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A study by researchers at the Boston University School of Medicine, Boston Medical Center, Harvard University and Cambridge Health Alliance revealed that 77 percent of fire and ambulance recruits in Massachusetts are overweight or obese. More exactly, nearly 44 percent were overweight and 33 percent were obese, according to the study published in the journal Obesity.
“They are pretty striking numbers. We were ourselves pretty surprised at the severity of the penetration of the obesity epidemic,” said lead author Antonios Tsismenakis, a second-year medical student at Boston University School of Medicine and a fellow at the Harvard School of Public Health.
Tsismenakis also added that carrying excess weight is unhealthy for pretty much anybody, but especially a bad thing with emergency respondents. That’s because any health condition suddenly incapacitating an emergency responder also potentially compromises the safety of his or her coworkers and the community.
For the study, the researchers analyzed the pre-placement medical examination of firefighters and ambulance recruits from two clinic testing centers between October and June 2007. They excluded those who were older than 35. Among the 370 recruits studied, only 22 percent were normal weight.
The study showed that extra weight was associated with higher blood pressures, worse metabolic profiles and lower exercise tolerance on treadmill stress tests.
And cardiovascular disease and musculoskeletal injury are important causes of morbidity and mortality in emergency responders, and excess body fat is associated with higher risk for both.
The study was funded in part by grant from the US Department of Homeland Security.
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