Assessment of Volatile Compound Transference through Firefighter Turnout Gear
Authors
Aliaño González, María José; Montalvo García, Gemma; García Ruiz, Carmen; Ortega Ojeda, Fernando Ernesto; Ferreiro González, Marta; [et al.]Identifiers
Permanent link (URI): http://hdl.handle.net/10017/51270DOI: 10.3390/ijerph19063663
ISSN: 1661-7827
Date
2022-03-19Affiliation
Universidad de Alcalá. Departamento de Ciencias de la Computación; Universidad de Alcalá. Departamento de Química Analítica, Química Física e Ingeniería QuímicaBibliographic citation
International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 2022, v. 19, n. 6, p. 3663-
Keywords
volatile organic compounds (VOCs)
fire
occupational risk
toxicity
turnout gear
firefighter
ion mobility spectrometry
chemometrics
combustion products
Document type
info:eu-repo/semantics/article
Version
info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion
Rights
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)
Access rights
info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
Abstract
There is high concern about the exposure of firefighters to toxic products or carcinogens resulting from combustion during fire interventions. Firefighter turnout gear is designed to protect against immediate fire hazards but not against chemical agents. Additionally, the decontamination of firefighter personal protective equipment remains unresolved. This study evaluated the feasibility of a screening method based on headspace-gas chromatography-ion mobility spectrometry (HS-GC-IMS) in combination with chemometrics (cluster analysis, principal component analysis, and linear discriminant analysis) for the assessment of the transference of volatile compounds through turnout gear. To achieve this, firefighter turnout gears exposed to two different fire scenes (with different combustion materials) were directly analyzed. We obtained a spectral fingerprint for turnout gears that were both exposed and non-exposed to fire scenes. The results showed that (i): the contamination of the turnout gears is different depending on the type of fire loading; and (ii) it is possible to determine if the turnout gear is free of volatile compounds. Based on the latest results, we concluded that HS-GC-IMS can be applied as a screening technique to assess the quality of turnout gear prior to a new fire intervention.
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