NFPA Journal - March/April 2018 - 59
SMOKE ALARM TECHNOLOGY
SMOKE
SIGNALS
Smart smoke alarms that can distinguish between burning food
and burning furniture will hit the market this spring.
How it happened, and why safety advocates call it "a game changer."
By Jesse Roman
I
n his day job as staff liaison to NFPA
72®, National Fire Alarm and Signaling Code®, Richard Roux spends more
time than most trying to dissuade
people from disabling their smoke alarms.
But he understands the impulse.
Even Roux has moments of temptation,
especially when he uses the stove in the
small kitchenette of his family's RV. "The
smoke alarm is guaranteed to go off every
single time," he says, blaming the cramped
quarters that prevent him from placing
the device at least 20 feet from the stove,
as NFPA 72 advises for homes.
For people who have experienced
this frustration, which is to say nearly
everyone, there may be good news. Breakthroughs in research and technology have
brought us to a point where the next
generation of smoke alarms will be able
to discern between smoke from routine
cooking and smoke generated by a serious
fire. In fact, alarms will soon be mandated
to detect this kind of difference.
Beginning in 2020, UL, one of the
world's largest developers of safety standards for consumer products, will no
longer list smoke alarms that are unable
to pass a series of tests designed to prove
they are resistant to cooking and other
sources of false alarms. In other words,
every new smoke alarm that enters the
market by 2020 should be largely free of
the problem of activating because someone forgot about the dinner rolls warming
in the oven. It is perhaps the most significant change of the 250 technical changes
UL made to the most recent editions of
the standards it uses to certify and list
smoke detection devices.
"This is a life safety game changer,"
said Barb Guthrie, public safety officer at
UL. "What we are now able to place in
people's homes is a smart device that can
recognize all of these atmospheric conditions around the smoke alarm and sound
faster with a degree of accuracy that we
never had before." u
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of NFPA Journal - March/April 2018
Contents
NFPA Journal - March/April 2018 - Cover1
NFPA Journal - March/April 2018 - Cover2
NFPA Journal - March/April 2018 - 1
NFPA Journal - March/April 2018 - Contents
NFPA Journal - March/April 2018 - 3
NFPA Journal - March/April 2018 - 4
NFPA Journal - March/April 2018 - 5
NFPA Journal - March/April 2018 - 6
NFPA Journal - March/April 2018 - 7
NFPA Journal - March/April 2018 - 8
NFPA Journal - March/April 2018 - 9
NFPA Journal - March/April 2018 - 10
NFPA Journal - March/April 2018 - 11
NFPA Journal - March/April 2018 - 12
NFPA Journal - March/April 2018 - 13
NFPA Journal - March/April 2018 - 14
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NFPA Journal - March/April 2018 - 16
NFPA Journal - March/April 2018 - 17
NFPA Journal - March/April 2018 - 18
NFPA Journal - March/April 2018 - 19
NFPA Journal - March/April 2018 - 20
NFPA Journal - March/April 2018 - 21
NFPA Journal - March/April 2018 - 22
NFPA Journal - March/April 2018 - 23
NFPA Journal - March/April 2018 - 24
NFPA Journal - March/April 2018 - 25
NFPA Journal - March/April 2018 - 26
NFPA Journal - March/April 2018 - 27
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NFPA Journal - March/April 2018 - 30
NFPA Journal - March/April 2018 - 31
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NFPA Journal - March/April 2018 - 33
NFPA Journal - March/April 2018 - 34
NFPA Journal - March/April 2018 - 35
NFPA Journal - March/April 2018 - 36
NFPA Journal - March/April 2018 - 37
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NFPA Journal - March/April 2018 - 40
NFPA Journal - March/April 2018 - 41
NFPA Journal - March/April 2018 - 42
NFPA Journal - March/April 2018 - 43
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NFPA Journal - March/April 2018 - 48
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NFPA Journal - March/April 2018 - 51
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NFPA Journal - March/April 2018 - Cover3
NFPA Journal - March/April 2018 - Cover4
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