Firefighter Close Calls

Home of the Secret List

AHA: Fighting Fires Raises Risk for Irregular Heartbeat in Firefighters

 Billy    November 10, 2020    No Comments

Fighting fires comes with many risks. But new research shows there’s a new one to consider: increased exposure to fires appears to raise the likelihood of developing atrial fibrillation, or AFib, an irregular heartbeat that can lead to blood clots, stroke, heart failure and other problems.

Researchers found the more fires a firefighter fought, the higher the likelihood he or she would report having been diagnosed with AFib. The work will be presented at the American Heart Association’s Scientific Sessions, which begins Friday and is being held virtually. The research is considered preliminary until published in a peer-reviewed journal.

Lead researcher Dr. Catherine Vanchiere, an internal medicine resident at Temple University Hospital in Philadelphia, said she wasn’t surprised to find a link because there was so much anecdotal evidence of “otherwise young, healthy patients who were firefighters coming in to see cardiologists.”

“AFib is a diagnosis that doesn’t always carry symptoms, but it can cause fatigue, shortness of breath or having heart palpitations,” she said. “When you have an otherwise healthy adult coming in with these symptoms, it’s sometimes hard to pin down what’s going on. If that person happens to be a firefighter, now we know we should be looking at AFib as a possible cause.”

There are more than 1.1 million firefighters in the United States. Previous research shows the job’s strenuous physical activity, emotional stress and exposure to pollutants can stress a firefighter’s cardiovascular system. In fact, heart disease is the top cause of on-duty death for firefighters, responsible for 45% of deaths that occur on the job.

In the new study, Vanchiere and her team surveyed nearly 12,000 firefighters nationwide. About 94% were men, and nearly all participants were 65 or younger. The researchers found nearly 5% of those who fought 11 or more fires per year reported being diagnosed with AFib, compared to less than 3% of those who fought no more than 10 fires a year. The group included a mix of paid and volunteer firefighters who mostly fought structural fires (houses and other buildings), though some were fighting wildfires. The data was not analyzed based on the type of fire.

“Firefighters are generally more fit than the general population,” said Dr. John Balmes, professor of environmental health sciences at the University of California, Berkeley School of Public Health. “They also wear air packs that allow them to breathe clean air when fighting structural fires. But this smoke can be pretty nasty. Manmade materials are particularly toxic when they burn. The problem occurs after the fire is out and still smoldering and they take off their air packs. Smoldering fire generates more smoke that contains toxic materials.”

Balmes, who was not involved in the study, is also a professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, where he researches the impact of air pollutants on respiratory and cardiovascular health. Though wildfires are less toxic than the burning of manmade materials, he said, the fires ravaging the western part of the United States are increasingly exposing firefighters to more toxins, as homes and sometimes entire towns are destroyed.

Unlike structural firefighters, “wildland firefighters can’t wear respiratory protective gear because of the high level of exertion involved in hiking into the areas where these fires are occurring,” he said. “There’s essentially no effective way of protecting them at this point.”

Balmes said the impact of wildfire smoke exposure on the cardiovascular health of both firefighters and the general public hasn’t been studied much, “because these exposures weren’t so intense until recently. Climate change has really upped the ante in terms of wildfire smoke exposure, both to firefighters and to the community.”

For example, he said, the San Francisco Bay Area recently had 40 days in a row of bad air. “We never had that long a period before. Is 40 days different than just a few days? Probably. We need to study cumulative exposures and also recurrent exposures. This is going to happen every year.”

Meanwhile, firefighters who want to reduce their risk of AFib and other heart-related problems should focus on not smoking and eating a healthy diet, Vanchiere said.

“The big picture is that just being a firefighter isn’t the only thing that puts a person at risk,” she said. “There are things under their control other than their choice of occupation. And they need to seek care if they develop symptoms and not be too stoic to go in to see a physician.”

#firefighter
#Firefighter
#FIREFIGHTER
#firefighters
#Firefighters
#FIREFIGHTERs
#firechief
#firedepartment

 Firefighter Cancer, MISCELLANEOUS, News, News Firefighter Close Calls, Safety and Survival

Also check the most current issue of THE SECRET
LIST
(Click Here)

Sign Up for Secret List

For Email Newsletters you can trust.

Please Visit
Our Sponsor

GordonGraham.com


YOU NEED THIS BOOK!
(Trust Us)

400+ PAGES.
90+ CONTRIBUTORS!
100% of the royalties from the sales of "PASS IT ON" will be donated to the National Fallen Firefighters Foundation and the Chief Ray Downey Scholarship Fund.
CLICK ABOVE TO ORDER YOUR COPIES TODAY!


 

Pass It On: The Second Alarm

BillyG-book-170



Posters

Click to Print

  • Home
  • About Us
  • Apparatus
    • Crashes
    • Struck By
  • Close Calls
  • Contact Us
  • Drills
  • FIRE & EMS CIVIL DISORDER
  • EMS Close Calls
  • Fire Communications
  • Firefighter Cancer
  • Firefighter History
  • Firefighter Staffing
  • Gallery
  • LODD Calendar
  • Modern Fire Behavior
  • NIOSH Lessons Learned
  • NIOSH LODD Reports
  • Pass It On
  • Behavior Health
    • Behavior Health Resources
    • Behavior Health Information
  • Safety and Survival
  • Secret List
  • SOG’s
Submit Your
CLOSE CALLS /
NEAR MISS

 

LODD STATS

YearTotals
202141
202096
201957
201885
201793
201689
201586
201494
2013101
201283
201181
201087
200993
2008118
2007118
Tweets by @alertpage

Search Site

In Memory Of

fdnyClick this patch

Contact Info

Email BillyG
info@firefighterclosecalls.com

Email Weekly Drill
Suggestions to

Drills@firefighterclosecalls.com

helmet

ragusa

Click Here for The 9/11 Widows’ and Victims’ Families Association

ssc

Click Here: Skyscraper Safety Campaign


Copyright © 2003-2021

Copyright Disclaimer: This non-commercial, non-profit and free use website is for the exclusive purpose of firefighter safety, health and survival. All photographs in these posts are either submitted or from aggregate Google and are used in the postings for the purposes of education, satire, and parody, criticism, news reporting, research, and scholarship consistent with 17 USC §107 and never due to intentional or malicious misuse of a copyright.