Convert to Lifetime Membership & Receive Paul Combs T-Shirt

The new Paul Combs t-shirt, unveiled at FDIC, and featuring the Toxic Twins, was a tremendous success. With a limited quantity of t-shirts still available, the Coalition will offer current members the opportunity to convert to a lifetime membership for only $20.00 and – receive a free t-shirt! Quantities are limited so don’t wait. This [...]

Join the Fire Smoke Coalition today and help continue a “free training” mission to insure life-saving education for firefighters.

Firefighters

Below are resources and publications specific to the firefighter community. To view member-only content, please visit our Become a Member section to learn more about joining the Fire Smoke Coalition.

HCN Is NOT A Cable TV Channel!

February is American Heart Month. That’s it; one month and the shortest one at that? How can we expect to maintain a sustained effort to reduce heart-related deaths in the fire service if we only pull out the PR campaign once a year? Besides; we will forget about it as quickly as we forget all [...]

Rethinking Emergency Air Management: The Reilly Breathing Technique

When it comes to SCBA emergency air management, we have found that certain breathing methods are based on opinion and conjecture as opposed to testing and evaluation. The key to testing any method is to build in as many realistic controls as possible and to evaluate the subjects based on their individual performance. Articles and [...]

Characterization of Firefighter Exposures During Fire Overhaul

Previous studies have characterized firefighter exposures during fire suppression. However, minimal information is available regarding firefighter exposures during overhaul, when firefighters look for hidden fire inside attics, ceilings, and walls, often without respiratory protection. A comprehensive air monitoring study was conducted to characterize City of Phoenix firefighter exposures during the overhaul phase of 25 structure [...]

Cyanide & Modern Fires: Scientific and Practical Fundamentals for Fire Service Professionals

The contribution of hydrogen cyanide to smoke inhalation-associated injury and death has historically been overshadowed by a focus on carbon monoxide, another important toxicant in fire smoke. However, the role of cyanide is becoming better understood everyday as the body of evidence establishing its pervasiveness as a combustion product and its toxicity in the fire [...]

Focus on Smoke Inhalation—The Most Common Cause of Acute Cyanide Poisoning

The contribution of smoke inhalation to cyanide-attributed morbidity and mortality arguably surpasses all other sources of acute cyanide poisoning. Research establishes that cyanide exposure is: (1) to be expected in those exposed to smoke in closed-space fires; (2) cyanide poisoning is an important cause of incapacitation and death in smoke-inhalation victims; and (3) that cyanide [...]