Clothing choice could offer edge in firefighter testing
When Mike Scarlett wears coveralls and work boots, he’s about 90 seconds slower at standard wildland firefighter tests than he is when he wears shorts and a T-shirt.
Scarlett is a lab technician in the University of Alberta’s Work Physiology Lab, where Stewart Petersen, a professor in the faculty of Physical Education and Recreation, is conducting a study to determine the effect different clothing has on performance during wildland firefighter testing.
The pack test is one of the world’s most common assessments for wildland firefighters. Essentially, it asks applicants to throw on a weighted backpack and hike 4.38 kilometres in less than 45 minutes, Petersen said.
Often, there are no requirements around what people have to wear during the test.
As the difference in Scarlett’s test results suggests, that doesn’t make a lot of sense, he said.
The results of Petersen’s research could help inform the pass-fail cutoffs for wildland firefighter testing.
Those cut-off points are critical. They’re necessary to ensure the people who become wildland firefighters are capable of doing the work as safely as possible.
They’re also important for fairness, to ensure people who are capable of doing the job and want to the job, have an opportunity to do it, regardless of age or gender.
For the study, the results of the pack tests are compared to results from VO2 Max tests, or the “gold standard,” as Devin Phillips, the lab’s co-ordinator, put it.
On Thursday, Scarlett put on his boots and coveralls, hopped on a treadmill and put a tube in his mouth to demonstrate the VO2 Max test, which measures cardiovascular fitness and performance.
In the real world of wildland firefighting, the pack test, while less effective than the VO2 Max, is used more often, partly due to limited resources.
Currently, Alberta Wildland uses a variety of physical testing where recruits wear both regular exercise clothing and normal work clothing and personal protective equipment to determine the readiness of recruits in the province, said Mike Long, a spokesperson for the department.
Peterson’s research responds to calls for improvements in physical employment standards that were outlined in a special edition of the academic journal, Applied Physiology, Nutrition and Metabolism, published last week.
The issue, to which Petersen contributed, includes a comprehensive overview of current standards and points to areas that require further research including the implications of workers’ nutritional health and hydration and protective clothing.