Introduction: Firefighters experience many exposures associated with negative health outcomes. Because of this, there are many studies on the subject. Our objective here was to conduct an umbrella review of systematized reviews to identify firefighting activities and related exposures associated with negative health outcomes. Methods: A comprehensive search of the PubMed, Web of Science, and Scopus (Health) was conducted using all firefighter systematized reviews. We extracted the country and date of the review, type of firefighter, types of exposure, and related health outcomes. Risk of bias was based on AMSTAR-2 checklist. Results: In 1130 studies, 47 systematized reviews were included, mostly in the last 5 years and from North America and Australia. The topics were diverse, ranging from general aspects to specific exposures, such as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, wildland fires, organizational, traumatic, or psychological stress exposure, and from prevention or surveillance to specific health effects (e.g., cancer, mental health, musculoskeletal disorders, cardiovascular, and pulmonary health, etc.). The risk of bias assessment using the selection grid shows a significant heterogeneity, though some studies were of very high quality. Discussion: This umbrella review provides a comprehensive description of systematized reviews describing populations of firefighters, including information on exposure, health outcomes, and illness/injury prevention.
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Descatha et al. (2025) studied this question.
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