Título
Characterizing Wildland Firefighters’ Thermal Environment During Live-Fire Suppression
Autor
Facultad/Centro
Área de conocimiento
Título de la revista
Frontiers in Physiology
Datos de la obra
Carballo-Leyenda B, Villa JG, López-Satué J and Rodríguez-Marroyo JA (2019) Characterizing Wildland Firefighters’ Thermal Environment During Live-Fire Suppression. Front. Physiol. 10:949. doi: 10.3389/fphys.2019.00949
Editor
David Andrew Low, Liverpool John Moores University, United Kingdom
Fecha
2019
Resumen
Wildland firefighters work under adverse environments (e.g., heat and fire exposure),
which contribute to increasing the heat strain. Despite this there is a paucity of
knowledge about the thermal environment in real wildfire suppression scenarios.
Therefore, the main purpose of this study was to characterize the environmental thermal
exposure and the risk of heat burn injuries during real wildfire suppression (n = 23).
To characterize the wildland firefighter’s (n = 5) local thermal exposure, measurements
of air temperature and heat flux were performed. Heat flux measurements were made
using four thin-planar heat flux sensors. Two were affixed on the outer surface of the
garment on the left chest and thigh. Two other sensors were placed on the inner
surface of the fabric in parallel to those placed externally. Four thermal classes were
defined based on the heat flux across the inner sensors (≤1000, ≤5000, ≤7000,
and >7000 W·m−2). The risk of pain and first-degree burns were calculated using
the dose of thermal radiation method. The inner sensors mean and maximum heat
flux and environment temperature were 286.7 ± 255.0 and 2370.4 ± 3004.5 W·m−2
and 32.6 ± 8.9 and 78.0 ± 8.9◦C, respectively. Approximately 81, 15, and 3.5%
of the exposure time the heat flux was ≤1000, >1000–5000, and >5000 W·m−2,
respectively. The highest average and maximum thermal dose values were ∼94 and
∼110 (kW·m−2)4/3·s. In conclusion, the thermal exposure obtained may be considered
light. However, high thermal exposure values may be obtained in punctual moments,
which can elicit first-degree burns.
Materia
Palabras clave
Idioma
eng
Tipo documental
info:eu-repo/semantics/article
Peer review
SI
URI
DOI
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