hoffman@atps.enet.dec.com (up to his ultrix 20-May-1991 1055) (05/20/91)
blake@pro-party.cts.com (Blake Farenthold) writes: lemson@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu (David Lemson) writes: kaufman@neon.stanford.edu (Marc T. Kaufman) writes: > "Halon Sucks Up The Oxygen"... Nothing of the sort ... combustion requires four things: a source of fuel, some amount of heat, an oxidizer, and a chain of free radical reactions. Remove any one of the four, and the fire will be extinguished. Halon (and other CFCs) functions by blocking the free radical chemical reactions, not by oxygen displacement. One can breath in a room that has been Halon flooded. This is one reason why halon is a good fire suppression system. (OSHA would have *kittens* otherwise. It's the Ozone layer and the EPA that don't like Halon and the other CFC compounds.) In terms of the duration of exposure, the combustion products of a fire (smoke) are a much larger risk. Various plastics, when burned, can produce some really nasty gases. (Like cyanid.) THIS is why evacuation is a "good thing". Stephen Hoffman Engineer/Firefighter/EMT Digital Equipment Corp.