doi:10.3850/978-981-08-7724-8_11-06

ABSTRACT

The steady state tube furnace (BS 7990 and ISO TS 19700) is both a standard test method and a research tool that can provide building engineers and designers with valuable data related to fire hazard. The significant advantage of the apparatus over other techniques is its capability to replicate the whole range of fire conditions. This paper examines the relationships between the effects of material, combustion conditions and toxic potencies for specific classes of synthetic polymer (LDPE, PS, PA 6.6. and PVC). The major product yields have been translated into an overall estimation of the fire effluent toxicity, using the methods described in ISO 13571 and expressed in terms of the fractional effective dose (FED), and fractional effective concentration (FEC) indicating the contribution of each toxicant towards the overall incapacitation. The predicted toxicities show variations of up to two orders of magnitude with change in fire scenario. They also show changes of at least one order of magnitude for different materials in the same fire scenario. Finally, they show that in many cases CO, which is often assumed to be the most, or even the only toxicologically significant fire gas, is of less importance when HCl or HCN is present.

Keywords: Fire, Toxicity, Fire effluents, Asphyxiant, Irritant, FED, Polymers, Purser furnace, ISO 19700, BS 7990.

© 2011 CPD Unit, University of Leeds