EFFECTS OF PERSONAL PROTECTIVE CLOTHING (PPC) ON FUNCTIONAL ANTHROPOMETRY
After the tragic incident of 911 terror attacks on USA, the word of “bio-terrorism has become a threatening buzzword. The first responders such as firefighters and bomb squad personnel are very vulnerable to an array of disquieting threats when responding and fighting the bio-terrorism. A variety of personal protective clothing (PPC) are available for handling hazardous materials (NIOSH, et al; Johnson and Anderson). Most consist of an encapsulating barrier with either supplied-air or filtered air for respiratory protection. The firefighters are to wear fully encapsulating PPC to protect against biologically and chemically contaminated fields. The PPC allows first responders to perform physically demanding operations to decontaminate lethally contaminated fields or to evacuate civilians from those areas. The PPC is apparently intended to protect first responders from hazardous environments. However, unfavorable and adverse factors from the encapsulating PPC could retard the wearers mobility. The bulkiness, inflexibility, and heft of the PPC severely exacerbate biodynamic motions and restrict mobile performance. Accordingly, the PPC that is premeditatedly designed to prevent injury could be undesirably contributable to the occurrence of harmful accidents. Biodynamic motions and performance of the wearers in fully encapsulating PPC are evaluated through qualitative and quantitative approaches. Through the qualitative approach, the structured interview is conducted to identify the generic problems of the first responders. The interviewees are firefighters and bomb squad personnel as well as law enforcement officers and medical personnel who have experience of hazardous material handling. According to the qualitative identification, the functional anthropometry is quantitatively analyzed at three different experimental conditions, that is, semi-nude, fit-sized Level A suit, and over-sized Level A suit. The degraded mobile performance caused by wearing PPC is quantified through assessing the data of anthropometrics and biodynamic motions.
Gene H. Lee
Industrial Engineering and Management SystemsUniversity of Central Florida Orlando, FloridaUSA
国际会议
17th World Congress on Ergonomics(第十七届国际人类工效学大会)
北京
英文
1-4
2009-08-09（万方平台首次上网日期，不代表论文的发表时间）