PW: 1806 Determinants of injury and death among canadian firefighters

Abstract

Professional firefighters are exposed to a variety of injury hazards over the course of their occupation, including: extreme temperatures, toxic substances, strenuous physical labour, unstable structures, falling objects, extreme heights, violence and traumatic events. The purpose of this study is to describe the determinants of injury, disease and death among Canadian firefighters by age, gender, region, and employment status. A descriptive analysis of the Association of Workers’ Compensation Boards of Canada and WorkSafeBC data was undertaken to define priority issues for targeted intervention. Outcome measures included time-loss and fatality claims accepted by compensation boards between 2006 and 2015, and submitted by professional and volunteer firefighters over the age of 14 years.An analysis of AWCBC data revealed five principal determinants of injury and death among Canadian firefighters: cancer, traumatic injury, cardiovascular disease, respiratory disease and mental health. Cancer represented over 86% of all fatality claims, while traumatic injuries represented 90% of all time-loss claims among firefighters. Firefighter time-loss claims due to traumatic injury occurred at a rate of 1,661.3 per 1 00 000 firefighter population per year. Mental health was the third leading cause of time-loss claims among Canadian firefighters, occurring at a rate of 23.95 per 1 00 000 firefighter population per year. Volunteer firefighters in British Columbia reported lower rates of time-loss claims per 1 00 000 firefighter population than professional firefighters for traumatic injury, cancer, mental health, cardiovascular disease and respiratory disease.Given inherent limitations of claims data to analyze injury and death within an occupation, a dedicated national firefighter injury surveillance model is needed to support timely and responsive prevention and intervention, as well as specific research. The results of this study suggest that cancer, injury and mental health should be priority issues for researchers, employers and policy-makers working to improve firefighter health and safety.

Incidence of acute myocardial infarction in the workforce: Findings from the Occupational Disease Surveillance System

“…Strong health and fitness levels are required for fire‐fighters and possibly minimize the onset of lifestyle diseases, including CVD 107 . Volunteer fire‐fighters are also shown to have more cardiac fatalities compared to professional fire‐fighters 107 . Increased collection of specific exposure and life‐style risk factor information is essential to support and further understand our findings.…”

“…However, elevated AMI risks were not detected for fire‐fighters in our study. Strong health and fitness levels are required for fire‐fighters and possibly minimize the onset of lifestyle diseases, including CVD 107 . Volunteer fire‐fighters are also shown to have more cardiac fatalities compared to professional fire‐fighters 107 .…”

Building Resilience in Firefighters: A Systematic Review

“…This study did not find any papers that systematically reviewed criteria, methods, or models for firefighters' resilience assessment. Among the conducted research studies, 43% were from the USA (18, 19, 21, 22, 25, 26, 31, 32, 35-37, 42, 45), and others from Canada (n=5) (33,39,43,44); Netherlands (n=3) (28,29,40); Republic of Korea (n=2) (34,46); Malaysia (n=2) (27,41); China (13); Iran (14), Poland (24), UK (27); Italy (30); Belgium (23), and Ghana (38). Moreover, 71% of the studies were carried out during the last decade (𝑛 = 22).…”

“…Overall, 22.5% of the papers focused on physical fitness (n=7) (22,25,26,30,33,35,39), and injury determinants (n=6, 19.3%) (19,24,31,38,43,46), while the remaining studies focused on demographic determinants (n=4, 12.9%) (14,18,21,23), sleep disorders (n=3, 9.6%) (34,36,42), body composition (n=2, 6.4%) (32,41), physiological determinants (n=1) (17), musculoskeletal disorders (n=1), stress and psychology (n=1), chronic disease (n=1), health requirements (n=1), competency model (n=1) (13), training (n=1) (37), personality (n=1) (40), and the occupational medical determinants (n=1) (45). Among the included papers, 28 were articles, one was a thesis report (38), one was a standard guideline (45), one was an official report (43), and one (13) focused on developing a competency model for firefighters. Table 1 presents the general data for the studies included in this systematic review.…”

Hiring schedule optimization at the Surrey fire department

“…For information on firefighter injuries local to British Columbia and Canada, respectively, see Tyakoff et al (2015) and Ramsden et al (2018) respectively. The latter work also has extensive references to literature on firefighter injuries and welfare.…”