In the past week, three fires have touched the nerves of hundreds of millions of people. On January 24, a fire broke out on the basement floor of a shop along Jialeyuan Street, Tiangong South Avenue, Yushui District, Xinyu City, Jiangxi Province, killing 39 people; On January 23, a fire broke out at the Ginza Jiayi Changqing Garden Boyuan Store in Changqing District, Jinan, Shandong Province, killing four people, including three students; On January 19, a fire broke out in a dormitory of Yingcai School in Yanshanpu Village, Dushu Town, Fangcheng County, Nanyang City, Henan Province, killing 13 students. These three serial accidents have once again sounded the alarm for us to fire and flame retardant.

With the rapid development of science and technology in modern society, we are surrounded by more and more flammable materials. According to the International Technical Committee on Fire Protection, between 70,000 and 80,000 people die in fires each year worldwide. It is imperative to protect people from the threat of fire, and proactive fire prevention is more important than extinguishing fires after the fact. The use of flame retardants in electrical and electronic appliances, vehicles, furniture and building materials can significantly improve their fire performance.

Flame retardants are chemical additives added to polymer materials such as plastics to change their flammable properties. Materials with flame retardants are called flame retardants. It takes longer for flame retardant materials to reach the point of ignition, and even when burned, the flame spreads significantly less, giving people more time to escape and firefighters to rush to the fire. Studies have shown that flame-retardant materials can extend the time it takes for people to escape from 2 minutes to 20 minutes.

At the beginning of the new year, 400 passengers were able to escape quickly and safely in the airliner collision accident at Haneda Airport in Tokyo, Japan, and flame retardant materials played a pivotal role. Aviation tools were the first to apply flame retardants and flame retardant materials. It is reported that the seats, carpets and luggage compartments on the aircraft are made of flame-retardant materials, which can not only reduce the incidence of fire, but also provide passengers with a considerable escape time. It is precisely because the plastics, textiles and other products on the aircraft have strict flame retardant requirements, which prolongs people's escape time and minimizes casualties.

Here's another example. 10 years ago, bus fires and arson cases occurred from time to time, and the bus fires in Chengdu, Xiamen, and Hangzhou caused heavy losses to the safety of people's lives and property. In 2019, with the promulgation of the "Combustion Characteristics of Bus Interior Materials", the flame retardant and fire protection standards of buses have been significantly strengthened, and the bus interior materials can only meet the corresponding flame retardant requirements by using flame retardants. Since the implementation of the "Combustion Characteristics of Bus Interior Materials" in 2020, the number of bus fires that cause mass deaths and injuries has decreased significantly, thanks to the application of flame retardants and flame retardant materials.

The three recent fires occurred in schools, hotels and shopping malls, all of which belong to public places, indicating that there are loopholes in the fire prevention capacity of public places in China and need to be strengthened. Experts call for the implementation of fire prevention and flame retardant requirements in public places, speed up the formulation and introduction of relevant standards, and pay close attention to the implementation of existing standards, so as to protect the safety of people's lives and property and avoid the recurrence of tragedies.

The information comes from the WeChat public account: flame retardants and flame retardant materials