What's in that bright red fire retardant? No one will say, so we had it tested
laist.com193 points by littlexsparkee 8 days ago
193 points by littlexsparkee 8 days ago
> “It’s not in our interest to share product with public or private agencies,” Jurasek said at the time. “You are not the first person to ask for us to give them fire retardant. It happens. It’s not something we do.”
I don’t get why they are acting like they have something to hide. Phosphate is mined from rock, rock contains all sorts of other elements including heavy metals. That’s simply how minerals work. It’s not by itself an indication that anyone has done anything wrong.
Or they don't want to make it obvious that they're taking something cheap and marking it up a million percent and nobody is asking questions. This happens a lot in "our only customers are government or compelled to buy by government" industries of which fire is one.
The usual reflexive secrecy. Nobody gives out any information about what's in any product if they can avoid it. This has really bad economic and environmental effects.
I don't know that this particular retardant is a big deal, but the rule really ought to be that the maker of every product must disclose to the public (not just actual buyers) (a) what they put into it, (b) where they got it, (c) how they assured that it was what they thought it was, (e) how they processed it, (e) exactly what analyses or characterizations they've ever done on the product or anything that went into it, and (f) the complete results of those.
Trade secrets not only shouldn't get any legal protection, but in many cases they should be illegal.
I once bought a cinnamon spread but the ingredients didn’t explicitly say cinnamon, it just included “natural flavour”.
I asked the company to confirm if cinnamon was one of the “natural flavouring” and they refused to confirm!
I really hate that companies are allowed to use "natural flavors" and I refuse to buy any products that say that unless they are able to specifically tell me what's not in it.
Lots of people don't realize that "natural" can mean pretty much anything that's not produced in a lab.
There is a trend though where some companies include in the nutrition facts the sources of their ingredients. That's how it should be.
In the US you can write "modified food starch" and that can mean a million different things. In Europe they have specific numbers for different types of "modified food starch."
The characteristic flavor of cinnamon is almost entirely due cinnamic aldehyde.
There's a lot of it in various species of Cinnamomum. My guess is that they are using a mix of true cinnamon and its close relatives.
It occurs rarely and in small amounts in other plants, so small that I don't think it would be economical.
The only other shortcut to "natural" flavor that I can think of would be GMO bacteria or something.
It's very likely that the natural flavors include other things unrelated to cinnamon, like vanillin or eugenol (cloves, carnation). Flavoring is an art closely related to perfumery, by the way.
This is one of the downsides of an excessively litigious society.
Being afraid of potential risks, even if there are none, reduces transparency.
Unfortunately, excessive litigation is one of the downsides of an under regulated society. If our only protection from corporations is lawsuits then we shouldn't be surprised that people bring a lot of lawsuits.
And then you have the Germans, where they only feel safe in the most litigious and one of the most highly regulated countries of the world :)
> excessively litigious
I haven't heard evidence that litigation is excessive, except by very wealthy corporations and people.
I think most or many people lack access to litigation - they can't afford to use it or to protect themselves from it.
This industry learned a lesson from the AFFF debacle. And that lesson wasn't "share everything".
Companies don't need the threat of litigation to hide information about products. That's why departments like the FDA and USDA were created to begin with. For example, people were selling crude oil as medicine, and people were selling tape worm eggs a weight-loss pills.
[flagged]
They're also "hiding" this information from OSHA, as stated in the article.
Not if it’s below regulatory threshold. Which they seemed to say it was in the article (they said it’s below EPA threshold, so I assume that means the OSHA threshold too).
The article never says how much they detected. I can only assume it’s because it’s a nothing amount. If it was significant they would have been saying how much. It’s hard to take the article seriously as a result. We have crazy sensitive tests now, they do nothing in the article to show it’s not just another story about how sensitive testing is these days.
> The article never says how much they detected. I can only assume it’s because it’s a nothing amount. If it was significant they would have been saying how much. It’s hard to take the article seriously as a result.
Did we read the same article? There's a table with the amounts of different metals, with the amounts found in each of the different samples.
Most are in the range of 100X allowable in drinking water in in a liter of the powder. Seems minor.
> who decided they would publish this story before even knowing whether there is a story or not.
What makes you say that?
This feels like one of those things where context changes over time and takes a product outside of it's original use case.
Fire retardant is an emergency measure, one that would rightly be expected to see exceptionally low usage overall. But over time, more people and property have gotten closer to the forest; forest fires affect more people for many reasons.
So fire retardant use is not so rare.
