Professor earns prestigious award for improving firefighter health and safety
Denise Smith, Tisch Family Distinguished Professor of Health and Human Physiological Sciences and director of the First Responder Health and Safety Laboratory at Skidmore, is one of the leading scientists on a series of studies that have earned a prestigious award from the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) for improving firefighter health and safety across the United States and abroad.
Smith, who has researched the physiological effects of firefighting for decades, is a recipient of a 2020 Bullard-Sherwood Research to Practice (r2p) Award alongside partner researchers from the Illinois Fire Service Institute, Underwriters Laboratory and NIOSH. Their work in studying cardiovascular and carcinogenic risks under realistic firefighting conditions and translating that work to firefighters across the country has been recognized as an outstanding effort in applying occupational safety and health research to prevent work-related injury, illness and death.
The research team’s findings and actionable recommendations to agencies have led to policy and procedural changes and improvements, including in training videos created by the New York State Office of Fire Prevention and Control and distributed throughout New York state.
“The award was personally very gratifying because it validates our research agenda, which is to provide sound scientific research to the fire service so the policies and procedures they use to protect themselves and the community can be grounded in science,” said Smith. “It was especially meaningful to receive the award as part of a team that has worked closely for many years with the shared goal of advancing scientific knowledge and serving the first responder community.”
Over five years, “the NIOSH-IFSI-UL-Skidmore research team completed three different but related studies to comprehensively evaluate the cardiovascular and chemical exposure risks to firefighters during modern residential fires and common training fires, evaluated exposures and heat stress by job assignment, attack tactic and type of fire, and assessed decontamination procedures for PPE (personal protective equipment) and skin,” according to the award citation for “Understanding and Controlling Firefighters' Carcinogenic Exposures.”
In addition to publishing in peer-reviewed literature, the co-investigators have worked collaboratively with each other and key stakeholders to disseminate the results and recommendations to the fire service via a broadly distributed online toolkit, trade journal articles, trade and professional websites, online fire service programs and presentations to fire service audiences.
The mission of the First Responder Health and Safety Laboratory at Skidmore is “to enhance the health, safety and performance of first responders by conducting scientific research to elucidate the dangers of this important occupation, and develop and test interventions to mitigate those dangers.”
