- Author
- Morikawa, T. | Okada, T. | Kajiwara, M. | Sato, K.
- Title
- Toxicity of Gases From Full-Scale Experimental Fires Involving Fire Retarded Building Materials.
- Coporate
- Fire Research Institute, Tokyo, Japan Kyourin Univ., Tokyo, Japan
- Journal
- Bulletin of Japanese Association of Fire Science and Engineering, Vol. 41, No. 1, 9-19, 1992
- Keywords
- building materials | toxicity | fire retardants | plywood | polyisocyanurate foam | polyvinyl chloride | polystyrene | large scale fire tests
- Identifiers
- foam boards
- Abstract
- Five different fire retarded building materials, plywood, polyisocyanurate foam boards, polyvinylchloride foam boards, polystyrene foam boards and phenolic foam boards, were combusted one after another together with non-fire retarded materials in one of the 1st floor rooms of a fire resistant 2 story-house in order to evaluate the toxic effects of fire effluents from full-scale fires involving fire retarded materials. The results are summerized as follow: 1) The fires invovling polystyrene foam boards and phenolic foam boards had much lower heat release rates and toxicity of gases than those involving others materials, although the polystyrene which melted and driped on the floor would have burned if the amounts of non-fire retarded materials were greater. 2) In preliminary fire experiments it was found that mere 40 kg of non-fire retarded materials and no building materials in a room of 10 m² was large enough to kill animals (rabbits) exposed to the gases in the room upstairs whose opening was only 1 cm wide and 195 cm high. 3) HCN was considered to be the main cause to death of animals exposed to fire gases whenever the death ocurred, because in such cases HCN concentration was detected and COHb saturation in blood was lower than 30%. 4) The times to incapacitation calculated based on FED model with HCN and CO as toxicants had relatively good agreements with those obtained in fire experiments.