The new editions of NFPA 1500, Fire Department Occupational Safety and Health Program, and NFPA 1582, Comprehensive Occupational Medical Program for Fire Departments, include changes that represent significant steps forward for firefighter health and wellness. Many of those changes have been driven by user needs and by advancements in technology, including improvements made to personal protective equipment that allow for enhanced protection, the inclusion of vehicle data recorders in fire department apparatus, improvements made to breathing apparatus, the improved quality to prosthetics to allow for greater exposures to high levels of heat, improved technology to monitor and treat diabetes and cardiac conditions, and more. Both documents will likely face certified amending motions at the Association Technical Meeting; considering the scope of some of the documents’ proposed changes, this comes as no surprise, and is a natural part of the evolution of the standards.
Colorado Springs Fire Chief Rich Brown plans to turn several southeast fire stations into basic preventive-care clinics where residents can stop by for such things as blood pressure and blood sugar checks.
A two-hour blood pressure check clinic at three fire stations on Tuesday was just the beginning of Brown’s vision, he said. In the coming weeks, he hopes that people can go to fire stations for non-emergency check ups, such as getting an EKG done, instead of calling 911 for basic problems.
“We are going 100 miles an hour towards that end,” Brown said.
Brown briefly discussed the clinic intiative at Mayor Steve Bach’s second Town Hall meeting Wednesday night at the Southeast YMCA off Jet Wing Drive. About 100 residents listened while Bach discussed his plans for improving housing quality, parks, and job opportunities in that part of town.
An East Tennessee firefighter has designed a new device to help his colleagues stay safe on the job. Now, his invention is grabbing the attention of fire departments across the country.
“We’re so hot, we just pretty much cook inside,” said Rural Metro reserve firefighter Michael Robinson Sr. about the heavy protective gear firefighters must wear. “When we come out of a fire environment, our number one priority is to cool off.”
While fighting a house fire and brush fire in Heiskell last fall, one of Robinson’s firefighter colleagues collapsed from heat exhaustion.
He recovered, and the incident inspired Robinson to begin researching rehab techniques.
“I never really knew how important rehab really was until I started researching, and how many firefighters had paid the ultimate price for this heat issue.”
With his research, he created a device called the “HeatSeeker,” a rehab mist cap that fits onto any water discharge pipe on a fire truck, hose, hydrant, or portable unit.
Yoga has been found to be very beneficial in treating the symptoms of chronic constipation. Depending on significant factors such as weight and diet, your intestines can become latent with fat deposits causing the slowing of the digestion process. There are several initiatives that can be taken to regulate your digestive system, stimulate the colon, and increase the elimination of unwanted toxins within the body. Being consistent in your yoga practice may help to get rid of reoccurring issues pertaining to constipation. Yoga has become an instrument to help aid in firing up the metabolism.
The digestive process works by absorbing nutrients such as fat, carbohydrates, protein, vitamins, and minerals from the food we ingest. These nutrients absorbed travel through the intestinal wall and into the bloodstream. The waste that cannot be used becomes excreted as fecal matter. Much of the substances consumed are not absorbed in the intestinal wall and therefore travel into the intestine. Traveling through the intestine, the unwanted substances make their way to the colon, which serves as the final destination for these waste materials before they are excreted. The colon consists of three parts: the ascending colon, the transverse colon, and the descending colon. The ascending colon and descending colon are the main areas of the intestines that are massaged during powerful yoga poses such as Earth Pose. The massaging of these specific areas lends a hand to propel digestion into full gear. Bacteria in the colon also help to digest the remaining food products and will store feces in the rectum until it leaves the digestive system through the anus.
The National Volunteer Fire Council (NVFC) is taking its interactive trade show booth to FDIC in Indianapolis, Indiana, April 19-21. Show attendees can stop by booth #9014in Lucas Oil Stadium to receive free COPD screenings.
In partnership with Pfizer, the NVFC will offer complimentary chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) screenings at FDIC. COPD, which includes emphysema and chronic bronchitis, is a term used to describe the obstruction of airflow. Cigarette smoking is the most common cause of COPD, but breathing in other kinds of irritants, like pollution, dust, or chemicals, can also be a cause or contributing factor. Firefighters need to be especially careful due to the nature of their work.
Find all this and more at FDIC booth #9014. Learn more about the NVFC’s health and safety initiatives atwww.nvfc.org/health_safety and about lung and heart health at www.healthy-firefighter.org.
Jeffrey Mitchell, a volunteer firefighter in the suburbs of Baltimore, came across the accident by chance: A car had smashed into a pickup truck loaded with metal pipes. Mitchell tried to help, but he saw at once that he was too late.
The car had rear-ended the truck at high speed, sending a pipe through the windshield and into the chest of the passenger—a young bride returning home from her wedding. There was blood everywhere, staining her white dress crimson.
Mitchell couldn’t get the dead woman out of his mind; the tableau was stuck before his eyes. He tried to tough it out, but after months of suffering, he couldn’t take it anymore. He finally told his brother, a fellow firefighter, about it.
