Effects of simulated firefighting on the responses of salivary cortisol, alpha-amylase and psychological variables

Abstract

The aim of this study was to evaluate the effects of a simulated firefighting intervention on salivary alpha-amylase (sA-A), free cortisol (sC), anxiety (STAI), and profile of mood states (POMS) in 20 male firefighters (age 32 +/- 1 years, VO(2peak): 43 +/- 5 ml/kg per min). During the 12-min firefighting intervention (ambient temperature: 13 +/- 1 degrees C; relative humidity: 63 +/- 1%), individuals spent 63 +/- 28% of the time working at heart rate (HR) >85% of individual HR(max), [La] (peak) 9.2 +/- 2.9 mM and ratings of perceived exertion 16 +/- 2. At 30 min post-intervention significant (p < 0.001) increases in sA-A (174%) and sC (109%) were found with regard to values recorded before and after 90 min of the firefighting intervention. Since no differences emerged between pre-intervention and post intervention for STAI and POMS values, the hormonal changes were attributable to the intense physical stress of the simulated intervention. Further research is needed during real firefighting activities, where high emotional stress may also be present.

A Comparative Study on Effects of Human Body Wearing Various Fire Protective Equipments

“…코티졸 등의 스트레스호르몬이 배출된다 Rany, et al, 2006;Perroni, et al, 2009 (ISO, 2003;NISOH, 1986;ACGIH, 1996 , 1992).…”

Psychophysiological Responses of Firefighters to Emergencies: A Review

“…The high level of cardiovascular diseases (CVD) and mortality in the firefighters depends on the interaction of several factors such as sympathetic activation [3,16], physical workload [41][42][43], heat [5,11,44], dehydration [11,12,22], inadequate physical activity [45,46], dietary habits [47][48][49][50], shift work [47,[51][52][53], smoke exposure [54,55], noise [56] and psychological stress [12-14, 57, 58].…”

“…Although physical stress and the workload of a real emergencies are difficult to measure, several authors have claimed that the firefighting causes a heart rate (HR) close to the maximum values [5,12,16,17] with decrease in the stroke volume [12], and increase in the core temperature [5,11,12], in the levels of blood lactate [10,16,17] and psychological stress [3,5,11,12]. For this reason, it is recognized [25,26] that firefighters must possess the physiological characteristics that enable them to respond to the emergencies.…”

“…Various studies [1,[5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17] documented that the combination of physical activity, unpredictable conditions, warm clothing and/or exposure to external heat sources causes an increased physiological and psychological stress. In addition, firefighters wear protective clothing (PC) and self-contained breathing apparatus (SCBA), which are heavy, thick, multilayered and bulky (i.e., 23 kg).…”

Effects of Working Time on Physiological Response Wearing Fire Fighting Equipment

“…량(VO 2max ), 대사당량(METs), 그리고 소방방화복 및 보호 장 비의 착용 여부로써 작업 강도를 부하하는 연구들이 주를 이 루고 있다 (Perroni et al, 2009;Webb et al, 2011;Bang, 2012;Yoo, 2014) (Brengelmann, 1983). 고온 환경에서 작업은 심박수 증 가와 1회 박출량의 감소가 더욱 크게 나타나는 것으로 보고되 고 있다 (Ridge et al, 1986).…”