Domestication of fire

Manipulation of the chemical environment by humans may be said to have begun with the domestication of fire. Use of toxic heavy metals, most notably lead and mercury, is believed to have caused deleterious effects on hu-... 

Polyurethane foams do, however, suffer from one serious disadvantage. Unless modified they bum with copious evolution of smoke and toxic by-products, which has led to a number of fatal fires, particularly in domestic accommodation. To some extent the problem may be reduced by suitable upholstery covering, but as mentioned on p. 775 a number of countries have now made mandatory the use of fire retardent additives. At the time of writing there is considerable activity in the development of new safer systems, particularly in the use of amino materials such as melamine as additives. Further developments may also be expected in the near future. 

Clay eating probably was extremely important in human evolution it enabled hominids who did not use fire to eat plants with toxic antifeedants. However, the glycoalkaloids of the potato are heat stable and insoluble in water. Domestication of tomatoes and potatoes probably went hand in hand with clay eating. Johns (1986) suggested that geophagy is the most basic human detoxification technique with behavior antecedents that are prehominid. ... 

Eremophila sturtii R.Br. and Dodonaea attenuata A.Cunn. in western New South Wales (Table IV). Overgrazing by introduced domestic livestock and the relative absence of fire since European settlement are implicated in the development of this situation which, in several respects, resembles that of the Californian. chaparral communities ( ). Allelopathy is a possible contributing factor. 

Anthracite Coal. Standard sizes for anthracite coal arc indicated in Table 3. The broken, egg, stove, nut and pea sizes are largely used for hand-fired domestic units and gas producers. Buckwheat and rice are used in mechanical types of firing equipment. 

It is difficult to determine the actual amount of heptachlor that is used however, the total use of heptachlor in the United States was estimated to be 16,000 tons between 1971 and 1976 (Fendick et al., 1990). Due to the adverse effects of heptachlor, most commercial, agricultural and domestic uses of heptachlor in the United States were phased out between 1974 and 1988, and all uses of heptachlor products were banned by the United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) in 1988 (USEPA, 1990a). The only current use of heptachlor is in the treatment of fire ants in power plants (ATSDR, 2005). Heptachlor was used in 1948 in China and it was banned in 1982 (Wong et al., 2005). 

To reduce the contribution of wood to fire losses, much research through the years has gone into development of fire-retardant treatments for wood. A total of 21.3 million pounds of fire-retardant chemicals were reported used in 1974 to treat 5.7 million cubic feet of wood products (2). The amount of wood treated was about one tenth of 1 percent of the total domestic production of lumber and plywood and has increased ninefold in 20 years. 

The classification of different fire stages shows that fire hazards, and particularly the toxic hazards, depend upon the combustion conditions. In buildings, the majority of fires that are hazardous to life are likely to involve under-ventilated flaming, either pre- or postflashover. Since in the United Kingdom the majority of injuries and deaths from fire occur in domestic dwellings (77%), most deaths can be attributed to preflashover under-ventilated combustion. However, the greatest numbers of deaths from single fire disasters will almost always be attributable to postflashover conditions. 

The colorless carbon monoxide (CO) is everywhere. Wherever there is combustion there is CO it is the predominant product above 800°C. The concentration of CO might vary from 0.1 ppm in clean atmosphere to 5,000 ppm in the proximity of domestic wood fire chimneys (Fawcett et al, 1992) and is present in significant quantities in cigarette smoke (Hartridge, 1920 Hoffman et al, 2001). The atmospheric lifetime of CO is 1 to 2 months, which allows its intercontinental transport (Akimoto, 2003). 

Berg, M., Berge, N. (1999) Development of domestic wood fired boilers with catalytic abatement of emissions, Proc. of 2 Olle Lindstrdm Symposium on Renewable Energy - Bioenergy, Stockholm, Sweden... 

Berg M., Rudling L, and Berge N. (2000) Abatement of emissions from domestic wood fired boilers by catalytic flue gas cleaning. Proceedings of the ECSBT2, pp. 199-207. 

The use of domestic microwave ovens is to be greatly discomaged - although cheap, they allow for very little control and give no information about precise conditions and therefore fall short of proper scientific reqnirements. They are also dangerous, with the possibility of fires and explosions Purpose-made commercial equipment is mnch more versatile and, with feedback control from sensors for temperature and pressure, is much safer, and provides proper control and output data. 

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