Major progress in structural fire emissions research

An experiment runs in large-scale fire testing. Credit: Shantanu Jathar

Researchers from Colorado State University have completed large-scale fire tests at the National Fire Research Laboratory (NFRL), located at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). As part of a broader initiative to understand how structural fires at the wildland urban interface (WUI) contribute to air pollution, these tests measured gas and particle emissions from burning structural materials under realistic fire conditions. The data collected from these tests, covering over 150 different pollutants, will help create a comprehensive emission factor database and an emissions inventory for WUI-related structural fires in the United States.