What It Is
Picture two living rooms side by side that look almost the same. One has older-style furniture made from natural materials like cotton and wood, and the other has modern furniture made from synthetic, or human-made, materials like polyester and foam. Researchers light a fire in each and start the clock. In tests first run by UL in 2009 and repeated several times, the modern rooms reached flashover, the moment when nearly everything in a room catches fire at once, in less than five minutes, while the older-style rooms took about 30 minutes or longer. This is the kind of work done at UL’s Fire Safety Research Institute, based in Columbia, Maryland, where a single research project can include as many as 100 controlled fires.
Why It Matters
Research like this showed that modern homes can reach flashover more than eight times faster than homes built 50 years ago. In 2020, the institute released a video showing a room becoming unlivable in just three minutes, along with advice to keep working smoke alarms on every floor, know two ways out, and close doors. Its “Close Before You Doze” campaign grew from research showing that rooms with closed doors stayed under 100 degrees Fahrenheit as a fire spread, while open-door rooms passed 1,000 degrees. UL researchers have also studied newer risks, like rooftop solar panels and e-scooter batteries. This kind of research helps fire investigators understand how fast fires grow and what clues they leave behind.
