This of course is a very complex subject, made so by the overlapping issues it connects with, each a scandal in themselves. For example, the UK is in constant breach of the Stockholm Convention by ignoring the fact that our incinerators do not burn hot enough to take out the millions of kilogrammes of flame retardants in old sofas and mattresses, with the result, for example, that organic chicken eggs contain high levels of FRs. Also, the fact that recycling plant workers are exposed hugely to FRs when ripping apart old furniture for recycling (which also puts FRs back into new products such as carpet underlay). Also, the fact that UK firefighters are contracting cancers at 6 times the normal rate, due to the high toxicity of UK home fires.
All of which underpins the following:
a) The Inquiry's final report on 4 September 2024 stated that all deaths in the fire were caused by two toxic fire gases: carbon monoxide and hydrogen cyanide, but failed to point out that
b) The largest source of these two gases in the fire was the upholstered furniture in the Tower full of flame retardant chemicals, in fact
c) The Final Report does not mention even once either furniture or flame retardants; and also does not mention that the furniture flammability regulations were proven to be ineffective 3 years before the fire, also
d) That despite 72 people dying from these two toxic gases, government scientists have constantly insisted to the Grenfell survivors that they are not ill from the fire because the fire was not toxic.
I want to look at a major factor that is behind these contradictory findings: the University of Central Lancashire (UCLAN). For example, three of its fire toxicity professors (one a visiting professor) have between them pretty much controlled the Grenfell fire toxicity narrative: Prof Anna Stec, Prof David Purser and Prof Richard Hull. The first two were expert witnesses to the Grenfell Inquiry, producing a number of reports on the toxicology of the fire (that you can find in the Grenfell online library). Stec actually recommended Purser to the Inquiry, although she failed to tell them, and he did not declare it to them either, that for 4 years he had sat on an advisory panel funded by Chemtura, one of the world's biggest suppliers of flame retardants, and in 2014 signed up to Chemtura's attempt to sue the State of California for introducing new furniture flammability rules which would remove the need for flame retardants. Richard Hull has been and still is prominent in various moves to change the furniture regulations but not in the way recommended by the Environmental Audit Committee in 2019, i.e. to remove two of the fire tests and retain just the cigarette test (getting the UK in line with the rest of the world) which would remove all FRs from UK furniture overnight. Instead, he claims that the current regulations are effective and we just need to find less toxic ways of complying with them. Even though he knows they aren't.
In 2017, a few months before the Grenfell fire, Hull and Stec (and others) published a paper in Chemosphere, entitled: "Flame retardants in UK furniture increase smoke toxicity more than they reduce fire growth rate."
This is from a UCLAN press release, headed, "Cheap chemical flame retardants increase fire deaths: (14/12/2017):
"Breakthrough research has revealed that flame retardants used in domestic furniture increase the amount of toxic chemicals produced when it burns, increasing the likelihood of deaths following the outbreak of a fire.
"Inhalation of toxic gases in smoke is the primary cause of death from fire in the UK. Bromine, a chemical element often used in flame retardants by furniture manufacturers, increases the amount of the two key toxicants, carbon monoxide and hydrogen cyanide, when furniture burns [my emphasis].
"Researchers also discovered that flame retardants resulted in only a slight delay to the ignition of furniture, with UK standard furniture blazing within just 5-8 minutes. Furniture made specifically to pass UK flammability tests using higher quality materials but without flame retardants took 15-20 minutes before the first flames appeared, a noticeably longer delay than when using the chemical retardant.
"Professor Richard Hull, lead Researcher and Professor of Chemistry and Fire Science at UCLan, commented: “The gases produced when furniture containing flame retardants burn are highly toxic, yet there are currently no requirements to assess the toxicity of smoke from burning furniture. This means there is no incentive for manufacturers to limit the toxicity of the smoke from their furniture"."
UCLAN is pretty clear here, I'd say. That flame retardants play a major role in making fires toxic, and are right in line with the Inquiry's finding that toxic gases – carbon monoxide and hydrogen cyanide – are the primary cause of deaths in fires in the UK
But here's the strange thing, following the Grenfell fire UCLAN professors have barely even mentioned this paper or the role of furniture in the Grenfell fire. They've talked plenty about cladding however. When I asked Professor Stec why the Inquiry was only looking at cladding and not furniture she claimed that they couldn't look at two sources to begin with (although she didn't explain why not) but they would look at furniture's role later. They never did. The Chair of the Inquiry – Judge Moore Bick – informed me via his legal secretary that the Inquiry would consider furniture and flame retardants in Phase 2, having ignored them in Phase 1. But they never did.
