and resins, fires are more toxic than they ever have been before. However, our focus is often to ensure that secondary exposure doesn’t occur. And there’s a number of practices and procedures that we have in place to prevent secondary exposure” said Ryan Schubert, Deputy Chief of Waterloo Fir