Why You Should Use Photoelectric Smoke Alarms June is National Safety Month. In this blog I wanted to share some interesting findings and statistics related to smoke alarms. Going back to the 1960's there were very few smoke alarms in use. Starting in the late 1970's there began a push to install smoke alarms. By 2009 it was estimated that 95% of homes had at least one smoke alarm. While the number of fire incidents has steadily declined, statistics indicate that the death rate per incident did not changed significantly between the 1977 and 2009. There are some important findings as to why this has occurred. There are two types of fires: open fires and smoldering fires. Open fires involve visible flames and are often found in cooking fires, accelerant based fires, and last stage smoldering fires. Smoldering fires do not have visible flames, account for more deaths than open fires and are typically caused by smoking, heaters, and electrical related fires. Smoldering fires typically take longer to detect and lead to smoke inhalation. Smoking is the leading fatal fire cause. There has been a steady decline in the number of residential fire incidents due to a smaller population of smokers as well as other changes including improved building codes (fire blocking), safer appliances, and use of fire retardants in mattresses and furniture. The two most common types of smoke alarm technologies are ionization and photoelectric. Approximately 95% of all single station alarms use ionization technology and the other 5% use photoelectric technology. Ionization alarm sensors detect small, fast moving particles caused by open fires and have a high occurrence of nuisance tripping from cooking, shower steam, etc. Photoelectric alarm sensors are better at detecting slow moving medium to large particles caused by smoldering fires and are less susceptible to nuisance tripping. Nearly two-thirds of all residential fire related fatalities occur in homes with either no alarm or non-functional alarms. Considering that only 4% of homes are not equipped with fire alarms it is clear that vast majority of deaths occurred in homes where the fire alarm was present, but not functional or did not respond. Significant research involving different types of fires shows that ionization alarms respond too slowly to the smoldering/smoke fires responsible for most residential fire deaths. Studies found that ionization alarms will fail to adequately warn occupants about 55% of the time. Also, because ionization alarms are also notorious for nuisance tripping occupants often disable the alarms. Extensive research clearly shows that photoelectric smoke alarms are far more reliable in most real-world fire scenarios. In summary it is recommended that ALL ionization alarms be replaced with photoelectric smoke alarms. Information in this blog was derived from the following resources:Ion-vs-Photo-Smoke-Alarms-CREIA-092312.pdfhttp://www.ashireporter.org/HomeInspection/Articles/Silent-Alarms-Deadly-Differences/2537
