The price of fire safety

Abstract

Straight out of college, Ted Schaefer’s first assignment at 3M Canada was to provide technical support and formulate firefighting foams. It was 1980, and 3M was the dominant producer of fluorosurfactant-containing foams used to quell hydrocarbon fires after aircraft crash landings and to put out fires at oil refineries, chemical plants, and storage-tank facilities. From the 1970s through the 1990s, 3M’s Light Water fire suppressant—and other fluorosurfactant-based firefighting foams like it—were the “highest performing” foams available, recalls Schaefer, who earned a degree in chemistry from the University of Waterloo. The foams seemed to have few, if any, drawbacks. A concentrated formula, diluted with water, forms a heat-resistant foam blanket that rapidly cools and smothers most hydrocarbon-fueled fires. The fluorine content helps create a low-surface-tension film that rapidly spreads across the surface of a flammable liquid. A foam’s quick action in a fire can mean the difference between life and death.