Firefighting is an extremely dangerous occupation that encompasses many risks, one of which is the contamination of a firesuit. During a fireground operation, contaminants may be adsorbed from the firesuit and, in time, being adsorbed by the skin, potentially leading to adverse health effects. Currently, there are no methods that allows the detection of these contaminants without irreversibly damaging a firesuit. Finding a solution is crucial as it will improve firefighters’ safety in two ways. First, it will be possible to monitor the contaminants trapped in the textiles of a firesuit, thus facilitating the connection between hazard exposure and development of illness among firefighters. Second, it will define when a firesuit can be considered as safe to wear, aiding the decision-making regarding a firesuit’s lifespan. This thesis introduces a novel technological framework, named “Screening On Suit", for the non-damaging chemical analysis of a firesuit. In this thesis, we show the statistical and chemical components of this framework. Then, we show the effectiveness of this technological framework via both bench- and large- scale semi-controlled fires experiments. We show that this technological framework, after further research, has the potential to contribute to a reliable solution for monitoring of the firesuit contamination.
Andrea Junior Carnoli was born in 1992 in Bologna, Italy. He obtained his bachelor’s degree in chemistry in 2015 from the University of Bologna (Alma Mater Studiorium), Italy. He then moved to Turin, where he obtained his master’s degree in Clinical, Forensic, and Sports Chemistry from the University of Turin, Italy, in 2018. Right after, he joined the University of KU Leuven, Belgium, where he studied as visiting researcher. Alongside his academic career, Andrea Junior pursued a professional athletic career in roller skating, winning two consecutive world championship titles in 2010 and 2011. In 2019, Andrea Junior began his PhD research at uu77, Nijmegen, under the supervision of Dr. Jeroen J. Jansen. Since 2023 Andrea has been part of the Data Science team at Wageningen Food Safety Research, Wageningen, headed by Dr. Ir. Bas van der Velden.