Is Fire Retardant Dumbing us Down

a reply to: howtonhawky

Lol no I'm not

I'm directly challenging claims you made in the thread and asking you ti provide evidence

That's not against T and C infact it's encouraged
Report it if its an affront to your sensibilities

Your claim was they are dumping fertilizer I asked you to prove that. You posted the chemical make up....

That's like drinking a soda and telling me your drinking water just because it has some water in it

Its not the same thing

a reply to: SailorJerry

fertilizer is an accelerant

Now that we established that foscheck is 10% fertilizer would you care to ponder with me as too why they would use it to put out fires when there are other alternatives that can be used and are just as effective if not more so.

That is if you can fit actual thoughts and facts into your divisive agenda.

originally posted by: SailorJerry
a reply to: howtonhawky

Lol no I'm not

I'm directly challenging claims you made in the thread and asking you ti provide evidence

That's not against T and C infact it's encouraged
Report it if its an affront to your sensibilities

Your claim was they are dumping fertilizer I asked you to prove that. You posted the chemical make up....

That's like drinking a soda and telling me your drinking water just because it has some water in it

Its not the same thing

Foscheck is fertilizer

Are you really gonna revert to verbal stupidity?

If you put it on plants thay will grow.

Are you gonna try to tell us now that fertilizer with water in it is not fertilizer?

If so then you are not denying ignorance you are being divisive and that is something tha mods do not like if it is continually repeated as you seem to be determined to do.

originally posted by: howtonhawky
a reply to: SailorJerry

fertilizer is an accelerant

Now that we established that foscheck is 10% fertilizer would you care to ponder with me as too why they would use it to put out fires when there are other alternatives that can be used and are just as effective if not more so.

That is if you can fit actual thoughts and facts into your divisive agenda.

Like I said thats like drinking a soda ans claiming you're drinking water just because its got water in it.

Just because it has it in it, doesn't mean its all fertilizer. The chemical makeup is what supresses the fire

If you were to jusr dump fertilizer on it, it would accelerate the fire, why do you think they use fertilizer in bombs?

My only agenda is to discuss topics, if I see something that's factually inaccurate I point it out

If yiur feelings can't handle that, I suggest you pick a hobby that will protect your feelings instead of ATS

But don't come on here spouting off stuff, and then play the victim if someone calls you out

a reply to: howtonhawky

Yes, there is 'some' fertilizer components to fire retardant, but it's not ALL fertilizer! In fact, fertilizer is only a very small component.

So WHY do they put fertilizer in it???

Because it encourages vegetation growth after the fire, and it is vegetation growth which helps to stabilize the soil so there isn't massive erosion the next time it rains, that's why. It's intentional, not just a coincidence.

Haven't you followed the news where there will be a big fire in an area and then in two weeks when it rains there's news stories about massive mudslides in the same area? Lack of vegetation is why this happens, and it's why modern fire retardant has it (fertilizer) in it.

It's not like it's a massive planeload of pure Scott's Turf Builder being dumped on the fires!

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

Yes you are on track here but it is indeed fertilizer when you can take it and grow plants with it. 10% is alot.

Now it seems completely illogical and sinister to me to put a fire out with a toxic chemical.

The gain of vegetation you state is negated by the toxic air pollution caused by the evaporation of the fertilizer.

Literally ash will do the job of regrowth alone without our help.

Now if they choose to go around after a fire and fertilize the area then that would be more acceptable that having thousands of pounds of a chemical burnt in a very hot fire and taken up into the air we breath.

I purpose that any of you failing to see the problem with your logic to pur some miracle grow on tha campfire next time you are at a gathering and see how your peeps react to the toxicity of the chemicals.

or you could just admit that until a fire is put out that the majority of the retardant is becoming toxic vapors as soon as introduced to flame.

a reply to: SailorJerry

that is illogical and again you ignore the facts.

you can take yo ass to the store right now and buy a liquid fertilizer that is 10% active ingredient and 90% water and guess what it says on the package?

fertilizer

a reply to: howtonhawky

So many statements being made as fact

Tell me when was the last time you fought wildland forrest fires?

What's your qualifications to say what does and doesnt work?

