Environmental Impact of Fires in the Built Environment – Emission Factors
Conducted By: Fire Protection Research Foundation – an affiliate of NFPA
Final Report By: Margaret McNamee and Joakim Astrom, Division of Fire Safety Engineering, Lund University, Sweden; Benjamin Truchot and Guy Marlair, INERIS, France; and Brian Meacham, Meacham Associates, USA.
Description:
Current efforts to improve the sustainability of buildings focus on increasing energy efficiency and reducing the embodied carbon. Most fires occurring in the build environment contribute to air contamination from the fire plume (whose deposition is likely to subsequently include land and water contamination), contamination from water runoff containing toxic products, and other environmental discharges or releases from burned materials. The environmental impact also has economic consequences for communities and regions. As a start to calculate the true cost of fire to society, the Fire Protection Foundation undertook this study that developed a research road map identifying needed research to be able to quantify the environmental impact of fire from the built environment and its economic consequences. This study identified the need to develop updated emissions factors (EF) for atmospheric emissions and couple this to acceptable EF for emissions to water and soil considering both pure substances and relevant mixtures. The goal of this project was to update existing EFs for a range of fire conditions and develop new EFs for relevant building materials to produce a database that can be built upon with future research.
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