Hi All, I've noticed a few posts recently in regard to training on site and in particular those involving fire and the use of A/B Class fuels, internal firefighting procedures and the most toxic of all CAR fires!! I thought I'd put some detail in here in regard to statistics and exposures and how we deal with decontamination following training events on site that involve chronic exposures to a volunteer ERT group / industry. The lack of understanding and commitment to competent and proven decontamination practices on site is systemic and, in some videos, posted here hardly considered at all. We do a great job of preventing injury and managing PPE for our rescue volunteers when "on the job" or training scenario, such as push-ups for escaping air from an un parked LDV, however, seldom continue this level of injury prevention and ongoing health consideration post training. The World Health Organisation’s International Agency for Research on Cancer officially declared firefighting as a cancer-causing profession, a move with major implications in how cancer is managed for firefighters and fire services across the world, including Australia. A significant area of concern is the discovery that uniforms contaminated with soot can emit dangerous gases (Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons) for a considerable time after an incident, with the risk of cross-contamination carried to fire appliances and back into the fire station. Appropriately specified cleaning and maintenance practices will ensure clothing will provide optimal protection for its operational life, and the wearer or persons handling it will not be subjected to any foreseeable risks or exposures. This is a hard and time-consuming process to implement and means showering within the hour of exposure and "undressing" PPC on the training ground, bagging it up and protecting your exposures. Some larger mining companies have implemented strict decontamination processes for turnout PPC and procedures around travel to and from the training ground post fire. Clean in / Clean out! AFAC have resources to assist companies and services to define their decontamination guidelines. Ill attempt to put this in terms of exposures for professional organisations (DFES) and highlight some statistics that may be hard to believe. I am open to these being scrutinised and I have generalised the ERT portion of these statistics based on sites training plans and nationally accredited course programs and the professional statistics based on one type of fire exposure, being dwellings. I have taken the statistics from Accidental Structure fires in WA per 100,000 occupied residential dwellings only as I believe this relates to general ERT exposures on site. This number in terms of DFES responses is obviously lower as I have not considered factory, bushfire (predominantly volunteers also), or car fires. Responder numbers are based on 1022 active front line firefighters across WA (taken from DFES Report on Government Services 2023 section 9A.4 fire service human resources) and divided into per firefighter, per exposure and cross referenced with per ERT member per training day attended. In 2021 – 2022 there were 59 Accidental residential fires attended by DFES per 100,000 residential dwellings which there are 1,150, 257 dwellings as per the 2021 census. This means there were 678 residential fires averaged out on attendance of the 1,022 (not including part time / other) active front line responders totaling an average attendance number of .663 (probability of a full timer attending a house fire in a year) fires per responder, per year. If I cross reference this with 1 ERT member (average again and estimated exposures for a year of ERT service not including pre competition and competition training for a new member) the following is what I come up with: Maintenance training days for live fire per year – 2 Fires exposed to (estimation based on my own experience) – 2 – 3 fires for the maintenance training day - mixed class almost probably diesel and pallets! Accredited 6-day Fire/Urban Fire course of 1 per year – minimum 3 fires per day for at least 3 days (again based on my own experience and definitely conservative) This tells me our 1 ERT member is exposed to 11 active fires (in a training scenario) for the year with little to no regard for effective decontamination VS a .663 chance of exposure for professional outfits with strict and calculated decontamination processes. I’m not sure about anyone else, however this is concerning to me and definitely worth our time and effort to understand the risks for young adults who are relying on industry professionals to provide them with information and education around the risks. If your site isn’t taking decontamination seriously then I would consider finding the evidence and making changes!! Stay safe everyone and remember that the health impacts of firefighting either training or real incident continue long after the heat and light energy has been controlled!