The National Volunteer Fire Council (NVFC), with support from the U.S. Fire Administration, partnered with the HOPE Health Research Institute to conduct a study on obesity in the fire service. The report begins by stating that although the image of a healthy, fit firefighter is still intact, “a chilling epidemic” of obesity caused by unhealthy eating and physical activity habits threatens to undermine the ability of firefighters to effectively and safely respond to emergencies.
The report addresses the obesity epidemic in the U.S., its effects on the fire industry, new trends on how to combat the problem and then offers recommendations for departments. Chapter 2 looks specifically at obesity in the fire service:
Rates of overweight and obese individuals in the fire service are higher than those found in the general public, ranging from 73 percent to 88 percent of firefighters.
The high rates of obesity in the fire service do not appear to be due to inaccuracy in measurement.
Research demonstrates that a large percentage of firefighters do not meet minimal standards of physical fitness.
Occupational factors may place firefighters at high risk for weight gain, including shift work, sleep disruption, unhealthy eating patterns in the firehouse, and the absence of fitness standards for firefighters.
Overweight and obese firefighters have been shown to suffer from a large number of problems compared to their colleagues, including hypertension, higher risks for cardiovascular disease, low fitness, reduced muscular strength, and more frequent cardiac events.
Overweight and obese firefighters are less fit to perform their jobs and cost fire departments significantly more than firefighters with a healthy weight.
Several initiatives have attempted to address the high levels of overweight, obese, and unfit firefighters, including NFPA 1583: Standard on Health-Related Fitness Programs for Fire Department Members, NFPA 1582: Standard on Comprehensive Occupational Medical Programs for Fire Departments, the NVFC’s Heart-Healthy Firefighter Program, the NVFC and U.S. Fire Administration’s Health and Wellness Guide for the Volunteer Fire and Emergency Services, and the International Association of Fire Fighters/International Association of Fire Chiefs Wellness/Fitness Initiative
NIOSH provided a status update on its long-term firefighter cancer study, conducted in partnership with the U.S. Fire Administration and the National Cancer Institute. The goal of the study is to determine whether firefighters have a higher risk of cancer and other illness due to on-the-job toxin exposure. Researchers are analyzing the health of more than 30,000 firefighters who worked between 1950 and 2010 at San Francisco, Philadelphia and Chicago fire departments.
“The cooperation of the fire departments in these three cities has been exceptional,” Study Director Travis Kubale wrote in a NIOSH newsletter. “Department staff, city officials and union leaders have gone out of their way to welcome us and help us get underway with the project.”
Kubale said they are near completion of identifying all firefighters who worked during 1950 to 2010. Researchers have collected their individual work histories and are in the process of gathering exposure information, including fire runs made and the dates of when personal protective equipment and diesel exhaust controls were put into place at the departments.
“NIOSH team members work with fire department staff (personnel, payroll, and information technology), retirement board and fire museum staff to locate the information needed for the study. Some departments archive records off-site, which we retrieve and review,” Kubale wrote. “Once we locate and collect the records, we spend many hours poring over ledgers, annual report and microfiche. This time-intensive process is critical for the study’s integrity. To date, NIOSH data coders have made approximately 790,000 separate data entries for the San Francisco, Chicago and Philadelphia departments.”
Firefighting can be an extremely physically demanding job, at an emergency call firefighters are required wear an extra 50 lbs of protective clothing and equipment. They are expected to be able to climb flights of stairs, carry heavy hoses and pull victims to safety. The stress levels on the body is so high that the lead cause of fatal injuries to firefighters is a heart attack.
Because of this it is imperative that a firefighter be in the best physical shape possible.
The National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) has guidelines for firefighter exercise expectations, and most fire departments have made it mandatory for their members to work out a certain number of hours per week.
However as the Los Angeles Times reports most of firefighters’ injuries might be as a result of exercising not firefighting. Jeannine Stein for the Los Angeles Times writes:
“A study released online Wednesday in the journal Injury Prevention looked at injuries sustained by 650 firefighters and emergency medical service workers (paramedics, engineers, inspectors and battalion chiefs) at 21 fire stations from 2004 to 2009. The frequency of injuries per year was on average 17.7 per 100 employees.
Almost 33% of all injuries happened during mandatory exercise during a worker’s shift. The exercises are geared to keep emergency workers in shape for the types of jobs they do and to prevent injury. Transporting patients accounted for 16.9% of injuries, training drills 11.1% and fireground operations 10.2%.
“Exploring the root causes of these events and the manner in which physical exercise is performed, monitored and evaluated,” the authors wrote, “should be of greater emphasis within the fire service.”
With research showing that 40 percent of victims involved in building collapses suffer from crush injuries, Dr. David Tan describes some important tips for treating these injuries and examines crush injuries in the USAR setting.
By Kendall Holland
By Ryan Maye Handy
LION Connects
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