Prediction of the Toxic Effects of Fire Effluents

Abstract

A major thrust in the assessment of the toxicity of fire effluents has been in the development of mathematical models for predicting toxic ef fects from appropriate data on the composition of the fire gases. The objectives of these efforts are two-fold. Assessment of smoke toxicity from analytical data could obviate much of the use of live animals in conventional bioassay method ology. Furthermore, providing that both qualitative and quantitative dif ferences in toxicological effects between laboratory animals and man are understood, such modeling methodology could also be used for estimating the time to development of a toxic hazard in either real or simulated fire scenarios. This paper presents a state-of-the-art review of the predictive modeling of tox icological effects from exposure to fire effluent atmospheres. Also included are compilations of data for individual fire gases which may be used as input for such modeling.