The Therac-20 was a fine piece of electro-mechanical-nuclear technology, but the Therac-25 moved the control scheme out of its original context, and took away some of the physical interlocks. The Therac-25 is not remembered fondly.
Context changes over time, and assumptions need to be re-examined.
It reminds me of handling null values or other kinds of exceptional situations in coding.
We can assume they happen for some reason but unless we actually ensure that, the branch for handling the intended exception can silently start handling other use cases too.
That is why Therac-25 was mentioned, I guess. Software kills: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therac-25
- "Phos-Chek MVP-Fx is primarily made of ammonium phosphates, which are derived from phosphate. That rock, when mined, can contain trace amounts of heavy metals."
The thing they're catastrophizing about is rock phosphate—ordinary fertilizer that's mixed into the soil of every food farm in the world.
I'm not sure if the journalists who wrote this article are aware of this. "It's COVERING my garden plants!" reads quite definitely when you recognize it's f'ing Miracle-Gro.
https://www.usgs.gov/centers/national-minerals-information-c...
- "Phosphorus is an essential element for plant and animal nutrition. Most phosphorus is consumed as a principal component of nitrogen-phosphorus-potassium fertilizers used on food crops throughout the world. Phosphate rock minerals are the only significant global resources of phosphorus."
https://www.health.state.mn.us/communities/environment/risk/... ("Heavy Metals in Fertilizers")
- "Risk assessments conducted by the US Environmental Protection Agency and others have concluded that the hazardous constituents in inorganic fertilizers generally do not pose risks to public health or the environment."
The devil is in the details. Even though all minerals contain impurities, NPK fertilizer is processed to reduce them to acceptable levels for agriculture. If they did not do this, places dosed with large quantities of it (year after year after…) would become superfund sites. It is the same reason coal is so nasty: the CO2 is nothing compared to the ash—which is loaded with heavy metals. If the ash retaining ponds around a coal plant ever broke, the land would be uninhabitable for centuries, so the the ppms and ppbs are crucial information here.
> Even though all minerals contain impurities, NPK fertilizer is processed to reduce them to acceptable levels for agriculture
Source? What process exactly?
So many types of mining have loads of fluoride or heavy metals to discard. Since we’re dealing with minerals, in some cases visual inspection & sorting is sufficient. In other cases where high purity is required, may need to dissolve/melt them and process a series of precipitates & evaporates (i.e. expensive).
Here’s a fertilizer example: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21681395/
You can find similar articles just about everywhere there’s an NPK plant.
I know gypsum, aluminum, uranium are faced with similar obstacles. Google if you want details. (I do control systems if that helps.)
> "Risk assessments conducted by the US Environmental Protection Agency and others have concluded that the hazardous constituents in inorganic fertilizers generally do not pose risks to public health or the environment."
What I believe you're missing is where this might be coming from. We live in an Institutional crisis, where for years propaganda was spread and amplified by internal and external actors (like Russia) to undermine institutions, with lies and conspiracy theories.
Bold claims were made that organizations and the government were captured by private interests, completely disregarding that actual qualified people are working to make sure things are safe, like products we consume.
Just for context, RFK Junior is the US Secretary of Health and Human Services.
So, to circle back to your quote, the Risk assessment made by the US Environmental Protection Agency could be easily dismissed by the following unfounded and unsupported claim, "yeah the US Environmental Protection Agency is serving the big companies; they should be dismantled."
Like it would be the easiest thing for Russia to start a trend to sway people to demand a ban on phosphate. They did similar things with regard to Ukraine, to the point where the US Administration is amplifying russian talking points.
To be clear, I'm not saying this article is a propaganda piece; what I'm saying is that this sort of opinion from someone who doesn't seem to fully understand the subject is a prime example of something that could be amplified for propaganda and contribute to institutional demise.
You seem to be implying that all claims of regulatory capture, or even simple incompetence or bias, are all the result of Russian propaganda seems like a pretty bold claim to me.
I am sure there are people who want to sow distrust for their own ends, but there are also good reasons for distrust.
> what I'm saying is that this sort of opinion from someone who doesn't seem to fully understand the subject is a prime example of something that could be amplified for propaganda and contribute to institutional demise.
Part of the solution is transparency and full information.
> “It’s not in our interest to share product with public or private agencies,”
Is not an attitude that inspires confidence.
> You seem to be implying that all claims of regulatory capture, or even simple incompetence or bias, are all the result of Russian propaganda
Can you quote me on that? Because it's like you didn't even read what I wrote. How can I be more clear than:
> To be clear, I'm not saying this article is a propaganda piece; what I'm saying is that this sort of opinion from someone who doesn't seem to fully understand the subject is a prime example of something that could be amplified for propaganda and contribute to institutional demise.
