The fire retardant in the seafood chain
insideclimatenews.org> if left untreated, is known for spontaneously combusting as it decays and oxidizes.
Does anyone remember the 90s when as a laymen it seemed like an open debate whether humans would occasionally combust spontaneously? I guess it stopped happening once falling asleep with a cigarette lost popularity
But my point is I wasn’t aware that “spontaneous combustion” was a real thing one has to worry about it. Linseed oil rags will do this too, and that’s why patent leather shoes are coated in plastic now instead.
It had a brief fad then but I just read Bleak House last year and in the later editions Dickens defended his inclusion of the person spontaneously combusting in an introduction, because it had allegedly happened in UK and this was around 1850s. This is possibly responsible for why it pops up now and again.
There is a safety standard for managing flour dust in places like bakeries for spontaneous combustion reasons: https://www.nfpa.org/product/nfpa-654-standard/p0654code
This can happen to mulch as well if it's left in a very big pile for a long time.
Regularly happens to the same pile of mulch at a lot in Boston. No idea why they have been allowed to keep storing it.
https://www.universalhub.com/2026/mulch-fire-brings-all-jake...
If you have a big enough pile of organic matter, exothermic decomposition can lead to fire, if the conditions are right.
Commonly happens in grain silos, mulch piles, etc.
It really doesn't take that large of a pile of grass clippings or wood chips to get some steam coming out and a lot of steam if you disturb the pile.
Yep, many hay barns have caught fire because the hay was bailed while too wet and it is fermenting so vigorously.
HowStuffWorks used to be full of expert animations of automatic transmissions and helicopters around 2006 but they had a multipart article on spontaneous combustion, with anecdotes of 1890s people who retained too much ethanol.
Here it is: https://web.archive.org/web/20090510082422/http://science.ho... (3 pages, and refs)
Those forms of articles (along with Straight Dope) were the ultimate dopamine rush back then, and now it just doesn’t hit the same.
Human spontaneous combustion is a silly myth. Other kinds like oily rags and apparently fishmeal are very real.
Maybe it was more of being a middle schooler than a wider social phenomenon, but silly myths got a lot of play in the days before Google!
Arguably even more now…
Grain dust and flour also come to mind. Essentially anything with the appropriate fuel/air mixture can combust, often explosively, even if we otherwise think of it as food!
Those events aren't spontaneous combustion, an ignition source is needed to cause a dust explosion with flour, grain, or sawdust. Spontaneous combustion of something like linseed oil happens with no external ignition source. Spontaneously combustible substances undergo exothermic reactions in normal conditions, e.g. when drying, curing, being exposed to air, or similar. They have low enough flash points that their own heat is enough to cause ignition, which is why you never hear about concrete spontaneously combusting despite having an exothermic curing process.
> which is why you never hear about...
It might help that concrete is not combustible to begin with. Vs. (say) linseed oil definitely is.
Exactly. Grain dust is very dangerous because a small spark can make it explode, but the spark is absolutely necessary. If you leave a pile of oily rags in your garage and wait a few hours, your house could burn down. No spark needed.
Sad results of the system the optimizes for ease and efficiency rather than health and quality. The same mind set carries over to bread, pesticides, and food coloring that has been banned in European countries.
I don't know why they don't just use nitrogen in the storage vessels. Ship holds, for example, already have this capability.
Good idea. I was thinking store it under vacuum but nitrogen might be easier.
I make a lot of chili. Ethoxyquin is a good reason to mix your own chili powder.
How does Ethoxyquin get into chili powder?
It's used as a preservative/additive for chili powder, paprika, and ground peppers in the US.
About Ethoxyquin, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethoxyquin
There's a video of Vietnamese fish farmers on the side of the screen that clearly relates to this story but I don't speak Vietnamese so I guess I just have to wonder how.
Ethoxyquin is used as an additive in fish feed.
I just find it wonderfully weird that no process has been found to just handle powdery flammable things better, instead of adding stuff to it to make it less risky to handle it wrong.
There's lots of ways to make handling such things safe: climate control, inert atmospheres, (in cases like this were degradation is involved) rotating out material, compartmentalization, automatic fire supression etc. The problem is that these are very expensive compared to the dirt cheap methods used in commercial fisheries
In this case, handling it wrong simply means letting it sit there in a pile.
Americans' breast milk is full of fire retardants, found in 100% of samples taken.
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2023/08/24/1194759...
These articles are often misleading. With the modern detection methods, we can find seemingly anything in everything. Mass spectrometers can detect individual atoms and molecules, after all.
It's always important to check the quantities detected and the corresponding safe limits.
Since the article does not make any claims about exposure levels, no, it's not "misleading." You (wrongly) assumed there's no research on safe limits, or that there even ARE 'safe limits.'
Meanwhile you're making a nonsense claim about the capabilities of the sort of mass spectrometer used for this sort of study (like you know anything about mass spectrometers), while also ignoring the well established evidence these chemicals are causing harmful effects to human health.
Probably because you didn't bother to actually read the study summary, yet you felt qualified to whine about it being misleading while hiding behind weasel words like "often" and "seemingly."
Skepticism not a substitute for being informed and educated. Stop doubting and questioning things you're not qualified to doubt or question...especially when you clearly haven't read the material you're so smugly questioning.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S02697...
"A significant body of research supports the conclusion that current exposures to BFRs are having an adverse effect on human health and that early-life exposures are of greatest concern. PBDEs have been particularly well-studied and human exposure has been associated with harm to neurodevelopment, especially reduced IQ, as well as reduced fecundability, reduced birth weight, reproductive abnormalities, reduced fertility, papillary thyroid cancer, and alterations in thyroid function (Chevrier et al., 2010; Goodyer et al., 2017; Hoffman et al., 2017; Kim et al., 2014; Lam et al., 2017; Stapleton et al., 2011; Zota et al., 2011). Bromophenols are structurally similar to thyroid hormone, and evidence from in vitro, in vivo, and epidemiological research indicates that, like PBDEs, bromophenols can affect thyroid function (Michałowicz et al., 2022). The effects of brominated flame retardants on thyroid homeostasis may explain their ability to harm neurodevelopment, particularly via disruption of thyroid-hormone mediated development that occurs during fetal development. Several mechanisms for disruption of thyroid homeostasis have been elucidated. In human liver microsomes, 2,4,6-TBP and hydroxylated metabolites of PBDEs were found to inhibit deiodinase, key to regulating levels of active thyroid hormones (Butt et al., 2011). In vitro binding assays found 2,4,6-TBP bound transthyretin (TTR), which transports thyroid hormone, with ten times the potency of the natural ligand, T4, and that a number of BFRs, including some PBDE congeners, increased the response to T3 (Hamers et al., 2006). Results from a placental cell line found that among BFRs, 2,4,6-TBP was the most potent inhibitor of thyroid hormone sulfotransferase (TH SULT), which regulates intracellular levels of thyroid hormones (Leonetti et al., 2018). Mice exposed to 2,4,6-TBP had lower thyroid activity and levels of free T3 and T4 (Lee et al., 2016). Epidemiological research suggests sex-specific effects on thyroid hormone: in placenta samples from 95 North Carolina, USA women, accumulation of 2,4,6-TBP in the placenta was significantly associated with higher levels of T3 in females (Leonetti et al., 2016b). Male infants with higher levels of 2,4,6-TBP had lower T3, though the association was not significant. Evidence indicates that other BFRs affect the endocrine system, including antiestrogenic and antiandrogenic effects, increased production of testosterone and estrogen, and disruption of thyroid function (Chen et al., 2019b; Johnson et al., 2010; Mankidy et al., 2014; Saunders et al., 2013). Because of concerns regarding persistence, bioaccumulation, and toxicity, along with high production volume, BFRs have been the target of regulatory efforts. These include a ban on their use in enclosures for electronics displays in the European Union and in New York State and in all enclosures for indoor electric and electronic products in Washington State (European Commission, 2019; State of New York, 2022; Washington Administrative Code, 2023). A number of product manufacturers, including Apple and HP, also restrict the use of organohalogen flame retardants in their products."
Yes, and that's exactly why I said that such articles are misleading. Without listing the detected levels, these articles are entirely useless.
The quoted study found median concentrations of ~1ng/g of dry samples, so far below any reasonably dangerous levels.
I can very easily fear-monger too: "There's detectable URANIUM in every tested sample of mothers' milk!" And this is true, most of this uranium is from natural dust.
> Meanwhile you're making a nonsense claim about the capabilities of the sort of mass spectrometer used for this sort of study (like you know anything about mass spectrometers)
I worked with mass specs.
> while also ignoring the well established evidence these chemicals are causing harmful effects to human health.
In what quantities? And how do they compare with the detected ones?
probably not only Americans. The EU imposes fire retardants on furniture and clothing. It is not a health hazard in the long run because these might be the last human generations to be born due to GW
been looking at the title, but didn't want to read more bad news, bug then my brain thought this about something other than the actual real planetary food chain, and sure enough it's about industrialy made food substitutes. as to the fish meal catching fire, there are other solutions, pulling a partial vacume and flooding with CO², refrigerating/freezing, or useing other (fuck me), antioxidents, like various oils like chiken grease or hey!, fish oil, but of course Muney, jingle jangle muney muney muney, and the kind of people who own ship loads of fish meal, will never, see, smell, or eat any of the resulting comodities, so it's fine right. tried that janky salmon a few times, but never liked it, and stick to local caught fish from the ocean I could see if I were to stand up.
re: spontainous combustion, there is a biological process called 'the heat of evolution" that is used to describe the heat given off by ALL ripening and oxidising biological materials, and MANY foods will combust if packed too tight and insulated, case in point are bannanas that must be kept seperate and refrigerated and the whole bannana industry was built on specialy designed refrigerated ships, as there was no good way to ship them before refrigeration. as for 'heat of evolution' there are charts that give the btu's/ton per hour used in refrigeration design, as the heat is substantial and will overwhelm the systems, with fire a real possibility. this is different than dusts and powders exploding due to the 'right' mix and a spark, which might just possibly coincide with a decomposition fire, if a ship was that unlucky. but with so many ways that things can go wrong, it is astounding to find out someone got the idea to prevent food fires by covering everything in poison.