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How flammable is your home? Synthetic materials creating more dangerous fires

5 On Your Side digs into the melting points and smoke points of common materials.

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By
Keely Arthur
, WRAL Consumer Reporter
RALEIGH, N.C. — It was a house fire with the most unusual of causes.

“We’ve never seen it here and I don’t know of anyone who has seen it before,” said Daniel Shoffner of the Burlington Fire Department.

Living across the street Michelle Hernandez had a front row seat to the Alamance County blaze.

“I saw smoke, and I saw the firefighters,” Hernandez said. “I’m pretty sure the entire inside got destroyed.”

Hernandez speculated over the cause. Was it a candle left unattended? Hot hair tools? An overheated kitchen appliance? No, it was clothing made of synthetic materials.

“The homeowner was not home at the time of the fire,” Shoffner explained. “He had taken some articles of clothing out of the dryer. The clothes should’ve been air dried, but they were put in the dryer. He pulled the clothes out and put them on the bed. Apparently, they got so hot they smoldered and eventually combusted.”

Shoffner suspected it was a polyester jacket and explained that many synthetic materials have petroleum bases to them which burn rapidly.

5 On Your Side dug into the melting points and smoke points of common materials:

  • Nylon 415 degrees Fahrenheit
  • Polyester 482 degrees Fahrenheit
  • Spandex 446 degrees Fahrenheit
  • Cotton 764 degrees Fahrenheit

Just look at how much hotter temperatures need to be for cotton, an organic material, to ignite.

Using a temperature gun WRAL 5 On Your Side tested just how hot clothes get. When taken out of the dryer mid-cycle clothes reached nearly 140 degrees. We ran the dryer again, this time letting it go through the cool down cycle, the temperature was lower than before, at 120 degrees. A dirty lint trap can push dryer temperatures much higher, as can certain cooking oils on clothes.

5 On Your Side wanted to take their testing a step further and partnered with the Morrisville Fire Department. As part of community risk reduction, the Morrisville Fire Department set up a mock living room inside a test home.

Firefighters started the fire but igniting a dresser, using a flame and some hay. Within three minutes one of the couches was on fire, another couch on the other side of the dresser began to melt. Within six minute the flames were up to the ceiling pouring out of the home. The room became so hot the GoPro camera in the corner melted and fell to floor. At 7 minutes, the flames were put out.

“Synthetic fabrics burn about 8 times faster than natural fibers do,” explained Morrisville Fire Chief Nathan Lozinsky.

Research from Underwriters Laboratory shows that your average time to escape a fire alive in the 1980s was 17 minutes, it’s now down to three minutes.

Lozinsky told 5 On Your Side that practice burns allow firefighters to better prepare for the event of a fire. Adding that, synthetic fabrics are so common that they’re nearly unavoidable, but you can make your home safer by getting rid of clutter, which can serve as kindling. You should also make your home safer by making sure it has working smoke detectors. And run safety drills repeatedly with your family.

“The first time you do something in the case of an emergency, should not be the first time you’ve done it. You should rehearse it and practice it multiple times,” Lozinsky said.

Also, read the care labels on your clothes carefully, and check for product recalls. Baby clothes are often recalled for flammability.

Here are some other things to watch out for:

  • Hand sanitizer can ignite in relatively low temperatures, so keep it out of hot cars.
  • 9 volt batteries should not be kept in a junk drawer because it can spark when it’s near other metals.
  • Lithium batteries can ignite from defects or overheating.

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