Study highlights harmful effects of smoke

A recent study highlights the dangers of smoke in fire situations with where wood is the main fuel. With plastics in general you can control these effects and with Paxymer in particular you will greatly increase the safety in a fire situation.

Wood has been one of the reference materials for legislators and standard setters when trying to decide what safety levels should be required for flame retardant materials. A recent study concludes that wood smoke contains a number of carcinogenic substances and might even damage human DNA. Another important aspects of burning wood is the impact of particles and dioxins that are released in the smoke (Source: Where there’s smoke there’s trouble).

Smoke is one of the main safety issues in a fire situation, and the density and toxicity of smoke is often the determinant of how lethal a fire scenario is. Paxymer has taken both of these parameters into account. And a plastic material containing Paxymer will emit little smoke with a low density. This increases the time for evacuation and also makes the navigation in a smoke filled room easier. The comparison highlights the benefits of using designed plastic materials; the behaviour in a fire situation can be contained and controlled. However depending on how you make these material choices the effects can be the completely opposite. Different plastic materials will burn differently. Expertise and care is needed when choosing materials and different factors needs to be weighed against each other but the flexibility of polymers is difficult to compete with.

Paxymer is one of the few fire resistance systems that has taken the whole burning process into the system design. And combining Paxymer with a polyolefin will improve the safety in a fire situation drastically compared to most other alternatives.

/Amit Paul

MD Paxymer AB