You make claims all the time like you're an authority but its clear you don't know

originally posted by: howtonhawky
a reply to: SailorJerry

that is illogical and again you ignore the facts.

you can take yo ass to the store right now and buy a liquid fertilizer that is 10% active ingredient and 90% water and guess what it says on the package?

fertilizer

No its not

And the poster above me proved my point exactly and backed up my premise

But of course you'll just say everyone else is wrong and you're right

Because somehow you know better than everyone else lol

Good god the complete arrogance is astounding

originally posted by: SailorJerry

originally posted by: howtonhawky
a reply to: SailorJerry

that is illogical and again you ignore the facts.

you can take yo ass to the store right now and buy a liquid fertilizer that is 10% active ingredient and 90% water and guess what it says on the package?

fertilizer

No its not

And the poster above me proved my point exactly and backed up my premise

But of course you'll just say everyone else is wrong and you're right

Because somehow you know better than everyone else lol

Good god the complete arrogance is astounding

www.truevalue.com...

ready to use fertilizer and this is equivalent to what foscheck being sprayed.

you claim the other poster proved your point. he simply stated against your point by admitting that the foscheck is indeed a fertilizer and that he believes it helps plants grow.

i pointed out that the majority of the foscheck is being vaporized. I think very much so that you may be effected by this.

you seem to be stuck on stupid!

reality check

foscheck is fertilizer and simply renamed as a fire retardant. you have already stated that you believe fertilizer is a fire accellerant .

Where is the logic in using a product that is 10% accellerant that is mainly being taken into the air and into our air that we need to breath?

originally posted by: SailorJerry
a reply to: howtonhawky

So many statements being made as fact

Tell me when was the last time you fought wildland forrest fires?

What's your qualifications to say what does and doesnt work?

You make claims all the time like you're an authority but its clear you don't know

I can read and understand facts and processes that make things work and on top of that great wealth of wisdom everyone is free to discount my theories with facts. you have tried but you fail over and over.


i am totally open to logic and facts.

My base of reasoning is that water puts out fire.

The planes needed something more thick than water and the fertilizer industry has been using chemical waste for many things they should not because it is cheaper than waste disposal fees so they lace our air,ground and bodies with the waste in many cases.

just for you

I don't think that's what "retardant" means.

Could be wrong though

a reply to: howtonhawky

Using Brawndo on forest fires might just solve all of our problems.

a reply to: howtonhawky

Believe me, if companies want to dispose of toxic wastes they don't dye them bright orange and dump them from the sky in massive planes for the World to see! This would be pretty foolish, don't you think?

And...the fertilizer effect of fire retardant is actually a coincidental side effect of the product. (BTW, it's called "PHOS-CHEK", not 'foscheck' as you've been saying). The principle ingredients in wildfire retardants are water and Phos-Chek (ammonium polyphosphate, diammonium phosphate, diammonium sulfate, monoammonium phosphate, attapulgus clay and guar gum). The phosphates (which make up the fertilizer components AFTER the fire) actually have a different purpose initially. When they are dropped on a fire they decompose into ammonia and phosphoric acid and char . This creates a chemical reaction with the combustible material which results in the creation of carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide is heavier than air and starves the fire for oxygen, preventing it from spreading. The char on the combustible material reduces the surface area available of the material to burn. Regular water can't do these things.

Regular water does have incredible thermal absorption properties (1,700x that of air) but it also turns to steam, and steam rises so it's effectiveness fighting wildfires is limited to the amount of time the steam is present before it rises above the fire and is no longer useful. The fire retardant doesn't turn to steam, and it doesn't rise. Therefore, it continues to work (by generating carbon dioxide) even after the water has evaporated, turned to steam and risen above the ignition point of the flames.

Is fire retardant toxic? Sure it is, but so is water! If you drink enough water it will kill you just as sure as I type this. Everything is toxic to the human body in large enough quantities! Just try to breath regular air under 200 feet of water, it's toxic as hell and will straight-up kill you DEAD. Now, let's look at what the fire does. As it burns it generates far more toxic gases than the retardant used to extinguish it EVER could, by orders of magnitude. The fire generates tens of thousands of tons of carbon monoxide (deadly as hell). For an structures which burn, they too generate tons and tons of toxic gases what with all the plastics (carcinogens), paints, chemical treatments, petroleum products like shingles, wood treatments like arsenic, etc.

But, you're getting all worried about fire retardant. I think you've missed the forest, but for the trees.

And I suggest you research a little bit on fire retardants and how they work before making some knee-jerk reaction to a problem which pales in comparison to a much larger issue!

Lastly, if you'd really like something to worry about, why not worry about why we don't have enough controlled burns on dead-fall in forest areas? If we did this more responsibly we might not have as many forest fires that we need to worry about dropping fire retardant on!! Gee, what a novel concept, right?

You guys have never taken chemistry have you? So how does a fire retardant work well fire is a chemical reaction. And like any chemical reaction you can use chemistry to prevent it.

Fire spreads by preheating fuel in front of it cellulose meaning wood is a great fuel. When the preheating is finished the gas released combusts. I wont go into detail here but if your interested look into why charcoal forms. When heat is applied to phos check water and graphite is released. This displaces oxygen and lowers the temperature of the fuel source. The water basically boils off think of your stove you can't put your hand in boiling water but you can put your hand in the steam from the pot. Then the graphite creates a crystal barrier preventing the oxygen from reaching our fuel sources.

