Polymeric flame retardant systems for more performance and environmental care!: Fid-Bau Portal

Polymeric flame retardant systems for more performance and environmental care!

Zonnenberg, Luc / Borms, Rudi / Georlette, Pierre

Brominated flame retardants are continuing to play the leading role in the market to provide fire safety with 38% of the FR market in value. BFRs make a positive contribution to the environment by avoiding fires and their uncontrolled emissions of toxic gases and effluents. BFRs are associated with high performance recycling operations and their end of life fate can be managed and controlled as shown in many concrete cases. Several important Brominated Flame Retardants (BFRs) that have been investigated in depth by well renowned institutes show in general a good performance in toxicology-, risk assessment - and many other Health-, Safety- and Environment related studies. Meanwhile, following its policy of responsible care, DSBG, one of the leading producers of brominated FRs, is now promoting the use of reactive or polymeric brominated flame retardants as a next step for a safer environment. Indeed these types of brominated FRs are poorly soluble in water, which means that once incorporated into the end-product plastic matrix, they become integrated with the plastic and leaching is very unlikely to occur. Furthermore during ageing, they do not migrate to the surface of the plastic, thus eliminating any potential blooming in the finish product. Because these flame retarded products are all polymers with a high molecular weight, the molecules are too large to penetrate through cell membranes of living tissue. Bioaccumulation of these products seems to be very unlikely. Some examples of applications with reactive and polymeric brominated FRs that illustrate their efficiency and good contribution to the environment will be presented.