Last week the Northern Rockies Fire Science Network conducted a live webinar titled, “Smoke Exposure Health Effects and Mitigations for Wildland Fire Personnel: Current Research and Recommendations.” The one-hour presentation was very informative and heavily emphasized how smoke from burning vegetation can be hazardous to your health, especially for firefighters. Below is the recorded version, and following that is a list of resources identified in the webinar that provide more information about the effects of wildland fire smoke. I suggest that firefighters make the video a part of their annual refresher training.
We have written dozens of times about smoke and the research efforts directed toward evaluating the effects on humans. Articles that describe the effects are all tagged “smoke & health” on Wildfire Today. At this writing there are 17 of them. This article is the 18th.
In addition to those resources, here are others that were listed in last week’s webinar. Where possible, we downloaded them to the Wildfire Today web site in order to preserve the documents.
- Wildland Fire Smoke Health Effects on Wildland Firefighter and the Public. Final Report. June, 2017.
- Wildland Fire Personnel Smoke Exposure Guidebook. March 1, 2016.
- Wildland Firefighter Smoke Exposure. October 2013.
- 6 Minutes for Safety: Smoke Exposure
- Wildland Fire Refresher Training, 2014. Smoke: Knowing the Risks (it is the video below; I think they could have found a better photo to be the static image of the video).
I have COPE,need more information, to backup my possible disability claim and insurance ,
I fought wild land fire (78-97) tried chemshield
In the 90’s in got to hot and Uncomfortable, am not getting any good information, the Article, is great information, hopefully there is more evidence, for dr’s and Professionals, to help with disability claims
Sincerely Rob Scarbrough