Evaluation of Firefighter Exposure to Wood Smoke during Training Exercises at Burn Houses

Abstract

Smoke from wood-fueled fires is one of the most common hazards encountered by firefighters worldwide. Wood smoke is complex in nature and contains numerous compounds, including methoxyphenols (MPs) and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), some of which are carcinogenic. Chronic exposure to wood smoke can lead to adverse health outcomes, including respiratory infections, impaired lung function, cardiac infarctions, and cancers. At training exercises held in burn houses at four fire departments across Ontario, air samples, skin wipes, and urine specimens from a cohort of firefighters (n = 28) were collected prior to and after exposure. Wood was the primary fuel used in these training exercises. Air samples showed that MP concentrations were on average 5-fold greater than those of PAHs. Skin wipe samples acquired from multiple body sites of firefighters indicated whole-body smoke exposure. A suite of MPs (methyl-, ethyl-, and propylsyringol) and deconjugated PAH metabolites (hydroxynaphthalene, hydroxyfluorene, hydroxyphenanthrene, and their isomers) were found to be sensitive markers of smoke exposure in urine. Creatinine-normalized levels of these markers were significantly elevated (p < 0.05) in 24 h postexposure urine despite large between-subject variations that were dependent on the specific operational roles of firefighters while using personal protective equipment. This work offers deeper insight into potential health risk from smoke exposure that is needed for translation of better mitigation policies, including improved equipment to reduce direct skin absorption and standardized hygiene practices implemented at different regional fire services.

Development of Fireground Exposure Simulator (FES) Prop for PPE Testing and Evaluation

“…Much of the research on firefighters' dermal exposure to contaminants has focused on the solid phase contamination, such as higher molecular weight PAHs [6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13]. Once these larger PAHs contact human skin, they will likely remain available for biological uptake.…”

Individual and cumulative impacts of fire emissions and tobacco consumption on wildland firefighters’ total exposure to polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons

“…3-hydroxybenzo[a]pyrene (3OHB[a]P) is one of the metabolites of benzo[a]pyrene, and it is considered as the PAH biomarker of carcinogenicity [32]. 1-hydroxynaphthalene (1OHNaph) is frequently used to assess the exposure to naphthalene [34], a PAH that was selected as an important indicator of indoor air pollution by the World Health Organization (WHO) [35]. Due to the ubiquity of PAHs, their various sources and routes of exposure, the use of more than one PAHs biomarker better characterizes the total exposure of a subject.…”

“…Despite the undeniable role that firefighters play in maintaining population safety, limited information related with their occupational exposure to PAHs is available in the literature [4,5,11,31,33,34,[36][37][38], being scarce studies that included the impact of tobacco consumption [34,37]. Moreover, biomonitoring of wildland firefighter's exposure to PAHs from fire emissions has been mostly performed during training exercises [11,34,37,38] and typically based exclusively on 1OHPy analysis [31,33,37,38]. Exposure to PAHs has been associated with the development and/or aggravation of lung function reduction, specifically with exacerbations of asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, some cardiovascular pathologies and cancer [39][40][41].…”

Recent advances in CE and microchip‐CE in clinical applications: 2014 to mid‐2017

“…The technique employed a noninvasive skin wipe for sample collection followed by extraction and analysis using a double opposite end injection. Using a similar approach, methoxyphenols, and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons were analyzed in skin wipe samples from firefighters . Other small molecules analyzed by CE in various human fluids and cells are uric acid in urine , S–adenosylmethionine, and S‐adenosylhomocysteine in urine , iodine in urine , cyanide in urine samples from smokers and nonsmokers , gamma‐aminobutyric acid in CSF , oxalate, formate, and glycolate in human biofluids , malondialdehyde in exhaled breath condensate , and reduced glutathione and glutathione in red blood cells .…”