BACKGROUND Recent epidemiological research on firefighters indicates an increased incidence of specific types of cancer. Intervention is needed in the fire service yet little is known about how firefighters perceive their cancer risk. METHODS Participant observation (150 h, n = 100) and focus group (n = 17) data were collected from 15 fire stations in South Florida. Firefighters had at least ...

Firefighters have high exposure to traumatic events and an increased risk of developing symptoms related trauma. The current study assessed the psychological morbidity, empathy alexithymia volunteer firefighters compared career non-firefighter comparators from general population. Group differences were using multivariate comparisons univariate tests discriminant analysis for individual measures...

OBJECTIVES To examine the effects of sleep restriction on firefighters' physical task performance during simulated wildfire suppression. METHODS Thirty-five firefighters were matched and randomly allocated to either a control condition (8-hour sleep opportunity, n = 18) or a sleep restricted condition (4-hour sleep opportunity, n = 17). Performance on physical work tasks was evaluated across ...

Among the approximately 1.1 million firefighters in the United States (of whom about 70% are volunteers and 30% are paid career personnel), about 100 die each year in the line of duty.1 With the exception of 2001, when 344 firefighters died as a result of the events of September 11 at the World Trade Center in New York City, the number of deaths per year has stayed relatively steady, even thoug...

AIM Firefighters must meet minimum physical demands. The Norwegian Labour Inspection Authority (NLIA) has approved a standardised treadmill walking test and 3 simple strength tests for smoke divers. The results of the Trondheim test were compared with those of the NLIA tests taking into account possible effects of age, experience level and gender. METHODS Four groups of participants took part...

During fire emergencies, firefighters wear personal protective devices (PC) and a self-contained breathing apparatus (S.C.B.A.) to be protected from injuries. The purpose of this study was to investigate the differences of aerobic level in 197 firefighters (age: 34±7 yr; BMI: 24.4±2.3 kg.m-2), evaluated by a Queen's College Step field Test (QCST), performed with and without fire protective garm...

Let G be any connected graph on n vertices, n ≥ 2. Let k be any positive integer. Suppose that a fire breaks out on some vertex of G. Then in each turn k firefighters can protect vertices of G — each can protect one vertex not yet on fire; Next a fire spreads to all unprotected neighbours. The k-surviving rate of G, denoted by ρ k (G), is the expected fraction of vertices that can be saved from...

BACKGROUND Recommendations have been proposed for minimum aerobic fitness among firefighters but it is unclear if those criteria relate to performance on the fireground. Less fit individuals fatigue more quickly than fit individuals when working at comparable intensity and may have gait changes, increasing risk of falls. We evaluated the effect of fatigue during a live burn evolution on gait pa...

BACKGROUND A leading contributing factor to firefighter injury and death is lack of fitness. Therefore, the Fire Service Joint Labor Management Wellness-Fitness Initiative (WFI) was established that includes a focus on providing fitness assessments to all fire service personnel. The current fitness assessment includes a submaximal exercise test protocol and associated prediction equation to pre...