- Author
- Braun, E. | Gann, R. G. | Levin, B. C. | Paabo, M.
- Title
- Combustion Product Toxic Potency Measurements: Comparison of a Small Scale Test and "Real-World" Fires.
- Coporate
- National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, MD
- Journal
- Journal of Fire Sciences, Vol. 8, No. 1, 63-79, January/February 1990
- Keywords
- small scale fire tests | large scale fire tests | combustion products | toxicity | fire science | decomposition products | animals | time | rats | fire measurements
- Identifiers
- N-Gas Model; gas yields
- Abstract
- A long range goal of fire science is to be able to predict "real-world" fire performance from a small set of laboratory scale fire measurements. One material property of primary concern is the toxicity of decomposition products. Several small scale toxicity protocols that measure toxic potency of the smoke from burning materials have been developed. While several attempts have been made to correlate individual protocols with large scale results, no systematic set of criteria for determing the extent of similarity has been defined and tested. In this paper, three criteria have been proposed and tested using one set of materials (cotton fabric and polyurethane foam) in two different large-scale enclosures and three different fire scenarios. Tests were conducted to determine the extent of similarity between the NBS Toxicity Test Protocol and large-scale "real-world" fire performance. The similarity criteria were: LC50 values, time to death of the animals, and toxicant(s) causing the deaths (i.e., the ratios of yields of known toxicants and the contribution of the unknown toxicants). Comparison of test results showed that similar LC50 values were observed. However, toxicant yields varied and animal deaths occurred at different times, implying a difference in physiological syndrome(s).