Of the 90,000 firefighter injuries and 110 deaths that occur each year, over 10% of these fatalities occur during firefighter training due to the strenuous activities that require firefighters to work at or near maximal heart rates for extended periods of time. The LifeShirt System, provided by VivoMetrics Government Services, is a comfortable garment worn beneath a firefighter's protective gear to monitor vital signs and capture high resolution physiologic data. Over the past year, the LifeShirt enabled MFRI to monitor respiration, ECG, blood oxygen saturation, temperature, and activity level during standard training exercises including maze crawls, 1,000 degree training fires and hose pulls -- conditions that could not be replicated in a laboratory environment.
The data collected during this study will help to predict the onset of overexertion, heat stress and enable the optimization of recovery. A range of environmental conditions such as air temperature, fire temperature and humidity were factored into the study as well as physical characteristics of each firefighter such as age, gender, height, weight, and fitness. The guidelines will provide trainers with a standardized, statistically significant data set to use as a baseline as they observe firefighters during physically demanding work in stressful environments. Trainers can then recommend rest, monitor rehabilitation before re-entry, and use objective data to make more precise safety decisions.
"The overall goal of the study was to establish safer fire training and rescue parameters. Until now there was no other way to measure firefighters' life-signs in real-time, during training," said Steve Edwards, Director of Maryland Fire and Rescue Institute. "The LifeShirt enabled us to see how firefighters react in actual emergency situations, and allowed us to better understand what's needed to help them in the field while contributing to their safety."
