[ale] Fire down on Williams street...

[Robert Reese]

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On 5/13/2008 at 4:52 AM Jim Kinney wrote:

>Dang. And I did a science fair project on CFC's in high school, too. My bad.
>very, very bad.

Oops.  I should have read the rest of the replies before replying.  My bad as well.

When I was in the Navy I was part of the firefighting team on our ship; I'm pretty sure the military still uses Halon despite the ozone-depleting monster it is.  Halon was a huge part of our anti-fire system and we were taught all about it, including what to do and what not to do.  IIRC, Halon was first created by the Germans in WWII as a nerve agent.  Turned out it didn't work so well, but put out fires like nobody's business, so they put them in their planes.  THAT's when they found out the missing ingredient from the Halon nerve agent: heat.  Expose Halon to heat and it becomes quite deadly.  However, in most fires the volume of air in the room in which the fire occurs doesn't generate a high enough concentration where it is much of a problem; usually the fire is put out fast enough and there is enough ventilation that the converted Halon causes issues.

OTOH, exposure to Halon by itself isn't deadly but it does mimic a nerve agent in high enough concentrations.  Therein lies the danger: no atropine.  It causes the opposite effect in a Halon victim, which pretty much leaves them DRT.  That's why we are taught to paint a big, bright H on the forehead of an exposure victim.  Incidentally, the exposure amount is significant... as long as you get out when you learn of the Halon discharge you probably won't exhibit any symptoms.

Now, my training was a looooong time ago so some of my data and training might be shaky.  But that's all to the best of my knowledge.


>Found out there are some new halons that are not ozone depleting nasties.

Really?  That's good news!  I'll look into them; maybe they'll have some home systems.

Cheers,
R~

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