Polychlorinated dibenzo-p-dioxins and dibenzofurans (PCDD/Fs) are unintentional byproducts of combustion and industrial processes. Firefighters face the risk of occupational exposure to PCDD/Fs. Congener-specific analyses of 17 PCDD/Fs were performed on 20 serum samples collected from firefighters and fire scene investigators, and four soot samples that had deposited on the surfaces of the fire...

OBJECTIVES This study investigated the effect restricted sleep has on wildland firefighters' acute cytokine levels during 3 days and 2 nights of simulated physical wildfire suppression work. METHODS Firefighters completed multiple days of physical firefighting work separated by either an 8-h (Control condition; n = 18) or 4-h (Sleep restriction condition; n = 17) sleep opportunity each night....

Sudden cardiac death (SCD) is the leading cause of death in firefighters. Although on-duty SCD usually occurs in older victims almost exclusively because of coronary heart disease, no studies have examined causation across the career span. In the present retrospective case-control study, cases of SCD in young (aged ≤45 years) firefighters from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and ...

We consider a deterministic discrete-time model of fire spread introduced by Hartnell [1995] and the problem of minimizing the number of burnt vertices when deploying a limited number of firefighters per timestep. While only two firefighters per timestep are needed in the two dimensional lattice to contain any outbreak, we prove a conjecture of Wang and Moeller [2002] that 2d − 1 firefighters p...

BACKGROUND Fire fighters are exposed to a wide variety of toxic chemicals. Previous studies have reported excess risk of some cancers but have been limited by small numbers or little information on employment characteristics. METHODS We conducted a retrospective cohort mortality study among 7,789 Philadelphia firefighters employed between 1925 and 1986. For each cause of death, the standardiz...

Firefighters are exposed to many traumatic events. The psychological costs of this exposure increase the risk of Post-Traumatic Stress disorder (PTSD), depression and anxiety. This study examined the effectiveness of Narrative Exposure Therapy (NET) as a short-term treatment for reducing PTSD symptoms among Saudi firefighters. A randomized waiting-list control study was conducted with 34 trauma...

Research into the causes and prevention of suicide has been deemed a national priority, with a recent focus on sectors of the workforce, such as firefighters, who experience occupational hazards that may confer risk for suicide. Elevated levels of posttraumatic stress symptoms (PTSS), which show robust relationships with both suicidal ideation (SI) and suicide attempts, are common among firefig...

Submit Manuscript | http://medcraveonline.com dangerous missions. Injured firefighters and civilians inside hazard buildings are risky to rescue and evacuate. Sometimes, firefighters face serious challenges to get in the hazard building to extinguish fire, and locate the civilians, because in most cases, firefighters do not have a prior knowledge about the hazard building infrastructure. Firefi...