Reducing heat strain during work in protective clothing

Commercially available cooling systems have been promoted for use with personal protective clothing with various claims but no validation of the effectiveness to address wearer heat strain. If the cooling systems don’t lower core body temperature, they may put the user in more danger, thinking they have increased operational time, while their core body temperature still rises.

The scope of this PhD project is to review commercially available personal cooling systems, survey current practice within first responder departments and evaluate a range of systems in multiple conditions whilst wearing chemical protective clothing.