Task Force Releases Hydrogen Cyanide Report
A couple of months ago, I posted about an incident in Providence, RI, where firefighters were exposed to hydrogen cyanide. The chief of the department formed a task force to study the problem and they have released their report. Here are some interesting points (from The Providence Journal).
The report contains 16 recommendations for the fire service, the medical community and the public. The task force advocates training firefighters about the risks and to consistently wear their air masks, educating the medical community to routinely test smoke-inhalation victims for cyanide poisoning, and teaching the public that there's no time to spare in getting out of smoky buildings.Above all, the task force is pressing to end the traditional "smoke-eater" culture of fire departments, in Providence and nationwide.
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The task force recommends more scientific and medical research. They found that Rhode Island Hospital is the only major hospital in New England that performs cyanide testing in-house, and there are only eight laboratories in the country that perform whole blood cyanide tests. Hospitals that can't perform the tests in-house can wait up to a week to get test results, which is useless when determining whether a critically ill person has been poisoned by cyanide.
The report is being sent to the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, which recently sent a team of doctors to investigate the cyanide incidents. The NIOSH team is expected to release its report in several months, and might end up recommending a wider investigation into how prevalent hydrogen cyanide is at fire scenes -- and what firefighters nationwide should do to protect themselves.
Lots of good info in this article.
As firefighters, we all know that we should be wearing our SCBA in any IDLH atmosphere. This will go a long way to preventing hydrogen cyanide poisonings.
The medical community will need to beef up its ability to test blood for hydrogen cyanide. With only eight labs able to do the test, there could be a big bottle neck.
I'm interested to see what NIOSH has to say in their report. I'll be sure to post when it comes out.
