The framework by which personal protective equipment products must demonstrate minimum design and performance levels are established by the body of national standards developed by consensus standards development organizations.
For the fire service, this is the National Fire Protection Association. The NFPA standards for firefighter protective clothing and equipment are among the more rigorous in the world. Balanced memberships on technical committees do the work to establish and modify standards and periods for public proposals and comments are included to encourage full industry review representing a range of interests.
The NFPA standards combine comprehensive criteria with a rigorous third party certification to ensure appropriate but high levels of firefighter safety.
NFPA 1971 is the standard that covers the ensembles worn by firefighters for protective clothing and equipment that include garments, helmets, gloves, footwear, and hoods, and also addresses aluminized clothing used for proximity fire fighting.
Now in its 7th edition, work is in the process for completing an 8th edition; if the schedule is maintained, this will result in a new standard at the end of this year. The revision process must normally occur every five years.
Standards need to be updated and revised for several reasons. Sometimes new technology comes along, and the standard should not create impediments for novel materials and designs that potentially afford firefighters greater protection.
In other cases, the fire service may become concerned with new issues, which can be addressed through the creation of new or modified criteria to overcome any specific hazards or gear limitations.
Lastly, standards are subject to interpretation and some requirements necessitate further clarification or changes to ensure that the requirements are being equally applied by the industry for the intended benefits.
Whatever the basis for the changes, there is healthy debate among the members who consider the input of the public as well as its own proposals in looking to improve the standard.
This does not mean that all proposed changes to the standard should be implemented. Rather, careful consideration should be provided to determine if the proposed change will have a meaningful impact on firefighter health and safety.
This year’s revision of NFPA 1971 is no exception. Even though the standard has somewhat matured, there are still a number of particular topics under deliberation for inclusion, deletion, or modification as part of the NFPA 1971 standard.
For example, where harnesses are incorporated into garments, the harness materials must now be subject to flame resistance, heat resistance, and other test properties just as all of the materials used in the manufacture of products are currently evaluated.
Previously, such items were considered accessories and not assessed in the same manner as garment materials. Two new thermal insulation tests are being proposed for evaluating garments beyond the current thermal protective performance test applied to garment composites and conductive and compressive heat resistance that is used for knee and shoulder reinforced areas of the garment.
The first test, known as stored energy, is being considered as a test to address the phenomenon of burn injuries that occur to firefighters when they are exposed to radiant heat for relatively long periods of time and then their clothing is compressed against their skin, causing the stored energy to transfer through and result in a burn injury.
These types of burns typically occur without any damage to the clothing. While the test itself has been developed and validated as being repeatable, the committee has wrestled with how to set criteria around the method for avoiding these types of burns.
So far, the proposal has been to focus on dense materials placed on the garment sleeves and ensure that the insulation in these garment areas do not contribute to burn injuries.
Another test has been contemplated for looking at knee reinforcement conductive heat resistance under wet conditions. In this case, a new, but non-validated test method has been proposed and the debate centers around whether the test really measures the property of interest.
It is not certain, for instance, a test that mandates waterproof knee materials will avoid knee burns. Similarly, even established tests can be questioned. Some proposals have been received for reducing the severity or removing what is commonly referred to as the “shower” test.
Garment manufacturers express concern that the test has high variability and need to be addressed in order to ensure that it truly does measure the overall liquid integrity of garments.
Other elements of the ensemble are being looked at for possible changes. For example, a number of changes have been proposed for goggles as part of helmets. While the debate for whether helmets should be provided with faceshields or goggles has been put aside for the time by permitting manufacturers to offer either faceshields or goggles, new requirements have been added to ensure that these items meet national eye and face protection criteria.
In addition, changes have been suggested for providing a cover for goggles mounted on helmets to protect the goggles from fireground damage. Further, there has also been extensive work focusing on how helmets are mounted on headforms during testing.
Though this may seem a trivial matter, how helmets are oriented on the headform can actually become critical during several of the tests such as impact resistance and physical penetration.
One of the most active areas of committee revision work has been in the area of gloves. Gloves tend to be the ignored elements of the ensemble as many departments perceive gloves as a commodity. Nevertheless, the fact remains that gloves are often the weak protection link in the overall structural fire fighting ensemble.
There is also the continuing complaint that firefighter gloves are too stiff and do not permit adequate hand function, such as dexterity and tactility. The committee is trying to address this concern by implementing tests that can move glove design for improvements in balancing the tradeoff of insulation and hand function.
Unfortunately, many new tests are just emerging and it is not known with any level of confidence if the new tests will correctly encourage the new improvements or create cost burdens that push the price of gloves upward.
Clearly, more time and research are needed to adequately address these issues. The committee is also working toward improving existing tests, such as liquid integrity, and most importantly, it must decide on what tests best measure and affect insulation for the back of the hand.
Footwear has also been subject to a number of considerations. There have been issues for how high the waterproof barrier should be in footwear, and how it should be measured.
Likewise, there are concerns for properly testing each area of the footwear for flame resistance and the manner in which thermal insulation is assessed. Another method under review is the slip resistance for footwear and the efforts required to find a test that truly correlates with firefighter experience (particularly high angle operations and on icy surfaces).
These are all existing areas of evaluation, but the committee is striving to determine if better ways of testing can be found. Yet with anything new that has the potential to impact products with already acceptable performance levels, considerable data are needed to show that the new tests measure the intended performance, are repeatable with little variation, and, most importantly, provide product rankings that are consistent with field observations.
As with any comprehensive process, much of the activity comes down to the last minute. Therefore the committee is faced with a number of decisions which will ultimately affect the next generation of fire service protective clothing and equipment.
It goes without saying that this is a daunting task, and it is essential that the committee hear from all aspects of the fire service as to their genuine needs and concerns for the gear that firefighters must wear for their health and safety.
We encourage you to be voice pieces for these needs and concerns and let us or others know the particular problems or issues you would like to have properly addressed in the new edition of NFPA 1971.
