'Smoke gets in your eyes'

Abstract

The intention of this paper is to contribute to the objective analysis of the role of PVC cabling in major fires such as that at Dusseldorf airport. Repeatedly, questions regarding smoke and toxic combustion gas evolved by PVC cable materials, were posed. Today, functional fillers such as aluminium hydroxide(ATH) and magnesium hydroxide (MDH) are available to optimize PVC recipes, creating extremely low smoke and much less toxic gases. Latest research developments will be illustrated using smoke density results. NBS smoke chamber data demonstrate that the amount of generated smoke is considerably reduced when PVC is filled with ATH and/or MDH.