Firefighters understand the importance of proper fitting work wear. Sporting a size too small at an office job might run the risk of embarrassment. But doing the same at a fire scene might run the risk of serious injury or worse.
Female firefighters, however, face a lack of turnout gear designed specifically for their bodies, and that's something Meredith McQuerry and Cassandra Kwon—university researchers focused on clothing and textiles in the fire service—want to change.
"Females in the fire service are a growing population," McQuerry, an assistant professor at Florida State University, told Firehouse.com. "They continue to increase every year. But no one has really looked at their clothing and what they’re given to do their job."
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Thanks to a two-year grant from FEMA that runs through September 2021, the two researchers are spearheading a project that they hope will possibly redefine how women's PPE for both structural and wildland firefighting is designed in the future. Female firefighters are at a 33 percent greater risk of injury than their male counterparts, and anecdotal evidence shows that ill-fitting gear is a factor, according to McQuerry, who has spent a decade analyzing what firefighters wear on the job.
"(Female firefighters) have four times greater self-reported issues with the fit of their garments, things like not being able to step up onto the apparatus because their pant crotch hangs too low," she said. "Even an increased risk of thermal injury because the gap between the collar and the neck is too wide or their sleeve cuffs are too wide. So there is a lot of room for improvement, and there’s a huge potential to reduce the risk of injury by looking at these areas and determining where they are."
McQuerry and Kwon's initial interest in exploring the realm of female-specific PPE began while they were together at North Carolina State University, where Kwon still works as a research assistant professor. At that time, they had been looking at the overall challenges women face in the fire service and discovered that there was very little information concerning women and turnout gear, particularly when it comes to fit.
"Traditionally what has been done—even in gear that is promoted as female sized—it’s simply been a downgrading of male gear in many cases, which just means the sleeves, coat, and pants are shortened … instead there needs to be a focus on the proportional body differences between the male and female form such that a specific pattern female firefighters is made as opposed to using the traditional male design," McQuerry said.
Even when body measurement averages for the U.S. are applied to turnout gear, variations in the hips, waist and bust can be missed. For instance, hip circumference—which varies about 5 inches in men—can range more than 12 inches in women, she added.
"So that is our goal: We’re collecting data to propose a new sizing system based on female firefighter body proportions We truly want to make a difference in PPE functionality for women in the fire service."
Before reaching that point, though, McQuerry and Kwon have to fill in the gaps of knowledge within the current body of literature. To do that, they will be gathering feedback about turnout and wildland firefighting gear from around 2,000 female firefighters. Individual body scans also will be performed in smaller focus groups in order to have a collection of accurate measurements.
"We want to have data that is representative of as many females in the fire service as possible, across different regions of the United States, in both service types, in volunteer and career roles, as much data as possible, so we have a well-rounded statistical sample of the anthropometrics of female firefighters in the fire service specifically," said McQuerry, adding that the project is partnering with the groups such as the National Fire Protection Association and the International Association of Women in Fire and Emergency Service to help compile the data.
Firefighters aren't the only stakeholders that the project is concerned about. Between five to seven PPE manufacturers will be invited to open up about the challenges they encounter when it comes to developing gear for women, "so we’re not just tucking our head in the sand and ignoring those practicalities," McQuerry said.
"We want to face them head on. We want to truly understand them so that maybe we can come up with a solution for them," she added.
Like the rest of the world, McQuerry and Kwon have had to contend with the COVID-19. Focus groups with PPE companies set for this past spring at FSU could no longer be held. Body scans and interviews done at different regional locations, such as the Women in Fire conference in Spokane, WA, that had been scheduled for this month, also were dropped.
But the pandemic hasn't derailed the project, and the necessary data is still being collected, with a questionnaire being sent out to firefighters over the summer, McQuerry said. In some cases, more work is being done remotely, and the researchers even have plans discuss some of the information they've gathered during the Virtual Women Firefighter Health Meeting in November.
“It’s not keeping us from the work we hoped to do," she said.
Once the project is complete, McQuerry and Kwon hope to unveil a sizing system for female firefighters that's both safe and practical. The next step will then be to apply for another FEMA grant in order to use that system to design improved PPE specifically for women.
Even if the project ends when the FEMA grant expires next year, the researchers intend to share all the data they've collected with anyone who wants it and not just the project's partners. In fact, one of the project's biggest strengths might be to teach members of the fire service about a topic that hasn't always had the spotlight.
"That’s really what we’re here to do, to be a voice for the female firefighters, because no one has really been a voice for them at this level before. … We want to learn from them, so we can educate others.
