Flame retardant: an essential patron saint of safety

On July 6, 2013, Asiana flight 214 crashed when it landed in San Francisco, its fuselage caught fire and emitted thick smoke. In this accident, although the plane caught fire, the vast majority of passengers survived smoothly. It is a kind of chemical product widely existing in our life, but often ignored, that is flame retardant.

As a conventional means of fire prevention, flame retardants are widely added to a variety of materials. Flame retardant is indeed the invisible patron saint of life.

Flame retardant is a kind of additives which can delay the ignition time and inhibit the spread of fire. They inhibit the occurrence of combustion reaction through a variety of action principles. Inorganic flame retardants such as aluminum hydroxide and magnesium hydroxide generate water when heated, which absorbs a large amount of heat in the process, and also plays the role of isolating oxygen; brominated flame retardants can capture the free radicals in the combustion reaction and terminate the occurrence of chain reaction; in addition, some flame retardants can make the surface of materials rapidly expand and carbonize to form a protective layer.

From plastic products, synthetic leather, chemical fiber fabrics to foam insulation materials in buildings, there are polymer materials everywhere in our lives. These materials have many advantages in performance, but there is an obvious defect: they are easy to burn, thus burying a fire hazard. In order to eliminate the hidden danger, it is necessary to use flame retardant to improve the fire resistance of materials.

Today, flame retardants are mainly used in transportation, electronic and electrical equipment, furniture and building materials. Adding flame retardants does not make the material fully resistant to fire, but it can still reduce the occurrence of fire and provide valuable escape time for people trapped in the fire. In the fire space, due to the accumulation of flammable gas and heat, the phenomenon of "flashover" may occur - all kinds of flammable materials are on fire at the same time within 1-2 seconds. The emergence of flame retardant can effectively avoid this situation. Take the cathode ray tube TV with plastic shell as an example, if it is not flame retardant, the escape time left for people in case of fire is less than 2 minutes, while with the help of flame retardant, the escape time can be increased to more than 30 minutes.

The role of flame retardants in fire safety has been confirmed. According to the assessment of the European Commission, the use of flame retardants has reduced the number of fire deaths in Europe by 20% in the past 10 years. The Greenstreet Berman study conducted by the British government in 2009 showed that since the promulgation of the fire safety regulations for furniture and interior furnishings, from 2002 to 2007, there were 54 fire deaths, 780 non fatal burns and 1065 fire accidents, and fire prevention treatment of furniture relies on flame retardant.

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