Hazardous Materials for First Responders, 6th Edition (Publisher IFSTA/FPP #36701)

Hazardous Materials for First Responders, 6th Edition is the International Fire Service Training Association's (IFSTA) current manual for responders dealing with dangerous chemicals, fuels and spills, published through Fire Protection Publications (FPP) at Oklahoma State University, and SkillsTrain, the authorised Action Training Systems (ATS) distributor in South Africa, imports and supplies it as part of the same IFSTA range as Essentials of Fire Fighting. Like every IFSTA title, it is validated by a committee of serving fire-service professionals before publication, so a department adopting it is working from content vetted by practitioners rather than by publisher staff alone.

This 6th Edition is written to the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) 470 standard as consolidated in 2022, the current reference point for hazardous-materials and weapons of mass destruction (WMD) response, which brought together several older separate standards into one. It replaces the prior 5th Edition that some academies may still be running, and SkillsTrain also stocks that earlier printing for programmes not yet ready to transition. The manual covers first-responder-level recognition, scene safety and initial response, correlating broadly to the entry-level ground ATS's own HAZMAT Awareness and Response video series teach on video, giving a department a printed text to run alongside either series.

SkillsTrain's role is to bring the finished, current edition into Africa, not to write or accredit it, and SkillsTrain can advise a programme moving up from the 5th Edition on what has changed under the NFPA 470 consolidation and whether existing lesson plans need updating as a result.

Who it is for: services building or updating a first-responder-level hazardous-materials programme who want the current, NFPA 470-aligned IFSTA reference text.