Balancing halons’ values with its dangers
DEPARTMENTS
Dispatches
There’s a dilemma facing the National Fire Protection Association concerning halon extinguishing agents.
The agents, Halon 1211 and Halon 1301, are essential to extinguishing fires in high-tech electronic environments such as computer rooms and telecommunications centers. This includes facilities used in maintaining the national defense.
The problem is that halon wreaks havoc with the earth’s ozone layer, the level of the stratosphere that protects humans and other life forms from ultraviolet radiation. According to an official of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Halon 1301 consumes 11.4 times as much ozone as do chlorofluorcarbons, which the federal government banned in 1978 from use in aerosol cans.
Thus, the NFPA says it’s looking for ways to solve the problem—to safeguard the environment while continuing reliance on these important firefighting tools.
The association says it has already taken several steps toward a better understanding of the situation. One step was to reject a proposal requiring fulldischarge testing of halon fire extinguishing systems. The NFPA believes that most emissions occur during testing rather than actual firefighting, and that such emissions can be controlled. Thus, the NFPA is allowing alternative means of testing the halon systems while a committee determines a new technical standard for making sure such systems are reliable.
The NFPA also has joined the EPA in hosting meetings on the halon-ozone issue and in developing projects to control halon emissions. And, this spring, NFPA representatives participated in a joint hearing of two U.S. Senate subcommittees examining the international ozone layer problem.
