For insulation of houses is often used polystyrene, one of the types of foams. To cut sheets of the necessary size and shape is usually applied hot string. The method is simple and fast, but as it turned out, dangerous for health.

Specialists from the Swiss Federal Institute of technology believe that such a method of cutting leads to the appearance in the air nanoscale particles that people successfully breathes, receiving a powerful dose polybromide of fire inhibitor. Of course, those who just lives in the house with such a heater, it hardly touches.

Manufacturers penopolistirol have to add flame retardants, especially hexabromocyclododecane (HBCD), so that the materials meet the fire safety requirements for new buildings. But studies conducted on animals showed that HBCD cause serious reproductive and neurological problems. In 2010, the U.S. environmental protection Agency (EPA) has announced plans to enable HBCD in the list of chemicals that pose a threat to people and wildlife.

Based on the data of the previous work with polymers and polymeric nanoparticles of Swiss suggested that local overheating, created during cutting of polinomial, can lead to the evaporation of HBCD, which is deposited on the formed simultaneously, polymer nanoparticles and with them spread throughout the room.

To verify the hypothesis, the scientists conducted a cutting of thick polinomial in small, tightly closed space, catching released during this particle. To estimate the quantity of transported particles HBCD was used chromatography, mass spectrometry, etc., In the end it was found that the concentration of HBCD on particles in 15 times higher than the concentration of the substance inside a sheet of foam. In other words, if the worker will breathe for about two-thirds of the emitted particles within an hour, cutting, it will provide a consumption of about 13 mcg HBCD. For comparison: on the average, we get the same number of HBCD (from furniture, household dust, packaging, etc) for three months.

How to be? Undoubtedly, use carbon filter-petal that did not work then, as once with asbestos...

The researchers ' conclusions are presented in the journal Environmental Science & Technology.

Based on the materials of Chemical & Engineering News.