The influence of designs of protective uniforms on firefighters’ performance during moderate physical exercises:

The aim of this study was to verify whether the minor differences in the design of uniforms and their fit can be quantified in terms of their impact on firefighters’ cardiorespiratory parameters and subjective perception of these uniforms. The impact of minor design improvements compared to the existing designs of personal protective clothing (PPC) is still relatively difficult to quantify due to the lack of sensitive devices used in smart measuring methodologies; however, the perception of these slight differences is reported by PPC users. The impact of these design differences in PPC on firefighters was studied via physiological tests based on occupation-related activities in which cardiorespiratory parameters were monitored and three-dimensional (3D) silhouette scanning was performed on the firefighters. Apart from heart rate (beats/min), none of the other measured physiological parameters, for example, oxygen consumption (VO2, ml/min) demonstrated statistically significant differences when firefighter...