Firefighter Health
Consultancy & Research
Our work considers the health implications of firefighter working practices, and new approaches to reduce the physiological stress and associated health risks.
Current News
Worshipful Company of Firefighters Female Firefighter Project Completed
We are proud and grateful to have recieved a grant from the Worshipful Company of Firefighters to help complete our work on the effects of menstrual cycle phase and menopause on thermal tolerance in female firefighters. We worked hard over 2019/2020 to complete the project which is now available to view below. A full PDF version of this is avaible if you email A.J.Richardson@brighton.ac.uk
WCFF Female Firefighter Report 2020.docxFire Brigades Union: Heat Illness Prevention & Awareness Pack Goes Live
We have been busy creating a new educational package on prevention and awareness of heat illnesses for all Fire Services to use, this is now available from the FBU Union Learning system. This includes powerpoints deliverable within taught session with notes, voice-over powerpoints, interactive online learning platform with videos, full written documentation on hot wears and suggested methods.
Play the video below to see what its all about
Firefighter Physiology and Contaminants Study Underway
We have now recruited all 160 participants to take part in our national firefighter study on physiological stress and contaminant exposure. Hopefully we will complete collection of data sets by the end of November. We will be reporting the results (hopefuly) in Spring 2020. We beleive this is the largest longtudinal study on the consequences of real fire exposures. Click here if you are interested to know more.
Check out our latest paper of female firefighters and the considerations services should be making to provide adequate short and long term support. Read the full report here https://doi.org/10.1016/j.whi.2019.02.003
Award winning research
Dr Emily Watkins received the Research Project of the Year Award from the UK Fire Research Conference RE18 for our international survey on female firefighter health. https://www.ife.org.uk/IFE-News/re18-showcases-the-latest-in-fire-related-research
Consultancy
If you or your service is looking for implementation advice, training or education on heat exposure, health, well-being, physiology or current practices, please contact us.
We have delivered numerous and specifically tailored training sessions and lectures for services throughout the UK.
Our Research Areas
Check out our new study on the physiological monitoring and contaminant measures of firefighters and fire instructors.
It is important to try and keep cool during firefighting and to ensure you recovery quickly and effectively. Here we discuss current research on methods to aid preparation and recovery from wears.
Fire instructors are exposed to fires 10 times more than firefighters. Find out what this means for health and well-being.
Some of our recent research of female firefighter specific issues and how to get involved in new studies coming up.
It's possible to measure heat tolerance to see how well individuals tolerate the heat or to test new interventions that may improve heat tolerance. Here is some of our work looking at heat tolerance and thermoregulation.
New firefighting recruits have no experience of fire expose and therefore probably a low heat tolerance. We are looking at the consequence of their initial fire training on these individuals.
If you are thinking of physiologically monitoring personnel during activities and want advice.
See here for other work and information on the Environmental Extremes Lab at University of Brighton
