ANATOMY OF AN URBAN MYTH
In early April I received a call from Cleveland (OH) Firefighter Terry Bindernagle from the Cleveland Fire Academy. He was concerned about and somewhat mystified by a story making its way through northern Ohio concerning a strange plastic called Veton (a very obvious misspelling of Viton™, a fluoroelastomer made by Du Pont). The story he relayed to me was so preposterous that I made what in retrospect was a very serious error in giving it no credence whatsoever. The proximity in time to April Fool’s Day made it obvious, to me at least, that someone was having fun with the firefighters, knowing they would pay attention to information that might save them from injury on the job. To Firefighter Bindernagle’s credit, he didn’t accept my explanation and followed up by sending me copies of the documents being received, as it turns out, by fire departments and insurance claims offices all over the country.
THE STORY
The first document to begin circulation was a now infamous “Intelligence Bulletin,” allegedly issued by the Office of the Fire Marshal of the State of Alabama. In reality, it was not sent out by anyone in or known to that office. The Alabama state fire marshal is very upset, to say the least. It supposedly was issued by one “Tim Sherer” on the subject of officer safety. It is cited below word for word, including errors:
To: All OfficerslAll Divisions
From: Criminal Intelligence Unit
Source: L. E. S. Tim Scherer, Arson Squad
Subject: Officer Safety
Officers should use caution in handling burned vehicles. Following information furnished by Deputy Scherer:
Ref Fluoroelastomec [another obvious misspelling]
Date: 12/10/91
Fluoroelastomec, or Veton by its other name, is a material that is being used to make brake seals and fuel pipes, as well as other components in vehicles. This material becomes dangerous after it has been burnt, ie in a vehicle fire. The material melts into a HIGHLY CORROSIVE ACID, which if it gets onto the skin CANNOT be removed. The only treatment is AMPUTATION. This melted state will remain dangerous for a minimum period of two years, and only professional de-contamination will remove it safely.
AMPUTATION is the only treatment, and it is required if the material gets onto the – there is no second chance.
THE SPREADING OF THE STORY
Firefighters face many dangers, and when they find what they believe is a way to protect other firefighters from one of those dangers, they will expend extraordinary efforts to see that the information is disseminated. That is what happened here. As the facsimile machines were burning up with the criss-crossing messages all over the country, more and more firefighters were becoming concerned about this mysterious polymeric material and its terrible dangers. Many of them were concerned enough that they sought confirmation of the story by calling the Florida state fire marshal’s office, the Alabama state fire marshal’s office, I)u Pont, and anyone else they could think of who might be able to shed some light on the story. As I received additional phone calls, even 1 abandoned my April Fool’s theory and began my own serious investigation.
The major problem was that many of the callers talked to other people who seemed to know just enough to compound the problem. With some research, one can determine that indeed, Viton (not “Veton”) is a fiuoroelastomer (not “fluoroelastomec”) and that fiuoroelastomers —and indeed all fluoropolymers—are organic materials (as are all other carbon-based polymers, including naturally occurring polymers). Of course, all organic materials will burn, and anything that contains fluorine may produce hydrogen fluoride (chemical formula HF). Hydrogen fluoride is a corrosive gas that becomes hydrofluoric acid (whose chemical formula also is HF) when it dissolves in water. Hydrofluoric acid is a strong acid, and its corrosiveness is directly related to its concentration. The concentration of an acid such its hydrofluoric acid is determined by the amount of hydrogen fluoride dissolved in water. (See “Hydrogen Fluoride,” Fire Engineering, May 1988.)
Hydrofluoric acid, depending on its concentration, can cause deep-seated acid burns when it contacts human tissue. This injury can be quickly counteracted by applying a three percent gel of calcium gluconate to the affected area. If this burn is not attended to immediately, as is the case with any other tissue damage that is ignored, infection can set in, possibly leading to serious consequences.
