In Case of .Fire

In Case of Fire

Upon investigating the immediate cause of 10,000 U. S. deaths by fire each year. Professor John Charles Olsen of Brooklyn's Polytechnic Institute has found that in a large percentage of deaths, burning clothes supplied the deadly fumes. This he verified by setting a variety of fires in an asbestos-lined room, he reported last week in Industrial & Engineering Chemistry. Woolen and silk clothes, rugs and furnishings produce prussic acid and ammonia as well as carbon monoxide and dioxide. Burning wool also produces toxic hydrogen sulfide. Cotton, rayon, paper, wood and other cellulose produce poisonous concentrations of carbon monoxide and dioxide, and acetic acid which makes smoke acrid and causes coughing.

In general Professor Olsen and his research arsonists (George E. Ferguson, Leopold Scheflan) found three distinct layers of gases present in their burning room, "one at the ceiling, one on the floor, and an intermediate layer which consisted of more nearly pure air than either of the other two." A few moments of blaze, however, churns the layers together.

From this the investigators conclude that the air in a burning room is best at three or four feet from the floor for one or two minutes, that in speeding to safety it is wiser to stoop than to crawl.

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