Every year more and more different building and finishing materials appear on the market. Some of them become popular and exist for quite a long time, side by side with new products, while the fashion for others is so fleeting that not everyone can directly work with them.
Currently, a real “insulation boom” is taking place in the construction industry: due to the constant increase in the cost of energy carriers, residents of private houses began to think about saving. The best solution is to reduce heat loss at home during the cold season. This can be achieved in several ways, one of which involves the use of Styrofoam, also known as Styrofoam. This material, perhaps, can be called optimal in terms of heat retention. Moreover, the cost of expanded polystyrene is much lower than that of alternative options (mineral wool, etc.). On the other hand, information about the potential danger of this material to human he alth is increasingly appearing on the net and on the pages of printed publications. Now the harm of expanded polystyrene is not discussed only by the lazy. What is really going on?
The eternal question
Before we consider this issue, let us digress a little. Everyone should understand that in order to maintain a modern standard of living, it is necessary to compromise.
Electronic devices surround us everywhere, generating magnetic fields and inducing current on the human body; water in the centralized system is periodically chlorinated; laminate in the room and chipboard in the furniture emit formaldehyde; even plastic windows are considered dangerous by many, since polymers when heated (direct sun) are also not very useful. The safest building materials are adobe and wood from ecologically clean areas, but civilization has abandoned them as unpromising. Thus, the harm of polystyrene foam really exists. The question is, is it big, and would it be better to cover the house with clay and build a thatched roof?
Harmful of Styrofoam: Fact or Fiction
Surely, everyone in childhood tried to set fire to the foam. It burns very intensively, and the color of the fire is blue, and the smoke is black. This suggests that not only carbon dioxide and water vapor are released during oxidation. It is believed that the composition of the combustion products includes phosgene gas, which causes a malfunction in the respiratory organs. Indeed, there is a danger. At the same time, such harm to expanded polystyrene can be considered somewhat exaggerated, since a non-combustible modification (self-extinguishing) is now being produced. Modern foam does not support combustion.
It is also known thatgradually carcinogenic styrene is released from the material. It would seem that the harm is obvious, but everything is not so simple. Open foam is destroyed relatively quickly, so it is always hidden under facing materials. The exception is indoor slabs, but modern construction has almost abandoned such a finish. In addition, there is extruded polystyrene foam, in which the structure is changed, and the potential harm is less.
Thus, when using polystyrene, like any other modern material, certain safety measures must be observed, and then its harm to humans will be minimal.
