Decontamination and Cleaning For Firefighters – New Suite of Products
The cancer rates of firefighters are rising at a critical rate, so it’s only natural that you should keep yourself, your team, and department safe and healthy. The most effective means of keeping yourself and your team’s health in check is through decontamination procedures that protects firefighters by removing any carcinogens from equipment, gear, fire trucks, and even the fire station.
This procedure involves the use of a variety of special equipments and products for the firefighters to clean themselves, their gear, equipment and as well as the fire scene.
You can view here for more decontamination info.
The decontamination equipment gets most of the job done in getting rid of any harmful particles. The priority is always at the firefighters as they are the ones exposed to any harmful particles and oxides as they go about their job inside the fire scene.
It is very important that fire fighters decontaminate themselves as well as their equipment and gear before they leave a fire scene, this is standard operating procedures. The decon procedures or decontamination procedures that firefighters perform include the removal of harmful particles and residue from their turnout gear, FR clothing, and the PPE, as well as from their dermal areas. Fire fighters are offered decontamination kits and decon kit refills to help them in decontaminating themselves and their gear on site. These kits contain specialized decontamination products such as turnout gear, FR clothing, and PPE cleaning products and sprays as well as decontamination wipes, decon field wipes to remove heavy metal residue from skin as well as other decon gear.
Dirt, soot, and grime can easily be removed by your average super market and grocery store baby wipes but when getting rid of metals however, they are highly ineffective as regardless of how hard and intense you wipe down, metals wont just come off as they stick to the skin differently as opposed to how germs and dirt sticks. Burning materials will usually release heavy metal oxides that are invisible to the naked eye such as hexavalent chromium from heating ceramics, chrome, stainless steel, and anti-corrosion coatings; lead oxide which is released by burning paint, carpets, and other household items and decorations. Companies such as Hygenall make soaps, surface cleaners, and wipes that not only cleans soot, but also gets rid more than more than 99% of the said heavy metal oxides and other metals such as mercury, arsenic, nickel, copper, and etc.
You can see this website if you want to find out more about these decontamination products.