Now is it hazardous tests have been done to answer that for over 50 years now. No study has shown it to be hazardous to humans or any animal excluding fish. Phosphates in water damages fish by damaging their gills. But any fertilizer seems to have this reaction which is why you don't want to have a farm run off go into local river and streams.

Is it useful this answer is a bit harder it can be depending on how its deployed. But also can be useless if dumped directly on a fire. We often see state governments will do exactly that so they can look like they are fighting the fire. Makes it easier to face the people who lost their homes when they can say see we tried everything.

So if you see a plane dropping it on a fire just know its for show. If you see them dropping it near roads and fields before the fire gets there they are using it as they are supposed to.

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

Your correct by preventing fires we just make sure they get really big when they do occur. They really need to let areas burn because if humans were not there areas that suffered from fires prevent them from spreading. And the other problem is new growth is never created meaning when there are huge fires they often times destroy the trees as well. A fire in woods should just burn off the undergrowth and the trees bark will usually prevent them from burning. Same reason you have to let wood dey out before it will burn.

But we create fires so hot the trees can't survive the heat because conservationist throw a fit even when a controlled fire is set.

And a couple more things that you're wrong about, OP...

You mentioned concluded earlier that fertilizer is an "accelerant" because it's used in explosives. First of all, this is nitrate based fertilizer, not the kind used in Phos-chek which is phosphate based. It is ammonium "nitrate" which is used in explosives, not ammonium "phospate" which is used in phos-chek. Secondly, even ammonium nitrate is not by itself flammable, it's the nitrous oxide it gives off when heated which burns. However, ammonium nitrate is not used in phos-chek so it's irrelevant.

You also mentioned above that the phos-chek gets 'vaporized' before it ever hits the ground. This is patently false. The phosphates in the phos-chek are not flammable, and they, along with the clay added to the retardant, are far heavier than air so they fall to the ground. And, why do you suppose they add all that orange dye to it??? So they can see where they dropped the last batch on the next tanker run. If it all vaporized, how would they see it?

Even more importantly, fire retardants are seldom dropped directly ON a fire. They are dropped in front of the fire to direct it away from things they don't want to burn (like houses and/or larger areas of fuel). It is used to help fire fighters create 'fire-breaks', which force the fire to consume all of it's fuel and burn out. Fire retardant does just what its name implies, it 'retards' (slows down) the fire. It's not intended to extinguish the fire itself, the fire will do that on its own.

Lastly, the phosphates in retardant do lower the ignition point of wood...the surface of the wood. When exposed to fire it ignites and burns the surface of the wood before the wood itself can reach its flash point. This is how the retardant retards the fire. The main mass of the wood doesn't reach it's ignition point and therefore doesn't burn.

I'd say that's pretty much...Game, Set and Match...for your argument. However, I will leave you with this...

A buddy of mine has a very nice cabin which is located right in the middle of the site of one of the largest wildfires in Colorado history, the High Park Fire (87,250 acres, 248 homes burned and 1 fatality). The fire burned for over a month. We figured for sure his cabin was lost, but one day he got a call saying, amazingly, his cabin had been spared. He asked me what I thought he should bring with him when he went to check it out. I told him paper towels, lots of paper towels. He didn't understand. Paper towels to wipe off all the orange dye which would be all over everything!

Turned out I was exactly right. They'd retardant bombed his cabin and several others 7 times. Every single square inch of ground was scorched except where they'd tanker bombed. Everything was orange, but it was still standing.

You may think the stuff doesn't work. And you'd be very wrong! I've seen first hand how the stuff works, and I've met with many wildfire hotshots will tell you countless stories of how effective it is. You?

a reply to: dragonridr

I assume you are not referring to me because I specifically stated fire retardant works as a chemical reaction.

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

i had high hopes for you until you compared fertilizer to water.

Is fire retardant toxic? Sure it is, but so is water!

nothing you posted is a great enough reason to continue the use of the fertilizer. we have safer alternatives. like dirt

we do not need chemical waste being put onto planes and spread over fires only to end up in our lungs.

remember we have cheaper safer alternatives

i give you total kudos for your research but it is a no win for anyone trying to rationalize this crap.

the reason is that if you are correct about the chemical changes it goes through then it is equivalent to what we just bombed assad for cause we said he gassed his peeps. i do not know if that is true but you should call the un on this one here.

best case we breath fertilizer and worst case we breath some noxious gas produced by the fire and fertilizer.it is not good at any rate.

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

You mentioned concluded earlier that fertilizer is an "accelerant"

no i did not..........

i quoted a hard head claiming that