Breathing Deep: Lung Health and Aerobic Capacity in Career Firefighters

• Firefighters require optimal aerobiccapacity to perform their critical andessential occupational tasks
• The average firefighter is middleaged and display higher amounts of body fat relative to the generalpopulationPulmonary function testing is used to assess lung capacity, and is a popular metric of lung health
• While pulmonary function is known to decline with age, its influence on occupational performance is unknown

PURPOSE: The purpose of this study was to examine the influence of pulmonary function (i.e., forced expiratory volume at one second [FEV1], forced vital capacity [FVC]) on aerobic capacity (i.e., VO2max) in career firefighters, after adjusting for body fat percentage (BF%) and age.

Retrospective Data

• Retrospective data was analyzed for 1302 career firefighters (females = 51; 4%)
  • Age = 39 ± 10 yrs
  • Height = 170.0 ± 7.2 cm
  • Body mass = 94.1 ± 15.4 kg
  • BMI = 29.4 ± 4.3 kg/m2

Design

• Data were collected during one testing session
• Body composition and pulmonary function assessed as a part of their annual departmental physical
• Multi-frequency bioelectric impedance analysis was used to estimate BF%
• Participants FEV1 and FVC assessed via pulmonary function testing
  • FEV1 was normalized to FVC (FEV1/FVC)

• 297 (29.5%) out of the 1005 firefighters were found to have optimal aerobic capacity
• FEV1/FVC did not influence the odds of having suboptimal aerobic capacity
• One-unit increases in BF% and age were associated with increased odds of having suboptimal aerobic capacity

• The findings suggest pulmonary function did not influence the odds of having optimal aerobic capacity
• Poorer BF% and increased age were independently associated with increased odds of having suboptimal aerobic capacity in healthy career firefighters
• Fire administrators and policy makers may wish to incentivize firefighters to improve their body composition in order to decrease the odds of having suboptimal aerobic capacity

Carina M. Velasquez(1), Kealey J. Wohlgemuth(1), Emilie Burnham(2), Michael J. Conner(2), Zachary Y. Kerr(3), Jacob A. Mota(1)

(1)Department of Kinesiology and Sport Management, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX

(2)Front Line Mobile Health, Georgetown, TX

(3)Department of Exercise and Sport Science, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC