Proceedings of The Fifth Int. Cont on Environmental Ergonomics QUAlJF1CATION OF FIRE FIGHTERS' PR01ECITVE CLOTIIING Ronald Heus, Leo JA. Wammes and Wouter A. Lotens TNO-Institute for Perception, Soesterberg, the Netherlands INTRODUCTION In 1981 the Directorate F"lre-Brigade, the Netherlands Ministry of Internal Affairs started a program to increase the general quality of the tum-out gear on the market. TNO was requested to support this program scientificly. The strategy was to do comparative operational tests with various types of clothing and to optimize the best clothing, putting it forward as a reference, to be beaten by the competition. The brigades were recommended to buy only clothing that would match the reference garment. The brigades were provided with the test reports. In a short time the reference garment became market leader and recently alternatives were submitted for testing. These appeared to be of comparable quality, proving the success of the project. In their concept specifications of tum-out gear the Directorate demands qualities beyond the pre-European Standard (prEN 469). There were already requirements for the protective aspects of fabrics against heat and flames (1, 2, 3) and water-tightness (4, 5) of protective clothes, but these requirements do not take account of the design of the clothing. That is why a test-battery has been developed to get results of the clothed man instead of material-studies (6, 7) or manikin-studies (8). The test-battery using clothed subjects is a means to arrive at standards for the clothed man. It includes both ergonomical (9) and protective aspects (10). In this paper the tests, typical results, and their potential to classify clothing are presented. METHODS The present test-battery is the result of a series of experiments with equipped fire fighters that started in 1981 (11). It consists of four parts: physiological strain test, heat-protection test, ergonomical experiments and water- tightuess test. The physiological strain test consisted of a 20 min:s walk around propane heaters (radiation intensity 7 kWm:') in a room with an l!ir-tem.l'erature of 6O"C. The fire-fighters walked alternately clockwise and anti-clockwise around the heaters. Vo" T,,,,,,, T_, mass of subject and mass of clothing have beeu measured. From the measurements the heat balance has been calculated (Metab = W"" + Sto + Dry + Evap + Resp) and the physiological strain of the subjects has been determined. The heat-protection test was carried out in the same facility as the physiological strain test, but at an air- temperature of 12O"C. The subjects walked up and down a step-bench in front of a heater till they had to leave the room, because of locally high skin temperatures. This test was done with dry and wet underwear, both for the front and the back of the subjects. Skin and clothing surface temperatures and tolerance times have been measured. In the ergoDomical test speed and coordination of the clothed flte fighter are measured. The times needed for dressing, for a 50 meter dash, for a coordination test and for a dedicated obstacle course have been measured. Loss of performance with regard to the reference-garment has been calculated by: LP = score - reference * 100 (%) score The water-tightness test consisted of a 20 min. conditioned rainfall (0.33 linin-l·m-'). In the rain the flte-fighters were carrying out some light tasks, which included walking, climbing and crawling. The amount of water absorbed into outer layers (water uptake) and the time to leakage have been measured. The tests were carried out by 8 subjects, wearing 7 different garments following a Latin-square design. After each experiment questionnaires have been filled out to get an impression of the mobility, ease of use, comfort and thermal sensations. RESULTS In the physiological strain test the average body heat storage at the end of the exposure was 7.2 body -152-