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...

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 ...