Fire fighter fatalities 1998-2001: overview with an emphasis on structure related traumatic fatalities.

Objective: To review the causes of all fire fighter line-of-duty-deaths from 1998 through 2001, and present recommendations for preventing fatalities within the specific subgroup of structure related events.

Methods: Fire fighter fatality data from the United States Fire Administration were reviewed and classified into three main categories of injury. Investigations conducted through the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) Fire Fighter Fatality Investigation and Prevention Program provided the basis for the recommendations presented in this paper.

Occupational burns from oxygen resuscitator fires: the hazard of aluminum regulators.

Background: There have been over 30 incidents of oxygen resuscitator fires over the last 6 years, causing severe burns to a number of fire fighters, emergency medical service personnel, health care workers, and patients. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) was requested to investigate three such incidents.

Methods: NIOSH conducted site investigations of the incidents, and the requesters also sent the involved oxygen resuscitators to a forensic engineering company for a causal analysis.

Suspected hypersensitivity pneumonitis after exposure to a biologic forage inoculant.

A 44-year-old farmer had respiratory symptoms and bibasilar pulmonary infiltrates after three exposures to a new biologic forage inoculant. Open lung biopsy revealed chronic interstitial pneumonitis and bronchiolitis obliterans with organizing pneumonia. The patient responded to oral corticosteroids but acutely worsened after an inadvertent reexposure to the forage inoculant.