Professors Stec and Purser provided several reports/statements to the Inquiry about the toxicity of the fire. While acknowledging that upholstered furniture would have been one of the main contributors of toxic gases, Purser very much played down its role and very much played up the role of cladding and windowsills, this despite the fact that cladding foam almost certainly did not contain flame retardant chemicals (unlike all those hundreds of sofas, mattresses and cushions which burned in the Tower) and the majority of cladding smoke/fumes would have stayed outside the tower (simple physics). Almost all the toxic gases from furniture would of course have stayed inside the tower.
When the Inquiry asked Purser about furniture he said that you would normally expect it to contribute hugely to toxic gases in a fire but he didn't believe that was the case at Grenfell. He didn't believe . . . provided no evidence or reasoning to back up this statement. Stec's final paper to the Inquiry, written at its request, is built around a curious choice of words the Inquiry put to her: to look into the extent of the various toxic gas sources in the fire. Stec chose to go with extent to mean how far into the tower did toxic fumes extend, rather than what was the extent – in terms of volume/mass – of the sources of those gases. She duly finds that cladding fumes extended far into the tower but without giving any amounts. She then claims that she couldn't determine the amount which came from furniture because there are too many different materials and designs in furniture. I do not think that is true; and certainly in the past she has had no trouble measuring the amounts of toxic fumes/debris content of burnt furniture. For this reason, she in effect dismisses furniture as a toxic gas source altogether. And even if this was true, she could, surely, at least have stated that x amount of gas came from cladding while a much larger amount, y, came from other internal sources. Instead, she in effect told the Inquiry, and the world, that cladding produced toxic gases that killed people but furniture didn't. And the Inquiry duly got on board by, as said, omitting even a single mention of either furniture or flame retardants in its final report.
So this is the bottom line: in 2017, UCLAN professors demonstrated that upholstered furniture in the UK is far more deadly when on fire than non-UK furniture that does not contain flame retardants - because those chemicals turn into deadly toxic gases in a fire. The same professors later directed the Grenfell Inquiry to totally ignore the role of UK furniture full of flame retardants in the fire, even though sheer logic suggests it was the greatest source of the toxic gases which the Inquiry finally concluded caused all the deaths (bar those who jumped from the building) in the fire.
The question of course is why?
All of which underpins the following:
a) The Inquiry's final report on 4 September 2024 stated that all deaths in the fire were caused by two toxic fire gases: carbon monoxide and hydrogen cyanide, but failed to point out that
b) The largest source of these two gases in the fire was the upholstered furniture in the Tower full of flame retardant chemicals, in fact
c) The Final Report does not mention even once either furniture or flame retardants; and also does not mention that the furniture flammability regulations were proven to be ineffective 3 years before the fire, also
d) That despite 72 people dying from these two toxic gases, government scientists have constantly insisted to the Grenfell survivors that they are not ill from the fire because the fire was not toxic.
I want to look at a major factor that is behind these contradictory findings: the University of Central Lancashire (UCLAN). For example, three of its fire toxicity professors (one a visiting professor) have between them pretty much controlled the Grenfell fire toxicity narrative: Prof Anna Stec, Prof David Purser and Prof Richard Hull. The first two were expert witnesses to the Grenfell Inquiry, producing a number of reports on the toxicology of the fire (that you can find in the Grenfell online library). Stec actually recommended Purser to the Inquiry, although she failed to tell them, and he did not declare it to them either, that for 4 years he had sat on an advisory panel funded by Chemtura, one of the world's biggest suppliers of flame retardants, and in 2014 signed up to Chemtura's attempt to sue the State of California for introducing new furniture flammability rules which would remove the need for flame retardants. Richard Hull has been and still is prominent in various moves to change the furniture regulations but not in the way recommended by the Environmental Audit Committee in 2019, i.e. to remove two of the fire tests and retain just the cigarette test (getting the UK in line with the rest of the world) which would remove all FRs from UK furniture overnight. Instead, he claims that the current regulations are effective and we just need to find less toxic ways of complying with them. Even though he knows they aren't.
