Physiological strain and decision making affected by different cooling tactics following live‐fire training

Multiple factors, including different environmental, physical, and psychophysiological
agents, influence firefighters’ health and safety in real fire and rescue operations. This
experimental study investigated the effect of live‐fire training and cooling strategies
on both physiological response and decision making. Twenty‐three healthy male
firefighters performed live‐fire tasks in four separate conditions: namely rest or
without cooling method (WCM), cool vest (CV), forearm immersion (FI), and cool vest
and forearm immersion (CV + FI). Cooling effects of the employed interventions were
evaluated based on heart rate (HR), tympanic temperature (TT), and Iowa gambling
task (IGT) scores. At the end of the four experimental conditions, HR and TT
increased, whereas IGT scores as a measure of decision making decreased relative to
baseline. HR (beats per minute) and TT (°C) were significantly lower at the end of the
experiment in the CV, FI, and CV + FI compared with the WCM conditions. There was
no significant difference in Iowa scores between experimental conditions. These
consequences demonstrate that live‐fire tasks are effective in raising the physiological and decision‐making responses following firefighting activities. It is concluded
that CV, FI, and CV + FI were more effective than the WCM in attenuating
physiological responses and decision making during live‐fire training