We had the recent opportunity to meet with John Hegelson, a senior firefighter from Australian Capital Territory Fire Brigade in Canberra. John had won the Churchill Fellowship to study overseas on a topic of his choosing, which was establishing “Best Practice in Managing and Decontaminating PPE.”
As part of this effort, John visited major modern fire departments including Tokyo, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, New York and London. He also visited protective clothing manufacturers and service companies in Japan, the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, and Switzerland as well as the International Association of Fire Fighters.
John chose to see us because of our background and experience on selection, care, and maintenance issues for firefighter protective clothing as well as our prior work on studying clothing and decontamination issues. It turned out to be a very informative exchange on a pertinent fire service topic.
John Hegelson’s specific interests are to find practical ways to encourage the fire service to provide for better care and maintenance of their clothing. Like the United States, Australia has struggled with a number of issues related to the proper cleaning and decontamination of clothing following fires and emergencies.
It is more than noteworthy that firefighters experience higher levels of certain chronic health issues such as particular cancers compared to other worker populations.
In fact, Australia is home to an important study being sponsored by the U.S. Technical Support Working Group, a government special projects agency, to examine the levels of skin contaminants that firefighters are being exposed to as the result of structural firefighting activities.
It is no surprise that the types of substances being identified in this study include skin toxic chemicals and carcinogenic polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons and that a fraction of the contaminants found on the clothing exterior manage to penetrate or permeate clothing to reach the firefighter’s skin.
As continued exposure to these substances is linked with health issues, proper cleaning and decontamination of clothing are a key part of minimizing these exposures.
There are several different approaches to help the fire services minimize exposures and ensure cleaner, better performing gear. John Hegelson’s touring around the world was to get a perspective and understanding for how each of these approaches can work to achieve this goal.
One approach is to justify the use of a second set of gear for firefighters. This is often a matter of economics, particularly for resource-strapped departments, but it provides one of the better ways to provide for adequate care of clothing, particularly after working fires where clothing is in most need of cleaning.
Unfortunately, the practice does not always get properly implemented. Sometimes firefighters will have a “working” set of gear and an “inspection” set. When this occurs, it defeats the primary purposes for having the second set of clothing — minimizing firefighter exposure to contaminants in the clothing by affording opportunities for its cleaning and extending the life of the gear.
One adjunct of this approach, which has happened in some places throughout the world but on a more limited basis here in the United States, is the idea of clothing rental.
Clothing rental has become the mainstay of the petrochemical flame resistant garment business, but has yet to catch on in the fire service. In this type of approach, the fire department has a leasing agreement for a manufacturer or other supplier to provide firefighter clothing to its members.
The individual firefighters are still measured to ensure correct fit, but the leasing company owns the gear. Other than offering the advantage of spreading equipment costs out over the lease period, the majority of leasing agreements offer spare clothing and most importantly care and maintenance of that clothing on some frequent basis.
When clothing needs replacement, it is covered in the agreement as well as circumstances where gear must receive special cleanings. While the department is still responsible for managing its PPE program, a well designed and implemented lease program can afford better overall cleaning and maintenance of the firefighter’s protective clothing.
A critical part of encouraging better practices of cleaning and decontamination is having access to cleaning and care. Departments utilize different means for accomplishing this, ranging from using independent service providers to having individual firefighters assume the responsibilities.
The fact is that federal regulations, or their state equivalents, require the fire departments to not only provide appropriate protective clothing but to maintain that clothing (these are part of the Occupational Safety and Health rules in Title 29 CFR 1910.132).
This generally means that fire departments must choose to either do it internally or contract an outside organization. Internal arrangements include placing washer/extractors at one or more stations and having members washing their own gear, or using some centralized facility staffed by light-duty personnel.
Sometimes these approaches work well, but clothing has to be consistently and properly handled and cleaned to ensure that to ensure proper decontamination and longevity. In addition, there must be considerations for special forms of contamination such as blood, body fluids, and chemicals.
External care and maintenance options may be considered easier for the department but need careful consideration to promote better cleaning and decontamination practices.
While there are several factors affecting the choice of an independent service provider, such as their qualifications for handling, cleaning, and repairing a specific manufacturer’s gear, one of the biggest issues is logistics. Either having gear picked up or sent out requires a sufficient time for its correct processing and return.
Drying processes particularly take up a lot of time. Sometimes the 48 hours between shifts common in many departments is not sufficient to accommodate this time need. Thus, the availability of clothing for cleaning requires detailed planning.
This brings it back to the issue of having a second set of gear, department spare gear, or loaner gear from the service provider. When the logistics is not properly managed, it becomes hard for a department to do a good job in keeping the clothing clean.
One of the issues we discussed with John Hegelson was the need for incentives and education. This is often a tough area and while great advancements have been made across the fire service, there are still a number of challenges to be met for encouraging fire departments and their firefighters to properly care for their clothing.
In our conversations, it was suggested that both the structural protective clothing standards which apply to manufacturers, and the selection and care standards that focus on fire departments, could provide a basis for improving fire service awareness.
In particular, these standards could require manufacturers to provide educational information content addressing the hazards and needs justifying proper care and cleaning, while the user-based standards could dictate specific training of firefighters in these area as part of their overall training and curricula in emergency operations.
We look forward to seeing the results of John Hegelson research, which while aimed at the Australian fire service has merit for the U.S fire service. In this global outreach, we can reflect on the lessons learned from a large assembly of different perspectives taking in account the various needs of different fire departments, but still toward the same objective.
Post Note: We would like to take this opportunity to acknowledge unwavering service of our veterans during this Veterans Holiday week.
