Flame retardants: iron compounds, their effect on fire and smoke in halogenated polymers

Abstract

The purpose of this section is to give an up to date overview of the effects which some iron compounds have on flammability and smoke production when polymers burn in air. A glance at chemical abstracts indexes under iron, iron compounds or iron chemistry shows thousands of scientific papers appearing every year; however, very few of these deal with the use of iron compounds as flame retarding/smoke suppressing additives for polymers. The recent chemistry of iron has been reviewed by Silver [1] but again there are few comments on the potential uses of iron compounds in polymers.