Respirators aren't common for wildland firefighters. Here's how that could change
An experience at Colorado Firecamp and the development of respirators for wildland firefighters
Welcome back to Burning Questions. I’m Haley Strom, a recent student of a Colorado College journalism class called “Reporting on Wildfires” taught by Corey Hutchins. In this edition, you’ll read about my experience at Colorado Firecamp where I earned my wildland firefighting certification, and learn about recent research on respirators for wildland firefighters.
Dateline Salida — Colorado Firecamp
In February, Colorado Firecamp, a wildland fire school in Salida, Colorado, was frozen.
I took my seat in a classroom along with other students bundled in jackets and hats, clutching mugs of coffee, ready for our first day of learning.
Next to me was Max, a 23-year-old from Minnesota with a happy-go-lucky aura who embodied the image I had of the stereotypical firefighter — the build of an ex-D1 football player, which he actually was. He shared his plans to start a job with the Diamond Mountain Hotshots in Susanville, California, come April, attributing his success in securing the position to his assertion that he was “built for manual labor and teamwork.”
Behind us sat Julio, transitioning from masonry to firefighting, and Henry, who studied Fire Ecology at CSU Fort Collins. Behind them was Travis, 24, with golden retriever energy, who volunteered for the Boulder Fire Department. His table partner, Jacob, was the sole high school student in the class. He hoped to join the ranks of hotshots after college. To our left were Shelby, Ashley, and Joko, employed by the city of Longmont and undergoing training to facilitate prescribed burns near Boulder.
Teaching the class was Tony Borja, an engine boss and engineer from the Trinidad Fire Department in Southern Colorado. Borja’s career spanned other roles, yet his heart lay in wildland firefighting. He attested to this by halving his salary to return to frontline firefighting following a job in the corporate world. He lamented the excessive meetings and sedentary work of his former role. Like many wildland firefighters, Borja thrived on the camaraderie forged through enduring 16-hour shifts on one’s feet.
Helping oversee the Firecamp was Kat Pedersen, a veteran wildland firefighter.
Firefighter Wellbeing
During my fall Colorado College class “Reporting on Wildfires,” I learned about a proposed law in Congress that would potentially support the health of federal wildland firefighters. Tim’s Act, as it is nicknamed, would offer paid time off for wildland firefighters and ensure year-round access to insured mental healthcare resources.
Through classmates and professors who had completed the S-130/190 Basic Firefighter course, I heard that in line with Tim’s Act, instructors are taking more intentional steps to create a culture that is open about asking for help or declining an assignment that is outside of their comfort zone.
Through my training at Colorado Firecamp, I got to witness this firsthand.
The most obvious takeaway came from an emphasis on pages 18-19 of the Incident Response Pocket Guide, a small yellow booklet that wildland firefighters live by. The guide includes much of what you need to know about the job, including how to decline orders.
Historically, wildland firefighting had a “yes sir/ma’am” attitude. If someone asked you to do something, you did it without asking questions.
However, guidelines have changed over the years to adapt to lessons learned in the blood of fallen firefighters. Pages 18-19 outline how to be your own safety officer as a wildland firefighter, saying no when you feel uncomfortable with an order. Throughout the class, our instructors frequently mentioned these pages and had us practice turning town orders. While learning about firefighter well-being was an impactful part of the course, I could tell that this need was becoming a larger movement, embodied by instructors like Tony and Kat who took mental health in the field seriously.
In writing this article, I was more drawn to another aspect of wildland firefighter health: smoke exposure.
Our class had a unique privilege. While many classes are taught mainly from a classroom, we had the opportunity to complete two days of prescribed burns, lighting a total of 72 piles of wood sawed and piled by the Southwest Conservation Corps.
On our first day, we burned three piles.