How is this implying that ALL claims, incompetence, or bias ARE the result of propaganda? And where am I wrong to say that this sort of thing is being amplified by, for example, popular US Podcasts that were, and some for sure still are, being funded by the Russian regime?[0]
This isn't a conspiracy theory by the way: it's well known that there are people being paid to promote propaganda, and there are people - like you said and well - that want to sow distrust for their ends, and also get paid by Russia to do it. There's still an ongoing investigation about the example I gave, but it's probably a mix of both.
But these aren't just the two types of people in the information space, that's just silly. Still, you should pay attention to who has, or gets, a big reach.
> Part of the solution is transparency and full information.
Is it? Because the solution seems to be about having a certain aesthetic, being loud, and disregarding everything else - you just need to make pauses to say "and that's a fact/the truth is/everyone knows this/it's common sense". Just look at the Trump administration, it's working pretty well for them.
[0]https://www.cdmrn.ca/publications/tenet-media-final-incident...
> all
OT: When you read hyperbole, the debate/discussion shifts somewhat subtley but substantially. Exploration and examination of the facts and merits ends - the word 'all' eliminates any variation from the extreme; it becomes attack and defense.
I agree with that, but that wasn't the point of my comment to say that any amount of disinformation is a product of propaganda.
My point is that there's a new Institutional crisis being exacerbated by conspiracies, disinformation, and misinformation. A lot of people have strong opinions based on a shallow perception of reality.
This contributes to the acceleration of Institutional collapse (like Democracy, Public Health, Public Service...), and it's being amplified by foul actors to feed back more into this nonsense. This feeds into distrust or even irrational hate of institutions that contributed to the success of Western countries.
I just gave a few concrete examples, with sources, of such an activity.
I'm not saying everything is right, or that there aren't problems, like corruption, opacity, etc. But it doesn't warrant destroying everything for the sake of an aesthetic or a misplaced sense of resentment acquired on social networks.
Yes, I got your point, which I agree with and was well said. Mine was tangential, as I said.
> Late last year, LAist requested samples of MVP-Fx from Cal Fire, the U.S. Forest Service and Perimeter Solutions, which manufactures the product, for the purpose of running an independent analysis for heavy metals. All declined.
> “It’s not in our interest to share product with public or private agencies,” Jurasek said at the time. “You are not the first person to ask for us to give them fire retardant. It happens. It’s not something we do.”
How is this legal? Like how can the government spray random chemicals all over the land and there's no way for the public to compel them or the people supplying them to declare what's in them?
> “You are not the first person to ask for us to give them fire retardant. It happens. It’s not something we do.”
Scary to think what other discoveries were missed if those other investigations had been given the samples they asked for.
I also enjoy how they all pile on to say the results can't be trusted.
> Cal Fire, the U.S. Forest Service and Perimeter Solutions all dismissed the results of the testing — saying that the samples couldn’t be relied on because they were gathered in the field.
The federal government is at least somewhat aware of these issues
https://www.epa.gov/assessing-and-managing-chemicals-under-t...
https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2016-05/documents/fl...
Historically, its not unusual for California's government and industry to dump chemicals all over the state.
It isn't the responsibility of the manufacturer to provide samples for analysis (unless the law compels them). Take it up with your government.
> Like how can the government spray random chemicals all over the land and there's no way for the public to compel them
There is, by voting.
> It isn't the responsibility of the manufacturer to provide samples for analysis
In a sane world it would be
“Adding a regulation mandating manufacturer to provide samples for analysis would put too much of a regulatory burden on them and destroy the economy”
A conservative representative somewhere, maybe.
The insane part is you, giving up your power to solve your problems (and encouraging others to). If people voted, it would be much different - it's that simple. If they were politically active, it would be a whole different world - maybe something like the one they wanted.
Instead of doing that, you're spending your energy saying how hard it is.
no regulations are written by specialists and staff that implement the intent of the law passed by legislature or by executive order. Voting only pressures certain parts of that. The US and States have had large scandals regarding heavy industrial wastes over time.
Rumor is they couldn't figure out where to put the "warning this product is known to cause cancer in the state of california" sticker on the planes
Some of the heavy metals are likely from the fire retardant, and some are likely from the fire. Look at zinc vs lead for example. There is little lead in the unused sample vs the environmental samples, thus most of the lead is likely not from the fire retardant. I would guess the most likely source is lead from roofs of burning houses.
