Obesity and incident injury among career firefighters in the central United States

Abstract

Objective: Firefighting is a dangerous profession with high injury rates, particularly musculoskeletal (MS), but limited longitudinal data is available to examine predictors of MS injuries in this population.

Design and methods: The relationship between personal individual, nonoccupational factors (e.g., demographic characteristics, body composition, fitness, and health behaviors) and incident injury and incident MS injury in a prospective cohort of 347 firefighters from the central United States was examined.

Results: Baseline weight status was a significant predictor of incident MS injury, with obese (BMI ≥ 30 kg m(-2)) firefighters 5.2 times more likely (95% CI = 1.1-23.4) to experience a MS injury than their normal weight (BMI = 18.5-24.9 kg m(-2)) colleagues over the course of the study. Similarly, firefighters who were obese based on WC (>102.0 cm) were almost three times as likely (OR = 2.8, 95% CI = 1.2-6.4) to have a MS injury at follow-up.

Conclusions: Findings highlight the importance of focusing on firefighters' body composition, nutrition and fitness as a means of decreasing risk for injury.