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Contact: Ralph
Derickson
(left
to right) David Atwood, chemistry professor; Jerrod
Dempsey, biology student; John May, ERTL manager,
and Niladri Narajam Gupta, doctoral student.
Their
research so far has shown that the three barriers
in the suits, including the moisture barriers closest
to the firemen’s skin, are equally contaminated
with “a wide range of problematic chemicals.
As they build up they will be very dangerous to
firemen,” said Dempsey, who wants to go on
to dental school after he graduates next year.
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LEXINGTON,
Ky. (Jan. 5, 2004) -- A
team of researchers at the University of Kentucky’s Tracy
Farmer Center for the Environment is working
on a project that may improve firefighters’ health
and safety.
The
UK research group, which includes faculty, staff
and students, believes firefights may face unseen
dangers to their health from contaminated fire
suits, and they are developing a way to test those
suits for hazardous, work-related chemical residue
that might cause cancer and respiratory problems.
Team
members, directed by UK chemistry professor
and interim director of the Farmer Center David
Atwood, take swatches of firefighters’ uniforms,
mix them in solvents, and subject them to chemical
analysis in UK’s new Environmental
Research Training Laboratory (ERTL) in the
UK College
of Engineering.
The
fire suits, or “turnout coats,” being
tested came from a fire department in Ft. Thomas,
Ky. The father of a biology senior involved in
the research at UK, Jerrod Dempsey, is a doctor
in Ft. Thomas; some of his patients are firefighters.
Dempsey
and other members of the research team became interested
in the research when they learned that the morbidity
rate for retired firefighters from heart and respiratory
disease as well as cancer is much higher than for
persons in other occupations.
Their
research so far has shown that the three barriers
in the suits, including the moisture barriers closest
to the firemen’s skin, are equally contaminated
with “a wide range of problematic chemicals.
As they build up they will be very dangerous to
firemen,” said Dempsey, who wants to go on
to dental school after he graduates next year.
Dempsey
noted that the UK research on contaminated fire
suits started long before the tragic events of
Sept. 11, 2001. “But events that day have
certainly given impetus to increase our efforts,” he
said. The air pollution and subsequent contaminant
exposure experienced by the New York firefighters “was
just off the charts.”
In
addition to developing tests to determine the level
of contaminants in fire suits, the research team
intends to work with private businesses to find
improved ways to clean the potentially hazardous
chemicals and contaminants out of the fire suits.
Both
patents for the tests and business opportunities
are potential outcomes of the research, said Atwood, “but
we are pretty desperate for funding to continue
the work and bring these possibilities to fruition.” Atwood
highly praised the work of the research team and
said it is an example of the university’s
desire to have more undergraduate students, like
Dempsey, involved in basic research.
“Jarred
is definitely a ‘top gun’ student,” Atwood
commented. “The project would not have been
this successful without his involvement.”
An
immediate product of the research effort is an
academic article that the team is refining in hopes
of getting it published in the Journal
of Chromatography.
In
addition to Atwood and Dempsey, other members of
the UK research team are John May, ERTL facility
manager in the Department
of Civil Engineering in the College of Engineering,
and Niladri Narajam Gupta, a graduate student in
chemistry from Calcutta, India.
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