Immersion fatalities: hazardous responses and dangerous discrepancies

Area of Science:

• Marine safety
• Protective equipment standards
• Human physiology in cold water

Background:

• Existing immersion protective equipment standards and guidelines are extensive.
• Fatal accidents at sea continue to occur, with equipment quality often questioned.
• There is a need to understand why current equipment fails to prevent loss of life.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the reasons behind fatalities at sea despite numerous standards for immersion protective equipment.
• To evaluate the recognition of environmental conditions and physiological responses in equipment design, selection, and testing.
• To assess the relevance and value of current immersion protective clothing tests.

Main Methods:

• Review of hazardous responses associated with cold water immersion.
• Consideration of environmental conditions and their physiological impacts.
• Evaluation of existing tests for immersion protective clothing.

Main Results:

• Current standards and testing may not adequately address all hazardous responses to immersion.
• The performance of immersion protective equipment in real accidents can be significantly worse than predicted by certification tests.
• Environmental conditions and evoked physiological responses are not fully integrated into equipment evaluation.

Conclusions:

• Formulation of standards, policies, and tests for immersion protective clothing must include all hazardous immersion responses.
• Routine certification testing may not accurately predict real-world performance of immersion protective equipment.
• A gap exists between equipment testing and actual performance under hazardous environmental conditions at sea.