Heat stress and flame protective clothing in mine rescue brigadesmen: Inter- and intraindividual variation of strain

A climatic exposure was conducted for the 52 rescue brigadesmen of a mine w hile they wore flame protective clothing. We looked for individual paramete rs allowing prediction of tolerated exposure times in the climate tested. O f all individual parameters, only body temperature at the end of the Stoklo ssa heat tolerance test and physical fitness showed significant influence o n the tolerated exposure time, although not very strongly. Age, body mass, and Body Mass Index showed no significant influence on the tolerated exposu re time. It was found during a longitudinal study that the tolerance time within the climate for four subjects showed considerable variations, and so it nas de cided neither to take the result of the heat tolerance test as admittance c riterion for the mine rescue serv ice nor to perform a ranking of brigadesm en,vith respect to heat tolerance by this test. (C) 1999 British Occupation al Hygiene Society. Published by Elsevier Science Ltd, All rights reserved.