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Título
Fractional Contribution of Wildland Firefighters’ Personal Protective Equipment on Physiological Strain
Autor
Facultad/Centro
Área de conocimiento
Título de la revista
Frontiers in Physiology
Cita Bibliográfica
Carballo-Leyenda B, Villa JG, López-Satué J, Collado PS and Rodríguez-Marroyo JA (2018) Fractional Contribution of Wildland Firefighters’ Personal Protective Equipment on Physiological Strain. Front. Physiol. 9:1139
Editorial
Frontiers Media
Fecha
2018
Resumen
[EN] Activities performed by wildland firefighters are carried out wearing a personal protective
equipment (PPE). Although the PPE protects workers from a wide variety of hazards,
it may increase their physiological response and limit their performance. The aim of
this study was to analyze the effect of the protective clothing (PPC) and the rest of
the PPE elements (i.e., helmet, neck shroud, gloves, goggles, and mid-calf leather
boots) on the wildland firefighters’ thermophysiological response during a moderate-
intense exercise. Six male wildland firefighters performed, in a counterbalanced order,
a 120 min graded exercise test wearing three different clothing configurations: (i) a
traditional short sports gear (SG), (ii) a PPC, and (iii) a complete firefighters’ PPE.
Trials were conducted on separate days at the same time of the day (12:00–15:00 h)
and under climate-controlled conditions (∼30◦C and ∼30% relative humidity). Heart
rate, respiratory gas exchange, gastrointestinal and skin temperature, blood lactate
concentration were recorded throughout the tests. Additionally, parameters of heat
balance were estimated. Exercise time was shorter (p < 0.001) wearing the PPE
(62.4 ± 13.3 min) than with the PPC (115.5 ± 5.0 min) and SG (118.2 ± 20.7 min).
The increment of gastrointestinal temperature with the PPE (1.8 ± 0.3◦C) was greater
(p < 0.05) than the observed in PPC (1.2 ± 0.6◦C) and SG (1.0 ± 0.2◦C). The use of
PPC increased (p < 0.05) subjects’ metabolic demand and skin temperature versus SG
during the last 20 min of the test. The sweat retention in the PPE (1,045.7 ± 214.7 g)
and PPC (978.3 ± 330.6 g) was significantly higher than that obtained in the SG
(510.0 ± 210.0 g). Sweat efficiency decreased (p < 0.05) in the following order: PPE
(45.6 ± 18.3%), PPC (64.3 ± 7.8%), and SG (79.3 ± 7.0%). These results highlight the
importance of the PPE elements in the subjects’ thermal strain. The reduction in the
sweat evaporation produced by the PPE, together with the ensemble mass caused a
substantial increase in the subjects’ thermophysiological response. As a consequence
the performance was reduced by ∼50%.
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