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Building Fire Concern:
Teflon on Cabling Can Be Toxic When Heated
By James Carlini
CHICAGO – In several previous columns, I focused on some of the issues surrounding the LaSalle Bank fire and pointed out how cabling can be an added fuel source in a fire. Yes, a new safety standard requiring sprinklers has been discussed, but are we aiming at the right issue?
In doing more research and getting feedback, there are even more areas of concern aside from fire and sprinklers. There is a new national focus on abandoned cable removal in commercial buildings to reduce the fuel load in the workplace. Abandoned cabling has been an issue to property management firms for years.
Back in 1986, I remember working with JMB Property Management and adding clauses to lease agreements for tenants to remove their cabling when they vacated the building. This is according to an industry consultant:
“In the U.S., there is approximately 8.5 million miles of abandoned cable in the workplace. Most of that cable contains Teflon FEP or Neoflon FEP (approximately 11 pounds per thousand feet of plenum cable). This material is potentially highly toxic and extremely corrosive. About 500 million pounds of FEP equals a potential super weapon or threat to the U.S. workplace.”
Teflon, a long-used material in frying pans and cable cladding, has been pointed out to me to be harmful in a different way in office fires. While it may be flame retardant, the tradeoff is that it can emit a toxic gas when it’s heated. At first I thought this was just a shrill environmentalist making some crazy claim, but in researching this, I learned a lot.
Warnings on Military Web Site
With more than 106,000 hits for “toxic Teflon,” there have been many articles about Teflon and its potential life-threatening characteristics along with information from the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute about toxic gases as a pulmonary agent (chemical warfare weapon).
Based on this, we may have to review and reappraise our thinking about the safety of the communications cabling workplace. At the Web site of the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute on pulmonary agents in chemical warfare, it states:
Perfluoroisobutylene (PFIB) is a toxic pyrolysis product of tetrafluoroethylene polymers encountered in military materiel. The oxides of nitrogen are components of blast weapons or may be toxic decomposition products. Smokes contain toxic compounds that cause the same effects as phosgene.
Phosgene is distinguished by its odor, its generalized mucous-membrane irritation in high concentrations, dyspnea and pulmonary edema of delayed onset.
The article goes on about problems both reversible and irreversible. I’m not an expert on this so I suggest you read the whole article on their Web site, which can be found here.
“For the past 25 years, the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) has not addressed the toxicity issue in the development of the updated National Electrical Code (NEC),” said Frank Bisbee, an industry consultant from Florida. He is right. What about their failure to do so? Have they left out a critical component for safety?
We have the technology to monitor for toxic gases and activate safety systems in indoor air systems to protect building occupants. This important step toward safety may not happen until the NEC recognizes the toxic properties of the materials that are allowed in building air systems.
This makes the sprinkler requirement for Chicago buildings sound like an ineffective measure to save lives. What they should be looking at is how to suppress toxic gases from smothering the inside airways of a building during a fire.
Beyond Pots, Pans
Toxicity tests have been made on pots and pans. They say that when a Teflon-coated pan reaches 554 degrees, ultra-fine particles start coming off the pan into the air. The particles can imbed in the lungs and lead to “Teflon flu”. The illness causes flu-like symptoms including headache, backache and a temperature between 100 and 104 degrees.
Think about a building that’s on fire. The fire is burning at a much higher temperature. When you reach a higher temperature, chemicals are released. At 680 degrees, six toxic gases can begin to come off heated Teflon, according to various studies.
In a July 11 article in the New Standard covering Teflon used in cookware, this was citing an interview done on 20/20:
Jane Houlihan, vice president for research at the Environmental Working Group, told 20/20: “At 554 degrees Fahrenheit, studies show ultra-fine particles start coming off the pan. These are tiny little particles that can embed deeply into the lungs. At 680 [degrees], toxic gases can begin to come off heated Teflon.”
[While] DuPont officials do not dispute that the dangerous fumes can be released, they told 20/20 that normal kitchen use would not get the pans hot enough to release fumes. However, when 20/20 cooked bacon in a kitchen demonstration, the pan heated past 554 degrees in just a few minutes.
This is more than just an environmental issue concerning cookware. In building fires, my concern is that all of these materials jacketed around various communications cabling will be burning at significantly higher levels. What happens at 1,000 degrees?
In a quote from a news article in October 2004:
The EPA has filed a complaint against DuPont for withholding evidence of negative health and environmental effects from a chemical used to make Teflon. The chemical, known as perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), has caused cancer in laboratory animals.
The EPA is investigating the possibility that DuPont knew of potential problems 20 years ago. Stores in China began pulling Teflon pans from their shelves after the EPA’s announcement and other foreign governments are launching investigations into PFOA.
While there are already complaints at the EPA about Teflon and there are huge fines being levied, that doesn’t take it out of the millions of square feet of office space where people work. The temperatures cited in these cookware studies are nowhere near what a fire can actually burn at, which would release more of the toxic particles in the airways of a building from cabling.
If there is so much out there, why hasn’t the industry questioned what we are putting in buildings? It would seem that this is a valid question.
None of the national testing protocols for communications cable (which can be placed in the overhead air systems within office buildings as well as ducts) measure toxicity or corrosivity, which are both extremely significant threats to life and property. The current product tests measure fire and smoke but disregard the emission of toxic gases.
As was pointed out in previous columns, most people who die in a fire die from smoke inhalation. If you add toxic substances that lock up breathing like a nerve agent, chances are more people will fail to make it out of a burning building.
Carlinism: Standards committees sometimes overlook things.
Copyright 2005 Jim Carlini
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