A new edition of NFPA 1971, the standard governing the requirements for structural fire fighting protective clothing and for proximity fire fighting protective clothing, is moving forward toward the end of its revision process. The revised standard is slated to be finalized with an effective date in December.
However, the fire service should not expect to see products certified to the new standard until around March of next year at the very earliest; recognizing the time involved in new certification, the standard allows for a one year time frame for implementation.
The revised standard will include several changes, but end-users will only recognize differences in their PPE in a few areas. One area a lot of firefighters will find of particular interest is goggles/faceshields — which we’ll cover further down — judging by the amount of comments and feedback we received on our article last year.
All NFPA standards are subject to periodic revision. Standards must be reviewed and modified to keep pace with evolving protection technologies and the methodologies used for demonstrating protection.
The previous revision, in 2007, saw some significant changes including the introduction of the drag rescue device, an increase of the shoulder/knee reinforcement insulation requirements, higher footwear, the combination of proximity gear requirements in the same standard, and the creation of an option for chemical/biological terrorism ensembles.
Since that time, the committee’s efforts have focused on identifying further improvements to turnout protective clothing, some successful and some not. For many changes, the intended impact was to make testing more repeatable or refine the interpretation of performance criteria. These revisions typically go unnoticed, but usually — though not always — result in a better standard.
Research dollars
For the upcoming edition, a substantial amount of research dollars and committee activity was spent on trying to address a phenomenon known as stored energy. The issue has been studied for more than a decade, and a new test method and associated criteria will be applied in the 2012 version of NFPA 1971.
The new test is intended to measure the incidence of firefighter burns that occur in protective garments when exposed to moderate levels of radiant heat. The accumulation of heat in the clothing layers can be rapidly transferred to the wearer’s skin when the clothing is subsequently compressed against the skin, as may occur from bending an arm.
Typically, these heat exposures are difficult to anticipate and most often do not result in any damage to the clothing materials. Some in the industry have contended that these burns frequently occur underneath trim and/or other impermeable reinforcements on the exterior of the clothing.
However, these burns can occur nearly anywhere in garments and gloves. In its first rendition, a stored energy requirement will only apply to the garment sleeves. The imposed criteria will require that manufacturers make changes to how trim bands are applied and investigate alternative materials or construction methods for addressing any exterior reinforcements on coat sleeves.
The materials used in fall protection devices and harnesses integrated into clothing will now be subject to the same flame and heat resistance requirements that are applied to all of the other materials used in garment construction.
The other changes in NFPA 1971 are relatively innocuous:
- Slight changes in hardware and hoop and loop requirements
- Changing from conductive and compressive heat resistance (CCHR) criteria for shoulder and knee reinforcements based on an arbitrary temperature rise, to a pass/fail determination using a burn prediction model
- A less severe conditioning technique for measuring overall garment liquid integrity
- A number of minor changes in different criteria and test methods mainly aimed at better reproducibility of test results and interpretation of passing performance.
Despite the perennial issue of goggles versus faceshields, the committee retained the department option for either goggles or faceshields with helmets, but will require that the helmet meet the American National Standard Institute (ANSI) Z87 eye protection requirements that are also applied to industry eye and face protection devices.
In addition, helmets with goggles and faceshields are required to provide a minimum field of vision. As with garments, a number of changes were made to the various test methods, with the primary objective of ensuring that the certification labs are running the tests in the same manner.
Several changes have been implemented for gloves. Many of the changes are being touted for improving the tradeoff between hand protection and dexterity, the number one complaint for fire service glove users.
To this end, a number of new tests were added to the standard including a new hand tool test, gripping strength or torque test, and completed revised grip test. Each of the tests were conceived to better simulate firefighter actions.
For example, instead of measuring the force applied by a test subject in pulling a halyard with gloves (with criteria based on the difference between gloved trials and barehanded tests), the new grip test uses a fiber glass pole to determine when this simulated fireground tool will slip from the test subject’s hands.
Right direction
The tests appear to be a move in the right direction, but the criteria set around these methods is generally intended to accommodate the full range of products in service today. Given this, the net effect may not have an impact on current glove styles.
Similarly, donning tests that have historically been performed dry will now be conducted wet to simulate fireground conditions, but the criteria have been extended to longer times such that gloves that comply today should also comply with the future requirement.
The theory is that the industry will gather test data over the period of the new edition and then set more stringent data for gloves that will bring a better balance between protection and hand function.
However, it is not known whether the new tests will provide discrimination consistent with field performance, as the committee has yet to carry out end-user trials to compare test rankings with user opinions.
Problematic criteria and tests for gloves were also addressed, mainly in the overall water integrity test and decisions on which parts of the glove is to be tested. Firefighter gloves have increasingly become more complicated in their designs.
Whereas the material layering was previously simple, gloves now have a variety of composites. Consequently, the committee created a way of mapping glove zones and determining which tests to apply to which areas of the gloves. Many of the changes for gloves address this issue while other modifications overcome test problems and compliance issues.
Focus on footwear
Footwear requirements also remain relatively unchanged. Clarifications were provided for measuring footwear height, as the height of footwear was increased during the last revision.
There were also issues concerning which parts of the footwear were to be evaluated in certain tests, particularly leather-based boot designs. The bulk of the changes were directed to changing tests, which were deemed to be problematic.
These included changing the way footwear sole heat insulation is measured and the assessment of footwear flammability. The latter was changed from a controlled burner-based test to evaluation of the entire footwear over a flaming fuel tray.
There was agreement within the committee to come up with a more meaningful traction or slip resistance test. The old test failed to properly show differences between footwear where there were known problems. A new test is being put into the standard which, as with other tests, will start with conservative criteria.
Overall, as the industry transitions to the 2012 edition of NFPA 1971, end users will find relatively few differences in their gear.
However, the hope is that end users can expect their gear to be more consistently tested and have fewer concerns about whether products comply or not, with less need for independent interpretations of requirements in the standard.
Still, the committee has introduced a number of new test methods or substituted procedures for other evaluations, all intended to drive improvements in PPE protection.