The second day was a full day in the field, where we burned a total of 69 piles. Throughout the day, I noticed myself coughing as the land we were burning filled with smoke. I had to work to catch my breath even on a day when the smoke dispersion was about as good as it could have been. I could only imagine how firefighters feel by the end of a season of rucking up hills and cutting lines through smoke.
I asked our instructor about respirators, but the consensus seemed to be that they are too bulky to wear on the job. Many firefighters preferred to just tie a handkerchief around their face. Wildland firefighters already carry about 45 pounds or more on an average day in the field doing strenuous work, and adding a respirator only makes breathing more difficult — even if it is protecting their lungs in the long run.
Respirators for Wildland Firefighters
As a wildland firefighter, you are required to have a few items on you.
They include the following: Nomex (flame-resistant material) shirt and pants, certain kinds of work boots, a hard hat, leather gloves, safety glasses, and a fire shelter. A mask or respirator is not on the list. While structural firefighters are required to wear self-contained breathing apparatuses (SCBAs) in toxic environments, wildland firefighters do not generally wear respiratory protective devices.
When I got home, I began looking into this more.
The National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) has been grappling with the need for wildland firefighting respirators since 2012, driven by concerns raised by academics and fire agencies.
“Right now, there is no standard, recommendation, or guidance on an occupational exposure limit for smoke,” shared Kat Navarro, Wildland Firefighter Health and Wellbeing Coordinator at the Department of the Interior, in an interview.
The federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration, known as OSHA, has a standard for particles not otherwise regulated, but this standard does not address unique attributes of wildland smoke. There are no legal requirements for wildland firefighters to protect themselves from smoke inhalation, nor are there strict timelines for when regulations need to be made.
The International Agency for Research on Cancer, part of the World Health Organization, classifies firefighting as a job that can cause cancer because of the dangerous gasses firefighters inhale. Previously, it was assumed that the combustion of natural things like trees was not harmful. However, research is finding that it is. Burning trees produces carbon monoxide and formaldehyde, among other carcinogenic contaminants.
Knowing this, research has started to address wildland fires specifically, such as through a longitudinal survey conducted by the nonprofit Wildfire Conservancy. The Wildfire Conservancy emphasizes the need for improved respiratory gear, highlighting the increasingly hazardous environments firefighters confront in wildland-urban interface (WUI) areas. Almost anything can be burned in the WUI, such as cars, electrical equipment, structures, and natural materials.
It is not just wood, leaves, and grass, and there is not much research on how these materials impact wildland firefighters, who are not required to have any respiratory protection.
Past Research on Respirators for Wildland Firefighters
Recognizing the need for better respirators, in November 2022, the National Urban Security Technology Laboratory (NUSTL) prepared a “Respiratory Protection for Wildland Firefighters Market Survey Report.”
In it, they detail the 31 best respirators on the market for wildland firefighters according to the first guidelines on respirators for wildland firefighters outlined in the NFPA 1984.
The examples provided by the NUSTL include two specific types of respirators: air-purifying respirators (APRs) and powered air-purifying respirators (PAPRs). APRs can be worn as hoods, face masks, or mouthpieces. They do not require batteries, and being the least advanced respirator option, they filter air but do not supply clean air. PAPRs are more protective than APRs by how they use positive air pressure to create a clean airflow inside a mask. They can be worn as a facepiece of a loose-fitting hood or helmet. They are also more breathable than APRs because they have less breathing resistance. This is ideal, especially for more strenuous tasks like digging a fireline, a control line that stops an active fire from entering an unburned zone.
Despite this comprehensive report, firefighters seem to agree that none of them are suitable for the field, and manufacturers are hesitant to produce such equipment due to low demand and profitability concerns. Not to mention, it would be challenging to create a seal that would fit over beards.
In 2022, the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health proposed a rule mandating wildland firefighters in California to wear respirators within two years.
