Toxicity, Fire Hazard and Upholstered Furniture.
Toxicity, Fire Hazard and Upholstered Furniture.
(453 K)
Babrauskas, V.
Interscience Communications Ltd. European Conference on
Furniture Flammability (EUCOFF'92), 3rd. November 1992,
Brussels, Interscience Communications Ltd., London,
England, 125-133 pp, 1992.
Keywords:
upholstered furniture; toxicity; fire hazard; combustion
products; hazard analysis; heat release rate
Abstract:
Fire fatalities associated with upholstered furniture
fires commonly involve the toxic effects of fire gases.
Extensive results, however, both from experiments and
from modeling, are presented in this paper that
demonstrate that occupant life safety can only by
ensured by assuring that furniture fires do not reach a
high heat release rate. Differences among commercial
products associated with toxicity effects are not
significant. A very remote possibility exists that
someone could produce furniture having combustion
products' toxicity significantly greater than exists in
the present marketplace. A combustion toxicity test
does exist which would allow the accurate screening out
of such products. Any usable combustion toxicity test
method requires the use of test animals; no
non-animal-based test is possible which can successfully
identify products of unusual or extreme toxicity.
