From FireRescue1.com

In fire experiments conducted in uniformly furnished, but vacant Chicago-area townhouses, National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) researchers uncovered temperature and heat-flow conditions that can seriously damage facepiece lenses on standard firefighter breathing equipment, a potential contributing factor for first-responder fatalities and injuries.

The findings are detailed in a report* from a research study sponsored by the U.S. Fire Administration and Department of Homeland Security. The work is an important step toward improving what may be the most vulnerable component of a firefighter’s protective gear in high-heat conditions: the facepiece lenses of the so-called self-contained breathing apparatus, or SCBA.

Failure of the lens can expose a firefighter to toxic gases and can result in burns to the respiratory tract as well as asphyxiation. In several SCBA-related deaths, degraded masks were found affixed to the faces of victims while their equipment continued to supply air.

In two of four realistic living-room fire scenarios tested by NIST, “lenses exhibited bubbling and loss of visual acuity, as well as severe deformation, and, in one case, a hole,” the NIST team says.

Read the full article on FireRescue1.com.

You can read the USFA’s report on facepiece thermal performance here.