Zinc on the other hand is present in all samples in about the same amount, including the unused one. That means that the zinc is likely from the fire retardant rather than the environment. Other metals are present in slightly higher amounts in the environmental samples, and often only in some of the samples. In that case both the fire retardant and the fires/environment are likely to contribute.
To me it seems like copper, lead and manganese are mostly from the fires, while zinc and chromium seems to be from the fire retardant. Then there is the sample from the Franklin fire, that seems to be higher in everything.
> Some of the heavy metals are likely from the fire retardant
I'm not disagreeing with what you wrote, but they did also analyze unused, "fresh out of the package" retardant.
I was trying to figure out what is in class A firefighting foam last week.
Nobody really wants to say, it is all trade secrets, evading a direct response, using vague sweeping terms, like it contains surfactant and foaming agents.
However based on the published MSDS. my guess, soap, it is mainly soap.
https://www.fs.usda.gov/rm/fire/wfcs/products/msds/foam/silv...
Note that I do think it is soap finely engineered for it's fire suppression characteristics. I also think you would get 80% there with a bottle of dish soap.
Ya some of us rural volunteer firefighters will use dish soap instead of foam concentrate. I personally haven't but some of the others in the department have.
It's ammonia phosphates with trace amounts of heavy metals.
I wonder who can figure out what the red coloring is ;)
Or if it will be accomplished one way or another?
The red colour is iron oxide (i.e. rust).
Source: https://www.perimeter-solutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/...
All the heavy metals were below 1ppm, are any of the levels concerning?
In case there's some natural accumulation process, the concentration can reach any levels, so absolute quantity might (or might not) matter as well.
I found it a bit concerning that this doesnt talk about safe dosages of any of the heavy metals.
Many of the levels are well above the levels required for drinking water.
That isn't much to go on, however.
Also, real ppm for this kind of thing is supposed to be by weight, so that would ideally be pounds per million-pounds.
IOW if they dumped a million pounds all over the place, and there was 1 ppm of trace lead content, then there was one full pound of unwanted lead scattered across the same acreage as the 900,000+ pounds of active ingredient.
However, ppm for environmental laboratories conventionally means milligrams per liter since that's a close equivalent to weight ppm, but realistically only for water samples. So for test material having a density different than water, some correction is needed which can often be neglected, but the real number is usually within the same order of magnitude.
If there were 280 drops of the DC-10 mentioned in the article, that is a maximum of 280 * 45000 = 12.6M litres of this, spread of 20 square miles.
That is 7.5 kg (16 lbs) of lead.
But what does that tell you? Is that a lot? The EPA warns against soil that is > 400ppm lead, which is a limit almost 1000 times higher than found in this.
https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2020-10/documents/le...
Looks like you've added some realistic data.
The more the better.
>But what does that tell you?
It's a lot of raw data, but mainly reveals it's all estimation "all the way down".
Definitely pounds to kilos of heavy metals were dispensed widely which were not there before.
Probably a lot more kilos than people think when you consider all the kinds of heavy metal that's popular today, not only Led ;)
And that's just the initial application.
Contamination migration will be a much less accurately determined phenomenon, while being potentially much more toxic in those areas of concentration, and less so in areas benefitting from dilution.
> Lane feels firefighters were left in the dark
That kind of thing happens a lot (see “9/11 Syndrome”).
Kind of a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” situation.
One of the things about fire, is that it alters chemistry. Perfectly safe materials, can turn into highly toxic gas, when heated. In many cases, this cannot be anticipated, or realistically prevented. There are also firefighting foams and whatnot. I think some of the foams contain fairly significant quantities of questionable chemicals. They are pretty much required, for Li-ion battery fires.
Firemen kinda take the brunt of that. I know a number of retired firefighters, and they all have health issues.
Remember that some of the firefighters are prisoners (as in criminals), a vulnerable population that has less choice and less access to health care or other remedies.
We should know what’s in the retardant, yes.
The alternative to retardant at the moment is uncontrolled wildfires.
That's an "all or nothing" fallacy, easily countered.
One alternative is water. Plus alternative products might be less efficient but less contaminating. Finally, even with Phos-Check, success is far from guaranteed.
Bottom line: the lack of transparency must be remedied and officials need to be aware and factor in heavy metal contamination into their decisions.
Fires burining neibhorhoods already produce massive ammounts of toxic and heavy metals. It literally is just adding a little more to the already extremly present pollution
The present pollution is the result of incremental addition of little more to what was little less at that moment, while seeking excuse in alreadism
The fire retardant ... actually does retard the fire, right. A tiny bit of extra toxicity in trade for much less stuff getting burned may be worth it.
