Incident Report Foam Fire Extinguishers Initial Email Enquiry – As representative for the BMW Plant Hams Hall engine manufacturing facility I thought the following may be of some use: Scope: Currently >500 Multi-purpose AFFF units on site, serviced and maintained by internal protection services staff Preparedness: Our current stocks of AFFF added to multipurpose hand held fire extinguishers are almost depleted, Controlled discharge of product takes place from one location on-site (all extinguisher's serviced / maintained internally), product flows via internal drainage system to trade effluent tank, various waste product here is transferred and treated at trade effluent plant prior to removal from site by specialist special waste tanker. Contingency: In the event the above disposal route can not be followed waste product is discharged to 'barrel', Environmental waste management engineer arranges collection to be processed off-site as special waste. So what are we using in place of the traditional AFFF, the product name is Purafoam purchased from CHUBB Fire, please find a link below: I would respect any views you have on the decision we have taken to use this product. 1st Response – The only comment I would like to make is that some of the information given on the Chubb web site with regard to organohalogen free foams is a little out of date. At Solberg Scandinavian we manufacture a range of organohalogen free fire fighting foams, including a 3x6 alcohol resistant version, which we call Arctic Re-Healing foams. This foam is EN-1568 approved part 3 1B and part 4 1A and is also classified as Water Hazardous Risk class '1' the safest class and furthermore it does not contain any substances listed in List 1 of The Groundwater Reg's 1998. It is environmentally benign and will not contravene any of the current environment legislation with regard to the use of fire fighting foams. We are currently working to ensure that the Arctic Re-Healing foams will pass the relevant EN standards for Fire Extinguishers and will announce the results in the near future. Hopefully we will have some positive news at the Fire 2005 Exhibition in Manchester so please call in at stand DC2 and ask for the latest update.
Author’s identities are concealed for privacy and security reasons. Further information on the information contained in this topic can be directed to the JOIFF secretariaty.
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