- Author
- Bulien, O. K.
- Title
- Toxic Hazard in Building Fires: Application of Research Based Knowledge for Regulatory Purposes.
- Coporate
- Flodda, Norway
- Keywords
- building fires | toxic hazards | regulations | egress | fire safety | safety engineering | fire statistics | toxicity | codes
- Identifiers
- generation of chemical species in fires; mitigation of fire related toxic hazard; foundation for a new code of practice
- Abstract
- A comprehensive review and discussion of the state-of-the-art on the toxic hazard in fires relative to existing knowledge within fire safety engineering has been performed. The study examines the possible applications of this knowledge in building regulations. The study if confined to Norwegian conditions and to building categories with a high representation in fire death statistics. The primary goal was to view the toxic hazard in a broad perspective and find an applicable strategy for reducing the number of fire related deaths through building regulations. The intention was to optimise the probability of success by finding the highest potential for improvement. The work has shown that the following conclusions bay be considered valid for all fire types and stages, based on the fact that heat release is considered the most important factor for generating a toxic hazard in fires. The study concludes that even the best prediction model for generation of chemical species in fires may have a high cost/benefit-ratio, or may be unattainable to the required accuracy.