Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Study: Cultural Factors Lead to Increase in Firefighter LODDs

From esciencenews.com:
While the number of fires is on the decline, firefighter deaths are not —and a new University of Georgia study helps explain why. Researchers in the UGA College of Public Health found that cultural factors in the work environment that promote getting the job done as quickly as possible with whatever resources available lead to an increase in line-of-duty firefighter fatalities.

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The research, published in the May edition of the journal Accident Analysis and Prevention, examined data gathered from 189 firefighter fatality investigations conducted by the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health between 2004 and 2009. Each NIOSH investigation gives recommendations directed at preventing future firefighter injuries and deaths. The researchers looked at the high-frequency recommendations and linked them to important causal and contributing factors of the fatalities.

Read the whole thing HERE. For more on the human factors affecting firefighter safety, check out this piece on learning from firefighter near-miss data by Dane Carley and Craig Nelson.

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