With these facts concerning hydrogen fluoride and hydrofluoric acid in mind, it is easy to see how someone could be led to believe that there is a material out there so dangerous that contact of the melted plastic (from a burning piece of this material) with human skin would cause serious injury. The inference that the information is coming from two highly respected sources such as the Alabama state fire marshal’s office and the Florida state fire marshal’s office certainly lent credence to the report. In addition, it appeared to some who were spreading the story in good faith that a nationally known and responsible insurance company and Du Pont themselves had confirmed one or more parts of the story. With these authoritative sources behind the report, it was accepted as gospel by many firefighters who received it. And when they passed the story on, it gained even more acceptability. It is a fantastic odyssey of a made-up, planted story left to be fertilized and harvested by others. Whoever started and circulated the story probably knew exactly what was going to happen.
TRACKING THE STORY
As best as I can piece the story together after talking to the two individuals central to the story (Marc Masonbrink and David Woerner), this is what happened: A Florida office of a well-known national insurance company had a damaged car that it insured towed from Alabama to Florida. The driver of the wrecker delivered the car and handed a manager of the insurance company the now infamous Alabama state fire marshal’s memo. The insurance manager, concerned about the safety of employees of his company all across the country who might come in contact with the material, called the Florida state fire marshal’s office to see if it had any knowledge of this material. As luck would have it, the phone call was taken by Masonbrink, a computer system specialist in charge of the computer system for the Florida state fire marshal’s office. He is not a firefighter, nor is he an arson investigator; rather, he is a very dedicated employee who happened to be at the wrong place at the right time.
Masonbrink took the call from the insurance manager and became very concerned about the story he was hearing. He knew that if the story were true, not only insurance investigators but also emergency responders might be in serious danger from the material. He told the insurance manager that although he did not know whether the story was true, he would make every attempt to discover the truth and pass it on to him.
Unable to get verification from the Florida state fire marshal’s office concerning “Veton” or “fluoroelastomec,” Masonbrink began to make phone calls to other agencies he believed could help. Since he had made a promise to the insurance manager, he felt compelled to learn about the material and report back. He made several calls, including a couple to federal agencies that should have known the answers or where to send him for more information. No one could give him the information he needed, but somewhere during his investigation, he learned that the correct name of the polymer was Viton and that it was made by Du Pont. He eventually got directions on how to reach a Du Pont department that had information about Viton and might be able to help. Masonbrink finally reached a Du Pont salesman named David Woerner.
Woerner has sales responsibilities for Viton, so he was eager to help. The story he heard from Masonbrink. however, was so farfetched that he just couldn’t believe it. He promised to do his part in clearing up the misunderstanding by sending Masonbrink all the information he could find, and Woerner began his own investigation. He learned that there was a report of a serious injury involving a fluoroelastomer (not made by Du Pont) in Europe in 1981. Researchers interested in how fiuoroelastomers burned or degraded placed a sample of the material II) an OVCfl Of conihustion cham ber and proceeded to either burn thu sample or degrade it by constantly increasing the heat energy input to a point where the sample would de grade. At some point after the experi ment, a technician reached in and picked up the sample with his bare hand. It is not clear to me whether the sample was still hot, so I cannot venture a guess about whether it was a thermal burn he received on the tip of his lInger. The report indicates that it was hydrofluoric acid that had con deii.sucl hack onto the sample that caused the burn. It seems unreason able to me, kmwing h~w some of these tests are run, that the chamber VULild he so sealed that any hydrogen fi tu ridc generated by the decomp( )5 i -ti( )fl Of the fluoroelastomer would dissolve in enough moisture in the air in the furnace or chamber to produce I concenti~tted solution of hvdroflu one acid in such a quantity that it would then condense directly on the sample (or its ashes) in such an amount to burn the finger, but that is what I have been led to believe happened.
The technician did nothing to the injured tip of his finger for several days; by the time he did seek medical attention, the damage, probably from the ignored infection, was so serious and far advanced that the tissue was permanently destroyed. The technician had to have the tip of his finger amputated. How his finger could have been burned seriously enough to cause the permanent damage and yet be ignored is puzzling. If the burn was caused by hydrofluoric acid and was not a thermal burn, first aid that could have prevented any serious injury was available at the time of contact. And, of course, if it was a thermal burn, first aid, again, could have prevented further damage. Regardless of w hat actually happened, a fluoroelastomer was involved; this apparently was the seed for the story that grew’ into monstrous proportions. The facts that good scientific procedures were not followed in handling the test sample and that first aid was ignored never entered into the story—just that an amputation occurred. I wonder if the results would have been the same if the technician had cut his finger, had gotten a splinter under the skin, or had had some other wound that let bacteria in and multiply.
