He was an instructor for fire, EMS and hazardous materials courses at the local, state and federal levels, which included more than 10 years with the National Fire Academy. Beyond his writing for FireRescue1. Connect with Avsec on LinkedIn or via email. You must enable JavaScript in your browser to view and post comments. Get more info. More FireRescue1 Articles. More FireRescue1 Exclusives. Make FireRescue1 your homepage. Email Print Comment. A matter of interpretation Then there is the matter of being able to interpret results.
If the tear strength for an outer shell sample taken from a used coat comes back just a little under the minimum requirement set for that material, does it mean that coat needs to be retired?
The committee responsible for these standards attempts to make the best decisions it can with the available information, but validation information is not available in all cases. For most performance properties, there is insufficient industry research to provide clear-cut findings for determining when the safety of products is diminished to the point that they are no longer protective.
Unfortunately, no one has any solid, fail-safe advice on how to make that interpretation and the whole aspect of retirement becomes this murky, judgment-based call for whoever is responsible within the department.
Some argue that the year mandatory retirement obviates these judgment calls or the fact that no judgments are made at all. The growing demise We are aware that many fire departments are facing hard times and funds for replacement gear are not always readily available, particularly when it may seem that the gear is still serviceable and apparently safe. Every several years, the National Fire Protection Association conducts a needs assessment for the fire service and publishes the results in a comprehensive report.
The most recent report from showed the following findings with respect to PPE age and back up equipment:. These statistics show that there is a substantial number of departments that either cannot or choose not to comply with mandatorily retiring their gear after 10 years.
Moving forward The NFPA standards development process affords several opportunities for individuals to make proposals and recommendations to challenge existing requirements. In this case, the individual put in a public proposal to remove the year mandatory retirement rule as applied to helmets from NFPA during the early stages of the revision process, which was backed up with a thorough substantiation. After the committee rejected this proposal, the same individual responded with a comment on why the committee should reverse its direction, again with further justification.
Others also provided similar proposals and comments. After the committee has completed its revision efforts, the final chance to pursue this matter is to bring the issue before NFPA at its association technical meeting. At that meeting, the individual will be afforded a chance to make a motion and debate will ensue from those present before a vote is taken to find if the NFPA membership agrees or not with the submitter.
If they do, then the committee will be asked to vote on the same issue and the results will be brought before NFPA's standard council for the final decision. At this point in the process, the only way to formally weigh in on this issue is to attend the technical meeting, which will be held in Chicago from June 10 to Please contact us or NFPA if you have questions about this topic.
BGS uses industrial extractors to wet-wash your pieces of bunker gear — this process may take more time for heavily soiled bunker gear. BGS allows your bunker gear to air-dry before returning it to you in labeled protective plastic bags.
Bunker Gear Storage Regulations Many people believe the myth that where you store your bunker gear is far more essential than how you store it. In summary, the storage tips proposed by NFPA are as follows: Ensembles should always be clean and dry before you place it in storage. Hang ensembles up to prevent creases and folds. Store your bunker gear in a clean, dry and well-ventilated space. Store your gear away from any UV-producing lights and direct sunlight. Do not store your gear in extremely cold or hot temperatures.
Do not store your gear in a vehicle's trunk unless you are protecting it with a gear bag or other covering. Do not store your gear in an airtight container unless it is new and unused. Do not store your gear in a personal locker or your living quarters.
Ensure your gear is not in contact with any oils, solvents, acids, alkalis or other contaminants. Bunker Gear Inspection Along with regular maintenance, NFPA states that bunker gear should be subject to an annual inspection for safety purposes. Tags: Bunker gear , Bunker gear specialists , Nfpa , Safety. Previous article Next article. Featured Post. Sign Up Sign up for our newsletter to receive updates on our latest sales, blog posts and more! Your email. Top-notch support.
Secure payments. Table 2 on page 52, drawn from ASTM Standard C, provides more detailed information concerning skin temperature and its relationship to tissue damage. Note in Table 2 that there is a very small range of skin temperatures related to the sensation of pain and that these temperatures are significantly low when compared with typical firefighting exposures. This represents a very short alarm time. The concept of alarm time, the time from feeling pain to the time for sustaining a second-degree burn, has been used for a couple of decades.
The term alarm time is primarily applicable to laboratory testing where thermal measurements are being made under controlled laboratory conditions. Alarm time as measured in a laboratory would not be expected to relate well to actual firefighting environments, where thermal environments are variable and extremely dynamic.
Information gained from discussions with many firefighters who have been burned suggest the following:. When pain is felt, it may be assumed that a burn injury has already occurred. This burn may be a first-degree burn or greater, depending on the amount of available heat energy, the amount of energy absorbed by the skin, and the exposure time. When pain is felt, remaining in the firefighting environment will likely increase the severity of the burn injury. If a firefighter is able to exit from the thermal environment that has caused the initial injury, heat contained in the protective clothing latent heat or stored energy will likely increase the severity of the injury until the garments can be removed.
A burn injury will increase in severity as long as the skin temperature is equal to or greater than C F. If hose streams are applied to a firefighter to extinguish flames on the clothing or to cool burn injuries, there is the risk of producing scald burns. The firefighter being wet down must be away from thermal environments that can convert water in the protective clothing to hot vapors or steam. As Table 2 indicates, human tissue becomes numb on reaching a temperature of C F.
When pain is felt from a thermal exposure, a firefighter must make a sudden decision to provide for his safety. The above discussion suggests that anytime a firefighter feels pain from a thermal exposure, the time for improving tactics to prevent injury has already passed and immediate action is required to reduce the threat of greater injury.
Improved understanding of these phenomena that result in firefighter burn injuries is being made through laboratory and field studies conducted by the NIST. These methods will allow researchers to make detailed measurements of heat flow through thermal protective clothing specimens when they are wet or dry. Data developed by the NIST indicate that firefighters may receive serious burn injuries from thermal exposures that are much less severe than those experienced in either the Flame Resistance or the TPP test used to certify NFPA protective clothing.
This article has been prepared to present issues that are the basis of current protective clothing research. We have provided this information for firefighters so that they can better understand the thermal performance and limitations of their protective clothing.
It is hoped that the information presented will be applied to developing appropriate training and fireground techniques for protecting firefighters from receiving serious burn injuries. Klinghoffer, Max, M.
Technomic Publishing Company, Inc. Stoll, M. Alice and. Maria A. Abeles, Fred J. Lawson, J. EMWC, U. Fire Administration, Emmitsburg, MD, Krasny, John F. NFPA, pp. Randall and Nora H. Jason, eds. Veghte, James H. Bennett, C. Momentum, Heat, and Mass Transfer, sec. Randall and David W. Stoll, Alice M. Photo by author.
He has studied fire and fire safety for more than 25 years with industry and the NIST. He was the leader of an industrial fire brigade and is currently the project leader for the Fire Safety Engineering Division studies on firefighter protective clothing. He may be reached by e-mail: jlawson nist. Sign in. Forgot your password? Clarion Events Privacy Policy. Password recovery. Recover your password. Get help. Latest Fire News and Features.
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