Oakes & Bellini Awarded $1.5M FEMA Grant to Study Health Effects of Wildland Fire Smoke to Firefighters
To help understand and combat these negative effects, the US Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) through the Assistance to Firefighters Grant Program — part of the Department of Homeland Security — recently awarded $1.5 million in research funding to a pair of faculty members in the Department of Bioengineering at Northeastern University.
Assistant Professors Jessica Oakes and Chiara Bellini are the principal investigators for this groundbreaking research study, titled “Health Consequences Following Acute and Chronic Firefighter Exposure to Wildland Fire Smoke.” They are supported in this research by co-principal investigator Michael Gollner, a faculty member at the University of Maryland College Park (UMD), and Casey Grant, the executive director of the Fire Protection Research Foundation.
Smoke Inhalation: Hard to Measure and Quantify
According to Oakes and Bellini, there’s a reason their research is unique: because long-term smoke inhalation by wildland firefighters is challenging to study scientifically. “Wildland firefighters work seasonally, and they travel from place to place,” explains Oakes. “Sometimes they are battling a raging fire, and sometimes they are mopping up, or containing smoldering remnants of a larger fire.”
“The wildland firefighters may wear bandanas or face masks, but usually personal protective equipment is just too hot and uncomfortable,” adds Bellini. “We have to understand and contend with a whole range of environmental factors because of the varying experiences these workers have.”
By using a combination of computational modeling and animal studies, the collaborative, interdisciplinary, and inter-university team is creating the first study to address this problem in a controlled laboratory setting over time. The final outcome will be recommendations for best practices regarding overall duration of exposure and use of protective equipment, which FEMA can implement to minimize the negative health effects for our nation’s wildland firefighters.
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