A Study of the Evaluation of the Effectiveness of Firefighter Clean Cab Decontamination Procedures

1736 

Student Poster 

J Taloumis¹, W Brazile¹

¹Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO

James Taloumis  
Colorado State University

William Brazile  
Colorado State University

The National Institute for Occupational Health and Safety (NIOSH) found that firefighters are at increased risk to a number of cancers, particularly digestive and oral cancers. During fire suppression, particles containing heavy metals and semi-volatile polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH's) can be deposited on the firefighters PPE and skin. When riding in the cabs, there is the potential that firefighters receive skin and oral exposure to PAH's and heavy metals even after the cab interior and SCBA's are wiped down. In recent years, the idea of the "clean cab concept" has become prevalent in fire department response and decontamination procedures. The concept focuses around minimizing the exposure to the interior of engines to contaminants typically encountered fighting fires by keeping SCBA's out of the cab of the engine by storing the SCBA's in a cabinet behind the cab of the engine. This study focuses on the collection and evaluation of carcinogenic contaminants within the cabs of fire engines at two different fire protection districts that follow differing procedures on allowing SCBA's in the cab while on route to fires.

This study focuses on the collection and evaluation of carcinogenic contaminants within the cabs of fire engines at two different fire protection districts that follow differing procedures on allowing SCBA's in the cab while on route to fires.

The researchers will perform surface-wipe sampling for PAH's and for arsenic, cadmium, and lead. The metals can be analyzed separately from a single wipe, but the PAH's cannot be analyzed from the same wipe as the metals so two sets of wipes will be collected per sampling location. PAH surface-wipe sampling will be performed using a five (5) inch by eight (8) inch towelette, provided by Bureau Veritas Industrial Hygiene Laboratory. Metals wipe sampling will be performed by ghost wipes provided by the Wisconsin Occupation Health Laboratory. On each day of sampling, the researchers will mobilize to the station location following a fire. Once the engine has been decontaminated following fire department procedures, the researchers will take two wipe samples for PAH's and two wipe samples for metals. The researchers will follow the sampling protocol developed for this project. The two wipes will be taken from the steering wheel and the rear door near the door handle. Following sample collection, each wipe will be placed in a separate container and will be delivered to the appropriate laboratory in the appropriate timeframe as dictated by the laboratory.

Only five sets of samples have been collected to date. All samples collected were below the limit of detection for each analyte. Researchers are proposing to conduct the remainder of sampling during training structure fires as the structure fires researchers sampled after were not large fires which could impact the concentration of PAH's and metals that were deposited.

Toxicology

Aerosols

Occupational and Environmental Epidemiology