Generated fire effluents are toxic and responsible for the majority of fire deaths and injuries. Therefore, measures of fire safety and the assessment of toxic effects of fires on humans, which are the key factors to assess fire hazards, have been researched in the last decades. However, it is more and more recognized that there is also a need to assess the environmental impact of toxic compounds within fire effluents. Since ecotoxicology investigates the toxic effects of fire effluents on populations, interactions between ecology and toxicology are very important. These interactions may be complex and may involve research of food chains with several different trophic levels. This makes tracing of toxicants, to obtain reliable results, a real challenge. To tackle it, the bench-scale test is a cheaper and less complex method than large-scale fire simulations. Progress in the field of ecotoxicological studies is important because long-term exposure from the environment and bioaccumulation of toxic compounds in the human food chain may cause indirect health effects on humans. It is also an important tool for the general protection of the environment and biodiversity. Last, with data obtained from these studies, databases for the Life Cycle Assessment of construction materials can be improved.
Summary
The ISO 5660‐1 cone calorimeter is an affordable, practical, and commonly used solution for the measurement of main fire properties of products and materials. Among its chief drawbacks is its limited ability to reproduce combustion conditions found in real fires. This deficiency is mainly due to its inability to control oxygen availability in order to simulate an underventilated fire. As several toxic or potentially toxic species are formed primarily in oxygen‐poor conditions, the controlled atmosphere cone calorimeter (CACC), now defined in ISO 5660‐5, is a major improvement when trying to study the toxicity of fire effluents. A proposed additional modification of the CACC via the introduction of chimney sampling ports and oxygen sensors improves the reproducibility and veracity of effluent sampling. This approach allows the implementation of various techniques to sample, collect, and analyze the generated fire effluents. In this study, the experimental set‐up was used to capture fire effluents generated by burning wood under different ventilation conditions. A gas chromatograph coupled with mass spectrometer was used to assess and compare the chemical composition of the collected samples. The results obtained with the new experimental set‐up proved the ability of the system to reproducibly generate fire effluents under various controlled burning circumstances. It could prove useful as a tool in characterizing the toxicity of fire effluents from various materials on a benchtop scale and ultimately contribute data for the numerical modeling of toxicity of fire effluents in real buildings.
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