A phosphorus – nitrogen PIN flame retardant was developed for PA6 providing gas phase fire performance and anti-drip.

The EU’s Committee for Socio-Economic Analysis (SEAC) has adopted an Opinion supporting Restriction (under REACH) of the chlorinated flame retardant Dechlorane Plus

100 to 130 participants joined the three sessions of pinfa’s webinar on “What are Safe and Sustainable Flame Retardants?” (one hour sessions on each of 27, 28 and 30th June 2022).

Filipe Almeida, Cefic (the European Chemical Industry Federation) underlined that the Green Deal Chemicals Strategy for Sustainability represents a radical step forward in regulation, with important changes in both REACH and CLP (Classification, Labelling and Packaging) within wider actions such as the Sustainable Products Initiative and Ecodesign.

Adrian Beard (Clariant), Chairman of pinfa emphasised that this proposed generic category “flame retardants” is not logical, because it refers to a function and not a family of chemicals.

Laurent Tribut, Schneider Electric (pinfa member) explained that ensuring 50% “green materials” in its products by 2025 is a core element of the company’s sustainability objectives, including both climate and resources, and covering both Schneider Electric and its suppliers.

Barton Finn, TCO Development presented TCO Certified, the global independent sustainability certification addressing social and environmental responsibility of workplace and data centre related IT products.

Jonatan Kleimark, ChemSec indicated that the International Chemical Secretariat is an independent non-profit organisation, founded in 2002, to advocate for substitution of toxic chemicals to safer alternatives, funded by the Swedish Government, WWF and other NGOs and individuals.

Peter Fisk, Green Chemical Design presented a study underway for pinfa, looking at whether organo-phosphorus flame retardants (OPFRs) is a meaningful group of chemicals for generic legislation, or how they could be appropriately grouped.

Stacy Glass and Lauren Heine, ChemFORWARD underlined the need to establish trusted downstream user information on chemicals in products. Firstly, toxicology data is missing on many chemicals.

Google is committed to moving to safer chemicals in its products and operations to support a safe and circular economy, from production through the end of life for recycling.

Carles Ibanez, ICL discussed the challenge for flame retardants and for all plastics additives of persistence versus durability.

A very wide range of different flame retardants are today needed to achieve fire safety in materials with very different and demanding mechanical, electrical, aesthetic or other properties.

As part of EU Green Week, Fire Safe Europe’s 2nd June 2022 webinar discussed why fire safety is linked to sustainability in buildings, in the context of the EU’s “Renovation Wave” objective of renovating building stock to improve energy efficieny and of “green buildings”.

Introduced the webinar with a presentation explaining why environmental and Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) assessments of buildings should take into account fire risk and fire safety, in the context of the IAFSS agenda for fire safety (International Association for Fire Safety Science, see pinfa Newsletter n°108).

The EU FIEP (Fire Information Exchange Platform) was launched with the aim of improving fire safety across the EU by sharing information on best practices between Member States.

Emphasised that sustainability is critical in construction, but is also very complex. Energy efficiency was a key parameter in the past, but now circularity is also a priority (use of secondary materi...

Agreed that fire safety opens important potential for innovation in sustainable building materials and construction.

There is a need for science, testing and standards, both on new materials and new energy systems in green buildings, and on the links between fire safety and sustainability.

Further underlined the need for data on changing fire risks with green buildings. Data is not keeping up with the implementation of new technologies, green materials, façade insulation, photovoltaics, energy storage, etc.

Keeping people safe is critical for all buildings. She calls for wide value chain cooperation to integrate sustainable construction and fire safety, engaging design engineers and architects, materials suppliers, the construction industry, as well as researchers and regulators

Industry wants European standards, to facilitate placing on the market and to ensure demanding levels of fire safety. The EU has regulatory tools which can support this, in particular the Construction Products Directive and the Energy Performance in Buildings Directive, but in the latter fire safety is only included marginally.

A Fire Safety Journal article and a thesis from Oregon State University find little existing science and identifies research and data gaps.

New report analyses emissions from fires, susceptible to have health or environmental impacts, with an Emission Factor database for 90 materials.