Woerner sent all available information to Masonbrink, including the report of the incident in England and information on how Viton decomposes under conditions of excessive heat. A letter outlining safety procedures to follow when encountering Viton in or after a fire was drafted to be sent in response to all inquiries.
Masonbrink called back the insurance manager with the information he had gathered. He believed that the material could be encountered safely and that the danger was very much overstated. He sent the data he had collected, not realizing that the insurance manager had misinterpreted what he said and what he sent. The insurance manager now was convinced that the material was as bad as he originally had thought, and he believed that he had received confirmation from the Florida state fire marshal’s office. He then proceeded to compose a letter to be sent to all the field representatives and investigators in his company who might have contact with the deadly polymer. He attached the Alabama state fire marshal’s memo to his letter and sent it out.
At some point, firefighters across the country obtained copies of the misinformation sent, and Masonbrink’s phone began to ring off the hook. He was astounded to hear that the story had changed, grown, and spread so far and wide. But he was absolutely amazed when he learned that he was the leading authority on the terrible hazards of this dastardly material. He began a one-man debunking team, trying to stem the flow of incorrect information, but the tide was really coming in. Stories now were spreading that the terrible “Veton” was carcinogenic and that the National Fire Protection Association was involved in a major test to determine its combustibility and carcinogenic properties.
A Florida consulting firm specializing in fire investigation picked up the story and sent out its own letters warning everyone of the dangers.
Farther north, Woerner also was receiving a flood of calls, since he now was the “Du Pont expert on how Viton burned and its subsequent dangers.” No matter what he said to callers, the data he sent out seemed to prove to some that all the dangers of Viton as contained in the original memo were correct. The snowball was growing. It seemed that it would never stop.
THE FACTS
But stop it did—-at least for now. The story had grown to such monstrous proportions that many members of the fire service across the country began their own investigations. Local and state fire academies began to investigate and very quickly got to the facts. And the facts are that Viton is a safe material and is totally harmless in its intended use.
Viton is a man-made polymer called a fluoroelastomer, and the presence of fluorine in the molecule means that it will not ignite and/or burn as easily as polymers that do not contain fluorine or other halogens, such as chlorine — assuming the articles made of other polymers are all identical in size, configuration, and weight. The Viton used in the gaskets and seals of automobiles does not exceed a total eight of eight ounces and is spread about in several places in, under, and throughout the automobile. For Viton to ignite, some other material must be burning, and the flames and/or intense heat of the other material burning must be present for Viton to continue burning. While it is true that hydrogen fluoride is a combustion product of fluoroelastomers, the amount of hydrogen fluoride released when such a small, thin gasket made from this material burns is miniscule when compared with the combustion products produced by the other materials burning. These other combustion products will dilute the hydrogen fluoride produced so that it will be unnoticeable. In addition, all hydrogen fluoride produced during the combustion of the seal or gasket will be mixed with other combustion products and carried off in the thermal column produced by the other burning materials. Any remaining molten fluoroelastomer (after the fire has been extinguished) probably will not have any hydrofluoric acid on its surface because of the water used to extinguish the fire.
If the fire was not extinguished by firefighters or others using water, what are the odds that, in a fire, hydrogen fluoride will be evolved from burning fluoroelastomer, dissolve in the moisture in the air, and then condense directly back onto the burnt part in any harmful concentration? The dynamics of a fire seem to dictate that the hydrogen fluoride will be dispersed by the air moving into and around the fire and being propelled upward by the thermal column. This makes the possibility of being injured by hydrogen fluoride or hydrofluoric acid in an automobile fire remote. Even in an auto parts store, where gaskets and other parts may be concentrated (in two or three dozen very small cardboard boxes), the contribution of hydrogen fluoride to the total combustion products will be negligible.
