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Having an entire stage devoted to firefighter PPE at The Emergency Services Show, the emphasis on keeping firefighters safe was clear, but the reality of doing so when they work in contaminated toxic environments remains a wicked problem for fire and rescue services as my post show interview with NFCC contaminants lead, Luke Gazzard shows.
At this year’s Emergency Services Show, ACFO Luke Gazzard from Avon Fire and Rescue Service joined a panel on the Firefighter PPE Stage to talk about what is being done to reduce firefighter exposure to contamination. He says that one of the big issues is determining the answer to the question: how clean is clean? Knowing the answer to this question enables commanders on the ground make judgement calls on what level of cleaning should take place after each incident.
Recognising how difficult it is to measure cleanliness when it comes to contamination from a whole range of toxic environments, he says that the National Fire Chiefs Council (NFCC) Contaminants Project Group is taking an evidence based approach to understand potential risks to inform future guidance for fire and rescue services to follow. A revision to the existing NFCC position statement on this area is underway and it is likely to be published in the new year.
Avon Fire and Rescue Service, like many other services. has a contamination working group led by operational firefighters. This was set up two years before the publication of FBU funded research by Professor Anna Stec in 2020, which provided services with new ways to think about the impact of toxic contaminants on their staff. The FBU’s DECON campaign encourages firefighters to make simple changes at work and at home that can help to prevent cancer and other diseases.
Many fire and rescue services have implemented clean cab policies and in Avon all new fire appliances have a locker for dirty Breathing Apparatus (BA) sets. The same approach is taken with the PPE, it it is all bagged up and kept out of clean space too. Back at the fire station, the BA sets then go through a washing process in a dishwasher style machine, with the electronics protected by a specially added waterproof cover. All new and refurbished fire stations along with Avon’s training centre now have these machines in place.
With 44 fire and rescue services in England alone, the potential for them all to have different approaches to dealing with the risk of contaminants is high, so the publication of a national clean cab strategy by the NFCC in the spring will be a welcome step forward for consistency in this area at least.
Focusing on changing behaviour
Luke says that behaviour is a big part of reducing risk from contaminants for firefighters and that starts in training school. The days of dirty faces and kit being what Luke calls “a badge of honour” need to be well and truly in the past, even though it’s a challenge to change ingrained behaviours, he admits. He’s finding that new recruits are educating others and enabling the change.
“We do thematic monitoring on the fire ground. We send out a level two commander to look at an aspect of our operations and for the next six months this aspect of assurance is focused on how we deal with contaminants. By looking at practice on the ground, the commander can feed this back into our IT system and look for trends to see where we can make changes to improve the safety of our firefighters.”
Half of the the frontline staff in Avon are on-call firefighters. Luke says that the awareness raising and changes in behaviour needs to work for them too.
“We encourage our staff to stay on station and shower before going home but if there is a large incident and there’s only one shower on an on-call station, then everyone has to wait their turn but is it practical to get everyone wait? We have to continue to emphasise the need to get clean.” Shower in the hour was Anna Stec’s mantra and variations of this exist on stations now as the behaviour is evolving.
It’s not just the shower facilities that are important but the general approach to how fire stations are zoned, to keep dirty equipment and protective equipment in one place to minimise risk of exposure. The estate is part of the solution too – zoning fire stations to keep dirty kit in one place is an increasingly common approach.
“It will take a significant investment by all services to do this but we need to be realistic about what we can afford to do and adopt a pragmatic approach for our existing estate. And yes, of course, for new builds we can look for a gold standard and build in a ‘clean first’ approach.”
One example of this is in West Sussex where the development of a new fire station and training centre in Horsham used the principles of zoning to minimise risk. Demi Shipp wrote about this for Emergency Services Times in October 2023.
While all these different approaches will, in their totality, make a difference to the health of firefighters in the future, there is plenty of work going on now to give firefighters the information they need to seek help when they have concerns about the potential for cancer. John Lord and Robbie Burns spoke on camera at The Emergency Services Show about how firefighters can add something called a SNOMED CT code to the health record held by their GP to recognise the heightened risks responders are exposed to in their roles.
Looking ahead, Luke says that the NFCC will publish more resources for fire and rescue services to use including risk assessments, training materials as well as the national clean cab policy. He’s keen to consult along the way and learn from others – including from a recent trip to the US where he spoke at a recent Science to the Station conference at the National Fire Academy.
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