AN ANALYSIS OF THE CHANNEL 7 EXPOSE OF THE SMOKE DETECTOR

The Hank Investigates story on smoke detectors that fail to awaken children was excellent reporting and hopefully will result in many homes being better protected against fire. However, as good as it was, this report covered no more than 20 percent of the smoke detector problem. To begin with, the inadequacy of the sound does not stop with the children. When the detector is not close to the sleeping parent, many if not most adults also will have difficulty hearing it. The reality is this device, manufactured for about one dollar and sold for ten dollars on up, is an extremely unreliable device. But, thats still the least of the problems. During the 1960s and 1970s, in order to sell the product and also discredit more reliable fire detectors, the manufacturers claimed (falsely) that their device would warn before you can see the smoke or flames or even smell the combustion products. And, four categories of fire were defined from smoldering to xxx. It was claimed this incredibly rapid warning would precede the smoke or flames no matter which stage the fire was in. So, the claim was an INSTANTANEOUS WARNING regardless of the fire category. During the Dunes tests the average time for the ionization device to sound when the fire initiated smoldering exceeded one hour. Out of 162 chances to warn of a smoldering type fire during Phase One of the Dunes testing, zero operated within five minutes, only one operated within ten minutes and only 28 (17 percent) sounded within a half hour. Yet the engineers running the test program claimed the device worked well. They lied! As for the ability of the ionization device to protect life when the fire is flaming, consider this. At Underwriters Laboratories the smoke is allowed to go as high as 37 percent obscuration (light reduction per foot) and the device can still pass. But, years ago, based on fire testing in real buildings, the International Association of Fire Chiefs (IAFC) determined that when the smoke exceeded 4 percent a person will be reluctant to pass through it to safety. So, UL allows the smoke to go to nine times higher than the IAFC recommended and still pass the testing. A major problem with the ionization device is that it false alarms to bread toasting and the shower running. It is much more reliable at warning of the roast being overcooked than it is at warning of a real fire. Because of the false alarming problem many people find it necessary to remove the battery. These flawed devices are even less reliable when not powered. When all the problems are added up it becomes clear that this device is a public endangerment first because it is so extremely unreliable and secondly because it has been a substitute for reliable fire detectors. The photoelectric type smoke detector is the only detector in common usage that reliably warns of a smoldering fire. The most reliable detector for the flaming fire is the heat detector. The vast majority of fire deaths are caused by flaming fires because this type fire can become deadly in less than five minutes whereas it may take a smoldering fire a half hour or more to create life threatening conditions. Therefore, the most reliable detector is a photoelectric smoke detector with a built in heat detector.