This article is the third part of a four-part series examining the conclusions of the PCIAW® Improving Firefighter Safety Round Tables held in 2024. The Professional Clothing Industry Association Worldwide (PCIAW®) brought together industry members from across the firefighting and emergency response community to explore the critical challenges facing modern firefighter safety and personal protective equipment (PPE) design. This third article examines the systemic issues in PPE standardisation, sizing, and procurement that create dangerous vulnerabilities in firefighter protection systems.
The PCIAW® Improving Firefighter Safety Roundtable sessions revealed critical gaps in how personal protective equipment is standardised, sized, and procured across fire services. From incompatible equipment combinations to inadequate sizing options for diverse body types, these systemic issues create vulnerabilities that compromise firefighter safety and operational effectiveness.
The Compatibility Crisis
The 2008 global financial crisis left a lasting legacy on firefighter safety that continues to impact services today. During this period, fire departments were forced to purchase equipment from diverse manufacturers and suppliers due to supply chain disruptions and budget constraints. This fragmented procurement approach created a patchwork of PPE systems with reduced compatibility between items, particularly at crucial connection points where different pieces of equipment meet.
These compatibility issues are more than mere inconveniences – they create direct pathways for smoke and carcinogenic particles to enter PPE. When these connections don’t align the subsequent gaps allow dangerous contaminants to reach firefighters’ skin and airways.
Roundtable participants strongly advocated for a new standard set of sizes for garment connections, ensuring compatibility even when firefighters wear items from different brands. This standardisation would serve dual purposes, both preventing smoke ingress while maintaining proper airflow circulation inside the suit. If connections are too tight in an attempt to seal out contaminants garments may become suffocatingly hot, aggravating heat exhaustion and causing further health complications. It’s therefore most sensible to ensure components are compatible at the point of manufacturing, rather than improvising with garments which were never meant to be used together.
Diverging International Standards
The roundtable highlighted significant differences between European standards and ISO standards for firefighting PPE, creating confusion and potential safety gaps for services purchasing equipment from international suppliers. A particularly notable difference concerns heat resistance testing, with some ISO standards requiring testing at 260 degrees Celsius—a level not commonly found in European testing protocols.
For example, the European Committee for Standardisation’s EN469 standard was not carried over after the UK left the European Union, as the organising committee determined that minimum performance levels in the standard were insufficient for UK firefighters, leading to the creation of a new British standard. This decision reflects the complex interplay between international standardisation efforts and local operational requirements, where a one-size-fits-all approach may fail to address specific regional risks and operational patterns.
These variations create procurement challenges for fire services seeking to ensure adequate protection while managing budgets. Services must navigate a vast array of data, including testing methodologies, performance metrics, and certification requirements, often without clear guidance on which standards are applicable to their operational needs. There is knowledge gap here which round table participants agreed should be closed by more co-operation between fire departments, manufacturers, and the standard bodies setting the requirements.
The Sizing Revolution
Current PPE sizing systems fail to accommodate the full diversity of firefighter body types, with particularly acute problems for female firefighters. Traditional sizing approaches, often based on scaled-down male designs marketed as “unisex” options, ignore fundamental differences in body proportions and fit requirements. This mismatch doesn’t just affect comfort – it directly impacts safety by creating gaps where contaminants can enter.
Female firefighters, representing 7-8% of the UK operational workforce, frequently wear male kit due to availability constraints stemming from financial or procurement limitations. This widespread practice likely contributes to the alarming cancer rates among female firefighters.
The roundtable proposed expanding from traditional 30-size systems to 60-size systems that better accommodate all body types. Importantly, participants stressed this should not be approached as a unisex solution, which historically meant offering male sizes in a smaller range. Instead, the focus should be on providing male and female cut designs with expanded size ranges that accommodate the full spectrum of body shapes and proportions within each category.
Manufacturers emphasised that creating more adaptable garments ensures all end users achieve the secure, tight fit essential for reducing smoke ingress and other size-related hazards. This approach works in tandem with gender-specific designs, recognising that proper fit is both a comfort and safety s.
Helmet System Challenges
Current helmet provision emerged as a particular concern during roundtable discussions. Many fire services reported using a single helmet type for all operations, from structural firefighting to road traffic collisions and community service activities. This one-helmet approach creates multiple problems: helmets optimised for structural firefighting may be unnecessarily heavy for other duties, while cleaning challenges mean helmets may carry contaminants from hot zones into less intense duties.
Several participants advocated for a two-helmet system: a larger, more protective design for firefighting operations and a smaller, compact model for incidents such as road traffic collisions. The lighter helmet could be easily stored in vehicles and would better suit the mobility requirements of non-fire emergencies. This approach would improve operational efficiency while potentially extending the service life of more expensive structural firefighting helmets by reducing unnecessary wear during lower-risk activities.
Procurement Strategy Evolution
Modern procurement strategies must move beyond simple cost considerations to evaluate total system compatibility and lifecycle value. The false economy of purchasing cheaper equipment becomes apparent when considering the reduced operational efficiency and potential health risks of inadequate protection.
Fire services are increasingly recognising that procurement decisions made today will impact firefighter safety for years to come. The traditional 10-year replacement cycle means that poor procurement choices create long-lasting vulnerabilities. In response to this problem, more fire services are implementing comprehensive evaluation criteria for procurement that considers compatibility with existing equipment, availability of appropriate sizes for all personnel, decontamination requirements, and manufacturer support for training and maintenance.
Some services are also exploring framework agreements that ensure compatibility across different procurement cycles while maintaining competitive pricing. These agreements can specify standard connection dimensions, ensuring that future purchases will integrate properly with existing equipment regardless of manufacturer changes.
Quality Assurance and Testing
The round table revealed concerning gaps in ongoing quality assurance for PPE throughout its service life, with participants reporting that it is common to see maintenance checks neglected and ignored. Without regular fit-for-purpose testing, services cannot verify that aging equipment maintains its protective properties, which is a particular issue given that repeated washing and contamination exposure may degrade protective capabilities over time.
Participants discussed the need for standardised field-testing protocols that services can implement to assess ongoing PPE effectiveness. These might include regular fit testing, thermal protection verification, and contamination level monitoring. Enforcing these protocols would help services make evidence-based decisions about equipment replacement rather than relying solely on age-based criteria.
Future Procurement Considerations
The roundtable discussions pointed toward a future where procurement decisions are informed by comprehensive data on equipment performance, contamination exposure, and health outcomes. Above all else, it’s important for departments to make procurement decisions that enable every firefighter to be equipped with kit that fits and protects them properly, regardless of their gender or the budget of their department.
Fire services are strongly encouraged to engage with manufacturers, both to learn more about the standards and regulations their kit must meet, and to ensure the kit they buy meets their operational requirements. This collaborative approach can drive innovation for both parties, promoting a mutual understanding and strengthening the Firefighter PPE ecosystem.
The path forward requires a fundamental shift in how the firefighting community approaches PPE procurement an management. Moving from a reactive approach from crisis-to-crisis, departments need to be more strategic. Updating strategies may require some initial investment, but establishing a compatibility standard and ensuring PPE is decontaminated effectively will produce significant returns in safety and operational effectiveness. As one roundtable participant noted, firefighters deserve equipment systems designed for the realities of modern emergency response, not outdated and retrofitted solutions which put them in danger when they go on call to save others.
