WHO 07:13″
“Introduction Certain subgroups of workers may be at higher risk of developing diminished health requirements in relation to the job they fulfil. A high-risk approach to monitoring can be used when these subgroups have been recognised. This approach was introduced by Rose (1985), who posed that the high-risk approach was a preventive strategy that seeks to identify high-risk susceptible individuals and to offer them individual protection. For susceptible workers, this approach can result in more INK1197 mw attentive monitoring
of their work-related health aspects, e.g. using a workers’ health surveillance (WHS). In this article, our goal was to identify high-risk subgroups of fire fighters. Work-related diminished health requirements have been studied in fire fighters, but very few studies can be found that identify high-risk groups. One of the few studies performed in ageing fire fighters found that musculoskeletal diseases increased with age (Sluiter and Frings-Dresen 2007). Other job-specific health aspects that were of interest to monitor in fire fighters were published in a recent review among several high-demand jobs (Plat et al. 2011). These include A-1155463 in vitro psychological aspects, physical aspects (energetic, biomechanical and balance), sense-related aspects and environmental exposure aspects as well as cardiovascular risk factors.
Subgroups including gender, professionalism and age are examples of high-risk groups in a high-demanding job, like fire
fighters. Literature examining gender difference in fire fighters is scarce, probably due to the small number of women fire fighters. Based on other literature, it can be concluded that women possess lower maximal strength when compared to men (Åstrand et al. 2003) and may therefore experience more difficulty when Glutathione peroxidase performing strenuous duties during fire-fighting tasks. In the subgroup of professionalism, fire fighters in the Netherlands can be grouped into one of the two types: volunteer and professional fire fighters. In the Netherlands, 22,000 volunteer fire fighters and 5,500 professional fire fighters are currently active. Volunteer fire fighters perform fire-fighting activities in addition to employment at a ‘normal’ job and are paged from their work or home during predefined time periods, but only when incidents occur. Volunteers operate primarily in more rural areas. Conversely, professional fire fighters perform 24-h shifts at the fire station, with 48-h rest in between shifts, and they are often located in urban areas. Professional fire fighters are assumed to have higher chances for developing diminished health requirements in this study due to more extensive and longer exposure than volunteer fire fighters.