In 2017, a few months before the Grenfell fire, Hull and Stec (and others) published a paper in Chemosphere, entitled: "Flame retardants in UK furniture increase smoke toxicity more than they reduce fire growth rate."
This is from a UCLAN press release, headed, "Cheap chemical flame retardants increase fire deaths: (14/12/2017):
"Breakthrough research has revealed that flame retardants used in domestic furniture increase the amount of toxic chemicals produced when it burns, increasing the likelihood of deaths following the outbreak of a fire.
"Inhalation of toxic gases in smoke is the primary cause of death from fire in the UK. Bromine, a chemical element often used in flame retardants by furniture manufacturers, increases the amount of the two key toxicants, carbon monoxide and hydrogen cyanide, when furniture burns [my emphasis].
"Researchers also discovered that flame retardants resulted in only a slight delay to the ignition of furniture, with UK standard furniture blazing within just 5-8 minutes. Furniture made specifically to pass UK flammability tests using higher quality materials but without flame retardants took 15-20 minutes before the first flames appeared, a noticeably longer delay than when using the chemical retardant.
"Professor Richard Hull, lead Researcher and Professor of Chemistry and Fire Science at UCLan, commented: “The gases produced when furniture containing flame retardants burn are highly toxic, yet there are currently no requirements to assess the toxicity of smoke from burning furniture. This means there is no incentive for manufacturers to limit the toxicity of the smoke from their furniture"."
UCLAN is pretty clear here, I'd say. That flame retardants play a major role in making fires toxic, and are right in line with the Inquiry's finding that toxic gases – carbon monoxide and hydrogen cyanide – are the primary cause of deaths in fires in the UK
But here's the strange thing, following the Grenfell fire UCLAN professors have barely even mentioned this paper or the role of furniture in the Grenfell fire. They've talked plenty about cladding however. When I asked Professor Stec why the Inquiry was only looking at cladding and not furniture she claimed that they couldn't look at two sources to begin with (although she didn't explain why not) but they would look at furniture's role later. They never did. The Chair of the Inquiry – Judge Moore Bick – informed me via his legal secretary that the Inquiry would consider furniture and flame retardants in Phase 2, having ignored them in Phase 1. But they never did.
Professors Stec and Purser provided several reports/statements to the Inquiry about the toxicity of the fire. While acknowledging that upholstered furniture would have been one of the main contributors of toxic gases, Purser very much played down its role and very much played up the role of cladding and windowsills, this despite the fact that cladding foam almost certainly did not contain flame retardant chemicals (unlike all those hundreds of sofas, mattresses and cushions which burned in the Tower) and the majority of cladding smoke/fumes would have stayed outside the tower (simple physics). Almost all the toxic gases from furniture would of course have stayed inside the tower.
When the Inquiry asked Purser about furniture he said that you would normally expect it to contribute hugely to toxic gases in a fire but he didn't believe that was the case at Grenfell. He didn't believe . . . provided no evidence or reasoning to back up this statement. Stec's final paper to the Inquiry, written at its request, is built around a curious choice of words the Inquiry put to her: to look into the extent of the various toxic gas sources in the fire. Stec chose to go with extent to mean how far into the tower did toxic fumes extend, rather than what was the extent – in terms of volume/mass – of the sources of those gases. She duly finds that cladding fumes extended far into the tower but without giving any amounts. She then claims that she couldn't determine the amount which came from furniture because there are too many different materials and designs in furniture. I do not think that is true; and certainly in the past she has had no trouble measuring the amounts of toxic fumes/debris content of burnt furniture. For this reason, she in effect dismisses furniture as a toxic gas source altogether. And even if this was true, she could, surely, at least have stated that x amount of gas came from cladding while a much larger amount, y, came from other internal sources. Instead, she in effect told the Inquiry, and the world, that cladding produced toxic gases that killed people but furniture didn't. And the Inquiry duly got on board by, as said, omitting even a single mention of either furniture or flame retardants in its final report.
So this is the bottom line: in 2017, UCLAN professors demonstrated that upholstered furniture in the UK is far more deadly when on fire than non-UK furniture that does not contain flame retardants - because those chemicals turn into deadly toxic gases in a fire. The same professors later directed the Grenfell Inquiry to totally ignore the role of UK furniture full of flame retardants in the fire, even though sheer logic suggests it was the greatest source of the toxic gases which the Inquiry finally concluded caused all the deaths (bar those who jumped from the building) in the fire.
The question of course is why?
RSS Feed