Intensive Research Needed To Get Facts on Fire Gases
FEATURES
The Editor’s Opinion Page
There is increasing concern about the toxic gases produced by burning plastics and the information that is available is for the most part unsatisfactory. It is frequently speculative and often incomplete when it is based on scientific facts.
At the IAFC Metropolitan Committee conference in San Diego, Merritt Birky of the Foundation for Fire Safety said that what little information exists about the inhalation of the smoke of plastics concerns only fatalities—not injuries. (See page 46.) Gordon Vickery, head of the Foundation for Fire Safety, declared that “we don’t really know what specifically killed 100 of the 130 hotel” fire victims in recent months.
A couple of weeks later, Birky told a New York State Senate subcommittee on fire safety hearing that two of the fatalities in the Westchase Hilton Hotel fire in Houston had lethal concentrations of hydrogen cyanide and he believed that the floor covering and some furniture was responsible.
On the other hand, C. Nicholas Hodnett, toxicologist for the Westchester, N.Y., County Coroner’s Office, stated that “depending on thermal conditions, silk or wool will produce more hydrogen cyanide than some plastics.”
We cite these statements not to point to the range of opinions per se, but rather to stress the fact that there is little in the way of hard facts available. The purpose of the New York legislative hearing conducted by Senator John R. Dunne was to get support for his bill to appropriate $300,000 to the New York Department of State for a study of fire gases generated by building construction materials and furnishings. The study would develop a rating system for the toxicity of materials and the information would be incorporated in the state’s uniform fire prevention and building code. A similar bill was sponsored in the New York Assembly by Assemblyman John R. Branca.
These bills, of course, hit at the heart of the problem. We need to obtain more facts about the various gases emitted by burning plastics and other synthetics. We need to know how lethal gases generated by these materials compare with natural materials such as wood, paper, silk, wool, cotton, etc.
Vickery declared that the bottom line is that man-made materials burn hotter and generate much more smoke than natural materials.
However, we don’t have hard facts on the specific causes of death of the nation’s annual toll of some 7000 or 8000 fire victims. We need intensive research—and we need it now—to determine what gases are killing people, and we need to know what long-term effects the gases have on those who survived—at least for a while.
This is the type of research that is made to order to be administered by the United States Fire Administration. It’s a powerful argument for the continuation of the USFA, which is scheduled to die on Sept. 30. It’s time for the fire service to let Congress know that the USFA has more work of prime importance to do.
We have a final, potent piece of advice to all fire fighters: Wear positive-pressure self-contained breathing apparatus at every structural fire!
