Firefighting is quite widespread in Slovenia therefore protecting firefighters and reducing the risk they find themselves in is crucial for ensuring their safety. With high-quality protective clothing firefighters can be better protected in extreme temperature events. Health friendly materials that can withstand extremely high temperatures are nowadays commonly available on the market. Manufacturers are increasing their investment in research and development of materials to improve the properties of their fabrics. As part of this assignment, we examined how fibre properties of firefighter protective clothing change when exposed to elevated temperatures. Thermal analysis showed that exposure to elevated temperatures results in the mass loss of the samples. The mass loss depends also on the exposure time. We compared thermal analyses between the samples of different layered fabrics. It turned out that the mass loss varies with specimen type. The samples were further analysed utilizing the optical microscope and the results were also compared to the ones obtained for the fabrics cut from the used firefighting suits. We used the optical microscope analysis on new material samples and compared the results. We showed that the exposure to elevated temperatures affects the appearance of fibres and their mass loss. Longer exposure to high temperatures additionally affected the appearance of fibres and their mass loss increased. Similarly, with the exposure to high temperatures the fibres of the protective firefighter suits became thinner, which certainly affects the temperature and mechanical resistance of the suit and correspondingly the safety of the firefighters. When exposed to elevated temperatures, the protective firefighter suits should be thoroughly inspected and replaced with new ones, if necessary.
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