A Database of Static Thermal Insulation and Evaporative Resistance Values of Dutch Firefighter Clothing Items and Ensembles

SIMPLE SUMMARY: Rescue services personnel may be exposed to a wide range of harsh environments that require the use of protective gear. In order to achieve the best performance, the optimal protection for specific incident scenarios should be selected. In order to be able to specify the protective clothing ensemble that best matches the protection needs, activity and environmental conditions, while keeping up the performance and reduce impact of thermal stress, we need to know the clothing properties that affect heat transfer via the protective layers. The thermal insulation and evaporative resistance values of firefighter clothing items and ensembles of the whole protective system are not easily available. The work presented in this paper fills this gap. Collected data allow for validation and selection of prediction models for exposure evaluation, and with this, it contributes to the best performing protective ensemble choice for specific incident scenarios. The paper also presents the relationships for summing individual clothing items’ insulation of the firefighter protective clothing system and therefore reduces the need for separate testing of all possible clothing ensemble configurations. The wide literature background allows for extrapolation of the results to other branches where protective clothing is used. ABSTRACT: The rescue operations’ environment can impair firefighters’ performance and increase the risk of injuries, e.g., burns and hyperthermia. The bulk and carried weight of heavy protection contributes to lower physical performance, higher metabolic load and internal body heat production. For recommending optimal protection for the tasks and incident scenarios, knowledge of clothing thermal properties is needed. However, detailed data on firefighter protective clothing systems are not available. The aim of the study was to provide scientific background and a dataset that would allow for validation of thermo-physiological models for task-specific conditions of rescue work. Thermal insulation of 37 single items and their variations and 25 realistic protective clothing ensembles were measured on a thermal manikin. Twelve (12) ensembles that evenly covered the whole insulation range were selected for evaporative resistance testing. The equations for summing up individual item’s insulation to ensemble insulation and calculating clothing area factor were derived from the dataset. The database of a firefighter clothing system was created. In addition, the local and regional thermal properties of the clothing ensembles were provided for use in future validation of advanced thermo-physiological models for rescue worker exposure predictions and for designing decision aid tools.