Grenfell Firefighters Study
Research type
Research Study
Full title
THE GRENFELL FIREFIGHTERS STUDY; establishing a cohort
IRAS ID
265618
Contact name
Johanna Feary
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Imperial College, London
ISRCTN Number
ISRCTN92425651
Duration of Study in the UK
1 years, 6 months, 0 days
Research summary
On the 14th June 2017 a fire broke out in the 24-storey Grenfell Tower, causing the deaths of over 70 occupants. The fire spread unusually rapidly and its extinction – which took 60 hours - required the labour of over 1000 firefighters from the London Fire Brigade (LFB). Because of the scale and nature of the fire, a sizeable proportion of firefighters were subjected to unusually high exposures to fire smoke, often without standard respiratory protection; this proposal is for the study of potential adverse effects from these exposures.
Through LFB we will invite all the Grenfell firefighters, and a sample of other LFB firefighters, to undergo a confidential assessment of their respiratory and cardiac health. We will use simple breathing and cardiac questionnaires and tests; we will also collect samples of blood for examination of DNA damage and other genomic signals in a subsequent project which will require additional funding and ethical approval. Finally, we will request permission from participants to enrol them in an ongoing process of linkage to routinely collected health data such as those from hospital admissions and cancer registration.
We will correlate the findings from the respiratory and cardiac measurements with data held by the LFB on individual exposures to firesmoke at Grenfell and at previous (and subsequent) fires. In the longer term we will link these exposure and early-outcome measurements to future adverse health events.REC name
London - Fulham Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
19/LO/1847
Date of REC Opinion
6 Dec 2019
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion