Eurisol calls for urgent review of fire safety

Warwickshire fire tragedy might have been avoided if tighter regulations were in place to control the use of plastic foam insulation in the core of roofing panels, experts have warned.

An urgent review of building regulations and fire safety classification standards is needed to prevent further disasters, according the UK Mineral Wool insulation trade association, Eurisol.

Investigations are still underway into the fatal collapse of the metal-clad warehouse, but the roofing panels are understood to have been made from urethane plastic foam, sandwiched between two thin steel sheets, which set alight before the roof structure buckled and fell.

Urethane plastic foam is widely used in many public and commercial buildings across the UK.

It is termed 'Fire Safe' by some manufacturers, a term permissible within current Building Regulations.

"The current confusing and misleading labelling system which allows potentially dangerous insulation products to be termed 'fire safe' needs to be discontinued as a matter of urgency".

"These so-called 'fire-safe' foam plastic materials are combustible," said Eurisol spokesman Crispin Dunn-Meynell.

"The term 'fire safe' is not defined by British or European standards or by Building Regulations and it has become apparent that this term is therefore open to potential misuse".

"Building regulations do not cover the use of composite panels in the external envelope of a building.

Regulations need to be changed to correct this oversight, and, in particular, need to highlight the difference in fire risk between panels with combustible cores and those with non-combustible cores.

"The combustible plastic foam insulation used on the Atherstone warehouse roof caught light under attack from the heat of the internal fire".

"The question is, had the Atherstone warehouse used roofing panels made from a core of non-combustible insulation, could this disaster have been avoided?".

Eurisol is calling for urgent action on two fronts to tighten fire safety in metal clad buildings.

Firstly, the labelling of urethane and other combustible plastic foams as "fire safe" should be discontinued.

Only those products meeting the highest standards of performance in accordance with British (BS) and European (EN) standards (ie Euro-class A1, Euro-class A2 and non-combustible products) should be considered to be 'fire safe'.

Secondly, an urgent review is required of Building Regulations Part B 2: (Appendix F; 2006).

The Regulations are currently inadequate in relation to the use of plastic foams and do not provide sufficient guidance on the use of combustible foam cores to sandwich panels used as part of a buildings' external structure.

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