Fires kill some 100 000 persons per year worldwide at a cost of around 1% of GDP. To reduce the toll of deaths and injuries, and the huge cost to society, fire safety standards are essential in all areas of modern life, and in particular for buildings and interior decoration, furniture, con-sumer equipment and transport vehi-cles. The general regulatory approach is that:
• Laws and regulations define the necessary minimum levels of fire safety.
• Technical standards for products define which fire test has to be applied and what the criteria are
• Fire test standards define the method of testing for reaction to fire and the measured parameters (e.g. time to ignition, heat release, ...)
Flame retardants can be added so some materials in order to achieve the necessary safety level, i.e. pass the relevant fire test – thus enabling their use to be conform to regu-lations and to offer the required level of fire safety to the public. EFRA recommends the use of tested and certified products: Flame retardant products have to prove their effec-tiveness by fulfilling the requirements of standardized fire tests. The fact that a flame re-tardant works on one substrate can not be taken as proof that it will do so for other mate-rials. This is especially true for flame retardant products which are applied by the end user, e.g. spray-on treatments for textiles and decorations.
When are Flame Retardants used?
• For the consumer, fire safety standards ensure that products offer a minimal standard of safety in use. In some cases, manufacturers also offer products with higher levels of fire safety as an element of consumer choice.
• For authorities, fire safety standards reduce the number of fires occurring and their gravity, thus reducing the costs to fire services and to society.
• For industry, fire safety standards ensure a level playing field between competitors, and provide a tool for showing that products are consumer safe.
Fire safety standards can address the fire behaviour (resistance to ignition, burning be-haviour once alight …) both of materials used in products and of the final product, as well as safety features of product design, fire alarms and extinguishers, emergency exits in buildings … There is an increasing tendency to develop fire performance engineering ap-proaches 1 to building and product fire safety standardisation: this requires the overall system (building or product) to offer a given level of fire safety, allowing designers to achieve this by optimal combinations of fire prevention (use-design, flame resistant mate-rials …), fire spread limitation (design, flame retardant materials, extinguishing …) and user safety through escape and safety specifications.
Conformity to fire safety regulations is tested - by product manufacturers, officially recog-nised testing institutes and independent experts - according to methods laid down in the standard, in particular fire tests. Certain standards specify different fire safety levels (classes) for products as a function of the results achieved in fire tests.
Harmonisation and standards organisations
Harmonisation of fire safety standards is a continuing process throughout the world. In the European Union standards are now issued by the European Committee for Standardisa-tion (CEN) and the European Committee for Electrotechnical Standardisation CENELEC). On a global scale harmonisation of standards and recognition of test results is being un-dertaken by the IEC (International Electrical Commission) for electrical equipment and by ISO (International Organisation for Standardisation) for all other technical fields. In addi-tion to these international authorities, there are fire safety standards issued by national bodies (e.g. Building Regulations,
Fire safety standards are defined by standardisation organisations, industrial associations, authorities or fire organisations. Conformity to standards can be obligatory (required by law or by, for example, building regulations), may be required by insurers, or can offer producers a marketing advantage. Conformity to fire safety standards can enable manu-facturers to demonstrate that products fulfil the requirements, for consumer products, of the EU General Product Safety Directive (2001/95/EEC) of being safe to be put on the market. For construction products and building materials, the key Directive is the Construction Products Directive (1989/106/EEC) (CPD), with the new SBI (Single Burning Item) fire test.
As part of large and small scale fire tests, which are designed to provide data on combus-tibility, ignitability, flame spread, heat release and smoke and gas generation both flame retarded and non-flame retarded products and components are included. Without fail, these tests demonstrate that the use of flame retardants inhibits ignition and reduces combustibility - particularly in the early stages of a fire, thus lengthening the potential es-cape time and providing additional time for corrective action to be taken. Depending on the test methods specified in standards, conformity to fire safety standards can often be demonstrated by testing the complete final product, but this can involve large-scale and expensive testing, and compliance can often be achieved by instead using fire-safe mate-rials and flame retardants (with conformity being demonstrated using small-scale tests of material samples).