Toxicity of Combustion Products from Burning Polymers: Development and Evaluation of Methods

Abstract

Laboratory and room-scale experiments were conducted with natural and synthetic polymers: cotton, paper, wood, wool, acetate, acrylic, nylon, and urethane. Smoke and off-gases from single materials were generated in a dual-compartment 110-liter exposure chamber. Multicomponent, composite fuel loads were burned within a 100 m3 facility subdivided into rooms. In chamber experiments, mortality depended on the amount of material burned, i.e., fuel consumption (FC). Conventional dose (FC)/mortality curves were obtained, and the amount of fuel required to produce 50% mortality (FC50) was calculated. With simple flame ignition, cotton was the only material that produced smoke concentrations lethal to rats; FC50 values for cotton ranged from 2 g to 9 g, depending on the configuration of the cotton sample burned. When supplemental conductive heat was added to flame ignition, the following FC50 values were obtained; nylon, 7 g; acrylic, 8 g; newsprint, 9 g; cotton, 10 g; and wood, 11 g. Mortality resulting from any given material depended upon the specific conditions employed for its thermal decomposition. Toxicity of off-gasses from pyrolysis of phosphorus-containing trimethylol propane—polyurethane foams was markedly decreased by addition of a flame ignition source. Further studies are needed to determine the possible relevance of single-material laboratory scale smoke toxicity experiments. Room-scale burns were conducted to assess the relative contributions of single materials to toxicity of smoke produced by a multicomponent self-perpetuating fire. Preliminary results suggest that this approach permits a realistic evaluation of the contribution of single materials to the toxicity of smoke from residential fires.