The ongoing fires ravaging Los Angeles, U.S., have killed at least 25 people and burned more than 12,000 buildings. Many of the structures destroyed were homes, mansions of the rich and famous and middle-class homes alike. Irrespective of the wealth of their owners, most homes destroyed likely had one thing in common: plastic.
As Mongabay contributor Alden Wicker reports, modern homes that survive fires often remain uninhabitable due to the toxic chemicals released by synthetic furnishings and building materials.
By 2022, more than $16 billion in plastic building materials were sold globally each year, a 50% increase in a decade. Materials like insulation, vinyl siding and laminate flooring are leading the demand. Polyvinyl chloride, or PVC, is one of the most commonly used construction materials and considered by many experts to be one of the most toxic types of plastic.
In addition to building materials, most homes are full of plastic furnishings and household items, including clothing, carpets, curtains and furniture.
Nearly all plastic is made from fossil fuels, which, when burned, can release soot and fumes that are toxic to human health. Researchers have identified more than 16,000 chemicals in plastic products, Wicker reports, of which roughly 25% are known to be associated with serious environmental or human health concerns. Most of the remaining 75% of chemicals have not had adequate safety testing.
When modern homes, like those in L.A., burn or reach very high temperatures without actually burning down, they can release a toxic stew of chemicals including lead, arsenic, asbestos and cyanates.
Rob Wilson, a homeowner in Flagstaff, Arizona, whose house survived a fire in 2022, told Wicker: “We thought we were the lucky ones.” But even after cleaning the surfaces of his house of soot and residue, it continued to smell weird, and their blood tests revealed abnormally low white blood cell counts. Professional testing showed toxic levels of chemicals including acrolein, formaldehyde, glutaraldehyde, hydrogen chloride and nitrogen dioxide. It also found that the polyurethane insulation in the walls likely started breaking down at high temperatures and was a possible source of contamination.
“The foam I think saved Rob’s house [from incineration] but his house is still totaled,” Dawn Bolstad-Johnson, a hazardous chemicals expert who took the samples from Wilson’s home, told Mongabay.
Wilson and his family had to leave their home and start over.
Modern homes full of plastic also burn hotter and faster, Wicker reports. In a 2020 experiment, researchers set fire to two experimental living rooms: one filled with natural furnishings and the other with modern synthetic materials. The more natural room took 30 minutes to burn and produced white smoke. The more synthetic room went up in flames within five minutes, producing an oily black toxic smoke.
This is a summary of “As global fire risk rises, modern homes become toxic plastic traps” by Alden Wicker.
Banner image by Cheshire Fire and Rescue via Creative Commons (CCO 1.0).
This story first appeared on Mongabay
This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
You may republish this article, so long as you credit the authors and Mongabay, and do not change the text. Please include a link back to the original article.
