Perspectives on Flame retardants

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Perspectives on Flame retardants

• Petra Andersson SP Fire Technology
• www.sp.se

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SP Fire Technology
Situated in Borås Sweden SP Staff approx. 900
Fire Tech Staff approx. 55 www.sp.se
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(No Transcript)
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Perspectives on Flame Retardants

• Advantages
• Prevent Fires, thereby
• Save lives
• Minimise environmental impact of fires

• Disadvantages
• Environmental and toxicological impact during
  production, use and waste
• Emissions during fires

necessary to weigh the costs of FRs against the
benefits of their use.
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Flame Retardants Types

• Organic compounds containing
• halogens, predominantly bromine and chlorine,
  synergists (antimony, tin)
• Phosphorous
• Nitrogen (often as a synergist with Phosphorous)
• Inorganic compounds
• aluminium-, magnesium hydroxides
• ammonium polyphosphate
• Reactive or Additive

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Perspective on Flame retardants Toxicity

• Exposure from
• - production risks mitigated through emission
  control
• - use risk evaluated in e.g. EU risk
  assessments
• - waste handling risk evaluated in e.g. EU
  risk assessments
• - fire
• Exposure through
• - inhalation
• - dermal
• - oral
• Toxicity different for each FR

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Perspective on Flame retardants ecotoxicity -
LCA
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Perspective of Flame retardants Fire-LCA
Weighs function of FRs against environmental cost
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Fire - LCA Input needed

• Normal LCA input data needed, e.g.
• energy consumption during production, use etc
• raw materials needed
• emissions during production and use,
• etc.
• Fire statistics, e.g.
• How many fires start in the product per year with
  and without flame retardants?
• How many products burn per year?
• Fire Emission data
• CO, PAH, CO2, Dioxins, Furans, etc.

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Fire Emission data
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Fire-LCA example of results
TV Case Study
Furniture Case Study
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Fire-LCA example of results
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Fire-LCA example of results
Furniture-case study
Comparing cancer risk results in a higher risk
for the non-FR case in this study
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Fire-LCA - Limitations

• Focuses on environmental impact
• Difficult to evaluate different emissions against
  each other
• Does not include number of lives saved or
  injuries
• Does not include costs for fire damage or cost
  for FR production
• Does not include societal impact

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Fire-CBA

• Input parameters
• Production costs
• End of Life, disposal costs
• Fires value of a statistical life, cost of burn
  treatment, cost of property (fire statistics)
• Chemical exposure costs

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Fire-CBA applied to TV with DecaBDE

• Costs incremental increases in cost to flame
  retard a product additional costs for disposal
• Benefits lives saved injuries avoided capital
  costs avoided
• Application to DecaBDE use in TV-sets
• No cost assigned to the injuries due to exposure
  to DecaBDE
• Incremental cost of manufacture of the FR and
  disposal of FR material included
• Cost of lives lost, injuries treated and capital
  costs associated with fires included
• Between US657 1 380 million can be saved each
  year by use of high level of fire performance in
  TV-sets.

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Limitations with Fire-CBA

• Difficult to estimate costs in some cases, i.e.
• risk of thinner shells on Falcon eggs
• anxiety
• debate
• risk for unknown impact

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Conclusions

• Not possible to make general conclusions about
  all Flame Retardants
• The advantages and disadvantages with Flame
  Retardants must be evaluated case by case.
• The application and the specific FR must be
  evaluated
• Imperative to team up fire expertise and
  toxicologists/ecotoxicologists for a true
  evaluation of FRs
• More research is needed into the
  toxicity/ecotoxicity of FRs in different
  applications and methods to evaluate FRs.