UL FSRI is pleased to partner with the Illinois Fire Services Institute (IFSI), The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), and Skidmore College to release the on-line training for the Assessing the Cardiovascular and Chemical Risks Faced by Firefighters project.
This online training course, based on a large-scale comprehensive research study is designed to help you better understand the health issues associated with fireground activities and provide tactical considerations that may increase your effectiveness while decreasing risk to hazardous exposures.
After taking this course, you will be able to:
- Recognize how thermal and chemical exposures on the fireground can have an impact on your health as a firefighter.
- Relate tactical choices and conditions on the fireground to possible cardiovascular and chemical exposure risks.
- Examine how firefighting operations may impact potential trapped occupant exposure and survivability.
- Discover how firefighting assignments and activities on the fireground can influence physiological responses.
- Develop ways to reduce exposure by using evidence-based techniques and decontamination methods on turnout gear and skin.
“Lessons learned from the Cardiovascular & Chemical Exposure Risks in Today’s Fire Service project are now available in this new and unique format. Thanks to UL FSRI’s expertise in leveraging adult learning tools and techniques for the Fire Service, we hope this program can provide actionable insights into findings from this complex project in order to allow firefighters to under understand how this data can apply to their specific operations.”
-Dr. Gavin Horn, Director, IFSI Research
Designed to better understand how operating in today’s Fire Service, the “Assessing the Cardiovascular and Chemical Risks Faced by Firefighters” project is related to the two leading health issues facing firefighters; namely cardiovascular events (heart attacks) and chemical exposures related to carcinogenic risk (cancer).
This project is supported by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Assistance to Firefighters Grant Program awarded to the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois. Additional support is from the CDC Foundation and the National Toxicology Program.
Take this course to learn more about how heat, occupant search and rescue, job assignments, cross contamination, hood laundering, and gross on-scene decontamination can contribute to increasing or decreasing exposure risks.
“We are excited to get this important science to the streets in a way that will increase the knowledge of the fire service. The course includes many take aways that be implemented by the fire service immediately. There is much more research to be done and this multi-agency team is working hard everyday to answer the fire service’s evolving challenges and questions.”
-Stephen Kerber, Director, UL Firefighter Safety Research Institute