The move prompted development of a wildland respirator standard aligned with NFPA standards. Despite initial resistance, the California Professional Firefighters Association and the International Association of Fire Fighters (IAFF) have expressed interest in taking part in operational field assessments to allow firefighters to test different kinds of respirators. For instance, in 2023, Los Angeles County conducted large-scale testing of five respirator models, encompassing both powered and non-powered designs.
An article in the San Francisco Chronicle captured their reactions to wearing the respirators in the field at the event.
While websites such as the U.S Fire Administration and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention explain the risks of smoke inhalation, including cancer and cardiovascular disease, the participants agreed that respirators are uncomfortable and not worth the extra strain to wear. Instead, they would stick to bandanas. According to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, some firefighters also use N95 masks because they are lightweight, but neither a bandana nor N95 protects from all the potential hazards inhaled on fires.
Current Research to Support the Development of Respirators for Wildland Firefighters
To push for better designs, the Department of Homeland Security gave an $875,000 grant to TDA Research to design a better model, which TDA named the Wildland Firefighter Respirator Device (WFR).
They state the device is easy to take on and off, has a clip to attach to a pack, and moves easily around the hips and waist. It also includes an advanced HEPA particle filter and an activated carbon filter to protect against chemicals such as formaldehyde, nitrogen dioxide, and carbon monoxide, in addition to a built-in blower unit to blow cool air on their faces to decrease the heat exacerbation of wearing a mask. At the first operational field assessment in Columbia, South Carolina, eight firefighters evaluated them. This respirator is still in development and they are currently looking for a manufacturing partner.
UCLA, partnering with the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health (Cal/ OSHA), also recently received a nearly $2 million grant from California Climate Action grants from the University of California to work on improving respirator designs. Rachael Jones, a UCLA researcher on the grant, said the main challenges in creating this design are meeting the physical demands of the job and figuring out what kind of particles firefighters will be exposed to in the WUI.
To address the concern of unknown particle hazards, the UCLA team is trying to determine what type of filter the respirator should have. While previous researchers have looked at isolated chemicals, previous findings do not give much insight into how well one filter can work for many different particles at the same time. The UCLA team is addressing this gap in the literature by looking at many different particles and how they operate together.
In addition, wearing a respirator can be demanding on the body, but a PAPR might make breathing easier. A PAPR has a motor on it that pulls air through the filter and delivers it to the face piece.
“It is not as much physical stress for the wearer because you do not have to pull air through the air filter with your lungs, it’s just delivered into your face piece,” Jones told Burning Questions in an interview.
One concern that has come up with the PAPR is that it is generally worn in jobs like welding and sandblasting where people are not as physically active, so even if it is easier to breathe from than a non-powered device, they might not deliver enough air to sustain wildland firefighters.
This is another aspect of the design that the UCLA team is working on.
Moving Forward with Legal Requirements
Researchers and government agencies have addressed firefighter health more than ever over the past few years.
The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law is one of these initiatives already funding support for wildland firefighter health. Another is the National Defense Authorization Act, nicknamed “Fairness for Federal Firefighters.” It provides legal protection to firefighters with work-related illnesses such as cancer and COPD. With new legislation and ongoing research, stakeholders will have more information to create legal requirements that can be replicated elsewhere such as our home state of Colorado.
Once researchers gain insight into what the respirator might look like, they will engage with stakeholders to develop regulations. These regulations will address whether respirators should be a requirement, a recommendation, and whether guidelines should be state or agency-mandated.
“Research on wildland firefighting is fairly recent,” Jones said, “and dissemination of research will come after they get more results from their study.”
We are headed in the right direction; it will just take time to figure out what comes next.
You’re reading Burning Questions, a newsletter produced out of the Colorado College Journalism Institute with support from a National Science Foundation grant. Students produced some editions in their class “Reporting on Wildfires” in the fall of 2023. Learn more about this newsletter here. 📬 Enter your email address to subscribe and get Burning Questions delivered to your inbox each time it comes out. You can reach us with questions, feedback, or tips by emailing burningquestionscc@gmail.com