Why are the fumes from burning stuff *always* bad?

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Is it possible to create a plastic or paper that, if it burns, DOESN’T create toxic choking carcinogenic fumes? Or is there something inherent in oxidization of materials (esp organic ones) that creates byproducts incompatible with life?

I was reading about how toxic the smoke from a house fire is, and wondered if humans could engineer curtains or carpet that perhaps *can* burn — but with smoke that is relatively safe to breath.

i mean obviously it would be better if stuff wasn’t flammable in the first place, but, one thing at a time 🙂

In: Chemistry

8 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Ok, so the problem is that burning something is the chemistry equivalent of smashing something with a hammer. The stuff doesn’t break in a nice way. There are a lot of metaphorical “sharp edges”.

As an example, a lot of engineering goes into cars to try to make smashing the gasoline safer. Optimizing oxygen mix, catalytic converters, the fuel itself… all designed to make the gasoline break cleanly when you smash it with the ‘chemical hammer’.

And gasoline is a boring-ass molecule. It *should* break cleanly. Easily. When you get into complex biological material, like wood, the molecules are insanely complex and don’t break into safe pieces at all when you burn them.

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