If you're looking for some negative on anything, you will find it. Always. The question should be if it's a net positive or not.
In reality people are just looking for something bad, so they can find something that was wrong/against the law, so they can blame them, so they can get money from them.
> The fire retardant ... actually does retard the fire, right. A tiny bit of extra toxicity in trade for much less stuff getting burned may be worth it.
And water does, too.
The real question is: is this extra toxicity worth it?
I understand your reaction, it's common. But irrational. It's akin to saying "If Trump can improve the country at the cost of some disagreement, then maybe it's worth it, so I voted Trump". What if he doesn't improve the country, and you just get the cost?
It's a good question to ask. You should just not base your opinion on the uninformed assumption you make ("I assume that because it may be worth it, then it actually is worth is").
> It's akin to saying "If Trump can improve the country at the cost of some disagreement, then maybe it's worth it, so I voted Trump"
Frankly in my opinion Trump got elected due to this attitude. Obviously, Trump or no Trump (and when he gets out of office, even if that's only when he dies) we will still have to live with MAGA people, right? They're not going to disappear. And, frankly, the ONLY break on republican power at the moment is that while they have power, they have to live with democrats. No choice. (yes, there's state and judicial power, but at this point there at best reminding Trump he has to live with at least some democrat viewpoints and laws. Not zero, but not much)
Imho Trump, and definitely Trump's actions, are the result of MAGA people shouting very, very loudly "NO COMPROMISE". And, why? Well, the democrat-supported demonstrations (Gaza, BLM, climate, and ...) were to some extent shouting the same. "NO COMPROMISE". No talking. The Gaza demonstrations were totally unwilling to discuss what conditions to force on Hamas, any at all, just as BLM demonstrations were totally unwilling to discuss solutions, just as ... The Gaza demonstrations were about winning, not about Israeli-Palestinian peace. The BLM demonstrations were about winning, not about compromise. And so on. They were just accusing everyone else of being horrible, depraved human beings that should essentially be murdered to the last man because of some (admittedly very fucking serious) mistake they made.
Then some evil election planner went to Trump, and pointed out that the 2016-2020 presidency would come with the ability to get the supreme court in the camp of whoever got elected president AND the 2024-2028 election provided 2+ years majorities in congress, in addition to the presidency ... and Trump (+ cronies) jumped on it. Yes, the goal was probably to get Trump in for 3 terms, so thank God for Biden. But there you are.
But then, at the tail end of Biden's presidency ... the economy showed clear signs of going down significantly (Trump is to blame for the MOMENT of the stock market crash, but imho ... at best 50% for it happening at some point), and the incumbent party was voted out, first in congressional elections, then in the presidency. As always happens in those circumstances. I believe over 200 years only twice has it been different (and one of those 2 times was WW2, so presumably it was a time the average house cat would have agreed there were more pressing matters than the economy)
And now we're here, sitting pretty, after years of shouting "NO COMPROMISE! NEVER" ... with the people we were never going to compromise with in power ... in congress ... in the senate ... and the orange tomato president.
Let's face facts here: we will be making a LOT of concessions before the 2026 elections, because why would republicans give us anything at all? (yes, because we still have to live together). After that less, but still making concessions until, hopefully 2028. People actually thinking about pros and cons, even when there's an easy target to blame, I hope THOSE will bring us forward.
Making a coalition of people who realize that for 2 to 4 years, we'll have to live with republicans in power, and then for at least 4 years hopefully they'll have to live with democrats in power again. People who compromise and live together, THAT is the way forward. And frankly, that answers all the republican shouting points too. A large people who compromise ... can take on China, because over there, there is no compromise, and with that complete morons in power, and zero loyalty. They cannot win against an army of soldiers that believe they'll be welcome in the country they fight for.
I'm honestly not sure what you are saying.
My point was really just to say that it's good to say "If this brings X at the cost of Y, then it may be worth it" (that raises great questions), but it is wrong to conclude just from that that it actually is worth it.
I see many people jump to this conclusion, and the logic is flawed. I mentioned Trump because I've heard many people justify their voting for Trump like this.
The correct way of doing it is:
1. "If this brings X at the cost of Y, then it may be worth it"
2. Investigate whether it would actually bring X.
3. Investigate whether it would actually cost Y.
4. Decide whether it's worth it or not.
In your previous post you were making the argument that the cost was not even worth looking at, much less comparing, because that by itself, any compromise, would be bad (and lead to trump)