If one really is looking for a scenario where burning fluoroelastomer could be a problem, it will be wherever a large amount of the material is burning by itself, which is an unlikely scenario indeed. It is possible that this could occur at a manufacturing operation where large quantities of fluoroelastomer are present, but remember that halogen(fluorine-, chlorine-, bromine-, and iodine-) containing materials are almost never the original source of ignition and that usually a fairly strong supporting fire must be burning to cause the halogen-containing material to burn.
A mass of smoldering fluoroelastomer could be extremely dangerous because of the amount of hydrogen fluoride generated combined with a relatively slow rate of dispersion due to the lack of a thermal column. However, hydrogen fluoride is lighter than air (its vapor density is 0.72), and it will rise fairly quickly. Anyone performing overhaul activities without respiratory protection could be in very serious jeopardy. In a smoldering car fire, the residual heat might decompose a part made of fluoroelastomer, liberating hydrogen fluoride. In this scenario, the exposed person would have to have his/her head directly over a decomposing seal or gasket, a very small part, and there would have to be no wind or any other movement that would cause the gas to disperse. While the chances of injury are small in this scenario, they do exist, and all firefighters should always wear respiratory protection when fighting a fire, even outdoors.
In summary, the conditions that would be necessary for a person to be harmed by the burning of articles made of fluoroelastomer are so specific that they probably do not exist in any “normal” fire, especially an automobile fire that occurs outdoors.
POSITIVE ASPECTS
Several positive results have emerged from this incident identified as a modern-day “urban myth” by my son, Frank. (An urban myth is what used to be called a “silly-season” story. Today, the urban myths are not funny, and many may cause harm to persons, organizations, or society at large.) Among the positive results are the following:
- The discovery that there is a working network for transmitting information-even if in this situation the information was incorrect.
- That a manufacturer of a material similar in composition to the one cited in this myth had a chance to investigate and report directly to the fire service concerning the safe use of its product. On May 5, 1992, Du Pont issued a press release “ … refuting the accuracy of the ‘Safety Alert’ distributed to firefighters, insurance claims personnel, and emergency response units nationwide…In the release, Du Pont emphasized that the fluoroelastomer involved in the 1981 incident was not manufactured by Du Pont and announced that inquiries concerning this material should be directed to Diane R. Currie, who can be reached at (302) 774-6812. Please give poor Woerner and Masonbrink a break; call Ms. Currie for technical information.
- The emergence of the educational arm of the fire service as the force behind getting to the truth. The Cleveland (OH) Fire Academy and the Nassau County (NY) Fire Academy contacted me personally; I’m sure others were involved in getting to the facts.
LESSONS LEARNED
Among the lessons learned from this incident are the following:
- Before accepting information as factual, check and recheck it with reliable and knowledgeable sources. The Chemical Clearinghouse recently established by Fire Engineering would be one source of information in a situation such as this one (see Fire Engineering, February 1992, page 85). The Clearinghouse came about at approximately the same time as the rumors started, so most people in the fire service community may not have been aware of this new service.
- Written material with obvious misspellings, such as that circulated in this situation, should make us suspect that something is amiss (usually the intelligence of the person who started the rumor). Members of the fire service involved with hazardous-materials response teams instantly recognized that the material in question was Viton (not Veton), since this material is used in the construction of some total encapsulating suits used to protect emergency responders in the safe mitigation of hazardous-materials incidents. They realized that no manufacturer would recommend a material that posed the hazards “Veton” was said to present for suits designed to protect a firefighter’s life.
- Manufacturers’ recommendations pertaining to the handling precautions when using items made from their materials should be carefully followed. As safe as a material may be for its intended use, the possibility always exists that someone may devise a way to use the material so that some possible harmful properties may arise.
- In tracking down the information contained in such a “Safety Alert,” or any other similar important information received, contact reliable sources immediately instead of wasting time trying to reach the purported original source of the information. In this case, the writer of the original memo did not exist —at least for his sake, he’d better not exist! I understand that John S. Robinson, Alabama state fire marshal, sure would like to meet “L.E.S. Tim Scherer” and ask him a few questions *
