In early 2006, the Discovery Channel is scheduled to air a program partially based on research from the Illinois Fire Service Institute. A Discovery crew was on the campus of the University during the first week of October to gather information on extreme temperature research. During the crew's four-day visit, Steven Petruzzello and Denise Smith shared with the crew the physical and psychological demands of firefighting by conducting a series of training drills.

Mr. Petruzzello is a professor of kinesiology and the director of the exercise psychophysiology lab and Ms. Smith is a professor and the chair of the department of exercise science at Skidmore College in New York and a research scientist at the Illinois Fire Service Institute. The program will shed light on health issues of workers in extreme conditions with particular emphasis on the specific work of firefighters.

"Over 13 years of doing this research has revealed quite a number of factors that are influenced by performing firefighting activities in the heat while wearing protective turnout gear," Petruzzello said. "We are interested in trying to develop strategies concerning rehydration, nutrition and fitness to help firefighters and first responders recover more effectively from such 'acute' bouts of strenuous activity in hot, hostile environments."

Smith elaborated on the physical stresses firefighters experience during firefighting activity. "We know that firefighters do heavy physical work requiring a lot of muscular activity, and the body responds in a certain way with an increase in heart rate and in blood pressure," Smith said. "Doing a lot of physical work in high-temperature environments and wearing 40 pounds or more of protective gear doesn't allow you to evaporate sweat as well putting a greater physiological strain on the firefighter."

She said the leading cause of firefighter Line of Duty Deaths (LODD) is heart attacks, accounting for 45 percent of the deaths or more in Most all of the years records on such deaths have been kept. The research looks at variables, like how much blood is pumped from the heart and heart rate in response to exercise, to see how the cardiovascular system is affected.

Petruzzello said there are emotional and psychological components to firefighting as well. "Psychologically, perceived effort is elevated as are thermal sensations, they feel progressively worse as the activity continues, and it is quite likely that their decision making abilities become impaired over time," Petruzzello said. "We are very interested in continuing our research to understand what factors might predispose certain individuals to be a greater risk for cardiac events as well as what factors might lead to greater disruption of cognitive functioning."

To demonstrate these conditions, firefighters had to go through firefighting simulations created by Petruzzello and Smith that allowed the researchers to measure their bodies' heart rates and perceptual and cognitive abilities. "We feel very positive that what we are doing is contributing to the health and safety of firefighters all over the country," Jaehne said. "The work we have done has been incorporated into a new national fire research agenda approved by the Fallen Firefighters Foundation (NFFF) and the U.S. Fire Administration (USFA)."

"In the best case scenario, it (the program) increases public awareness for firefighter safety, leads to good changes within the fire service and may help support our research as well," Smith said.

At the time of this writing no set date had been made public for the airing of the program, check local listings and or www.discoverychannel.com for more information after the first of the year.