“Volunteer Fire Departments are, when the alarm goes off, almost the only example of enthusiastic unselfishness to be seen in this land,” wrote Kurt Vonnegut Jr. in his novel “God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater.” “They rush to the rescue of any human being, and count not the cost.”

So do volunteer rescue squads. Day in and day out, these volunteers interrupt their lives — their family’s meals, their jobs for pay, their sleep at night — to rush to the aid of strangers, and count not the cost.

“Of any human being” — rich or poor — and they often rescue beloved pets as well.

We knew, of course, that firefighters risked injury and even their lives quelling blazes. But what we hadn’t grasped until earlier this month was that they also run a greater risk than the general public of developing cancer.

We covered a demonstration for Albany County firefighters at the Westmere firehouse in Guilderland where two volunteers demonstrated the process firefighters should go through to wash down themselves and their gear when their work is done so that they don’t contaminate themselves, their trucks, their firehouse, or their families.

We looked up two studies conducted by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, which showed firefighters are diagnosed with cancer at a 9-percent higher rate than the general public and die from cancer at a 14-percent higher rate.

One of the studies, of nearly 30,000 career firefighters from Chicago, Philadelphia, and San Francisco who were employed between 1950 and 2009, states, “There are approximately 1.1 million volunteer and career firefighters in the U.S. During firefighting activities, these workers may be exposed to many known carcinogens (eg, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), formaldehyde, benzene, 1,3-butadiene, asbestos and arsenic) in volatilised combustion and pyrolysis products or debris.”

Additionally, firefighters can carry these toxins into their homes, exposing the people with whom they live. State Fire officials have developed decontamination kits to reduce the chances that firefighters carry harmful chemicals to their firehouses and homes, potentially cross-contaminating co-workers and family members.

The process demonstrated at Westmere is said to remove 85 percent of the toxins. So we’re pleased the state is distributing these kits and that our local volunteers are being trained to use them.

Still, we are chilled by the added specter of cancer that looms over our volunteers. “Sadly, cancer is now the leading cause of firefighter deaths in the nation,” we quoted New York State Fire Administrator Jim Cable as saying.

We know what it is like to face cancer and to live with the threat of it. Many people — we dare say most — wouldn’t jeopardize themselves that way. Nevertheless, our volunteer firefighters carry on.

For decades, we have covered the admirable work of our volunteer firefighters and ambulance crews. We’ve also written about their diminishing numbers. We’ve covered the closure of volunteer ambulance squads in Westmere, Voorheesville, and Westerlo as professionals were hired to do the work.

We wrote last May about a young Fort Hunter Fire Company volunteer, Eric Wells, who told the Guilderland Town Board that young people moving out of their parents’ homes had trouble affording a place to live in Guilderland.

“We lost two members who had to move out because their rent went up $200,” said Wells. He also noted that the average age of Fort Hunter Fire Company members is 45 to 50 while the peak age for interior firefighters is 18 to 40.

This is one of the many reasons we were heartened to hear Supervisor Peter Barber say in his State of the Town address earlier this month that, as Guilderland updates its comprehensive plan, “... we want to make sure our town is home to all residents, regardless of income. It should not make a difference whether you’re a doctor or a lawyer, we want to make sure the home-care aids, the laborers, the people who do not have the same income have a welcome home in our town.”

Most fire departments in town — they are all staffed by volunteers — have trouble recruiting and retaining members, Wells said. “There are two departments in town … pretty much on life support,” he said.

We have found this to be true throughout our coverage area in rural and suburban Albany County. The days of the bucket brigade, which The Enterprise wrote of many times in the century past, where neighbors, hearing a fire alarm responded at the scene, are gone.

Most people, both men and women, work outside their homes, and many have jobs that make it difficult if not impossible to be on call for emergencies.

So we were pleased that the state has new legislation allowing municipalities to give tax breaks to volunteer first responders.

“It all goes towards recruitment and retention, which has kind of been a hidden bugaboo of the volunteer fire department for a number of years,” Donald Gaitor, a 50-year volunteer firefighter, told the Guilderland Town Board last month. 

Albany County, the towns of Guilderland and New Scotland, and the village of Voorheesville all appear to be headed in the right direction on this — offering volunteers a tax break. The town of Knox, we are pleased to note, has already adopted the measure in its most robust form.

At their February meeting, four Knox board members voted to give first responders a 10-percent tax break. Councilman Ken Saddlemire properly didn’t vote because he is a volunteer firefighter.

Volunteers become eligible once they’ve served between two and five years, depending on what the tax authority decides. The Knox Town Board opted for the minimum two-year threshold and also chose to make the exemption permanent once 20 years of service is reached, and to extend the exemption to volunteers’ widows. 

“It’s quite a service these guys perform, really, and there’s very little recognition,” said Supervisor Russ Pokorny, who volunteered for the Knox Volunteer Fire Department for 23 years.

Assuming the number of Knox volunteers gets as high as 50 — up from around 30, currently — in the town of just over 2,500 people, Pokorny said that the remaining 1,000 or so non-exempt households would only need to cover a $1,250 difference — or around $1.25 per household per year.

This is a small price to pay to reward the men and women who, just to join, need more than 100 hours of training, never mind the hours spent answering calls and the risks involved.

Of course, the county and the towns and villages have small tax bills compared to the school districts. A break on school taxes could make a difference.

So we were disheartened to hear at last month’s Guilderland School Board meeting that the district is not currently considering such a break — and neither is the Voorheesville district, which decided against offering property-tax breaks to volunteer first responders for the upcoming year, citing a lack of information on something that would impact the finances of all property owners in the district.

Judy Slack, speaking to the Guilderland School Board on behalf of the business practices committee, said, “We honor their work because we wouldn’t be the type of community we are without them but, because our budget situation is very uncertain, it felt to all of us reluctantly that we would like to wait this time before we grant this exemption on their taxes.”

Kelly Person, the school board’s vice president, correctly said of the tax break, “It doesn't decrease the amount we’d get from taxes. It just puts the burden on other taxpayers.”

The school board members making this decision must realize that, were Guilderland unable to recruit and retain enough volunteers — remember, two of its departments are said to be on life-support — it would cost those same taxpayers far more to hire firefighters who need to be on call around the clock.

School board members, representatives of the people, must certainly realize, even more than their municipal counterparts, that funding their own efforts are many taxpayers who get no direct benefits from the schools — that is, residents without school-age children.

As the school district repeatedly reminds voters: Good schools are good for the community — for property values as well as human values.

The same is true of robust fire departments and ambulance crews. These men and women are not just interrupting their lives, over and over again, but at times they are risking their lives. We owe them the support the state now allows us to give them.

After all, “They rush to the rescue of any human being, and count not the cost.”

We understand that a school’s business practices committee is charged with counting costs. But we believe calculations would show that, if the fire departments in Guilderland went the way of the ambulance service where paid professionals replaced volunteers, the taxpayers, all of them, would bear a greater burden than for the first-responders’ break.

And the loss in goodwill is incalculable.