In view of the current demand for novel, non-toxic flame-and smoke-suppressant systems for synthetic polymers, certain inorganic tin compounds have been evaluated as fire retardants in a number of plastic and elastomeric substrates. The results obtained indicate that tin compound additives, in particular, zinc hydroxystannate and zinc stannate, exhibit beneficial properties both in halogenated and halogen-free formulations. The tin compounds appear to act predominantly in the condensed phase by a char -promoting mechanism, and this leads to a significant decrease in the amounts of smoke and toxic gases evolved during polymer combustion. The observed carbon monoxide-suppression is particularly interesting, since CO inhalation is now known to be the cause of death in the vast majority of fire fatalities.The last two decades have seen a major growth in the use of synthetic polymers as materials for construction, insulation, packaging, upholstery and transport applications (_1_). Unfortunately, this period has also seen a dramatic increase in the number of serious fires, and the number of deaths and injuries in fires remains appallingly high.Fire deaths are normally violent in nature, and smoke inhalation and not fire itself is the killer that accounts for over 80% of fire deaths (2). Therefore, recent advances in fire testing have placed great emphasis in developing products that have low flame spread properties and are low smoke producing.The use of flame retardants in polymers has increased dramatically in recent years, in parallel to the growth of the plastics industry (J_). Data for the U.S. consumption of these chemicals during 1985 are presented in Table I. Many of the existing commercial additives, however, have problems associated with their use.In particular, certain flame-retardant systems are known to cause an increase in the amount of smoke and toxic/corrosive 0097-6156/90/0425-0189S06.50/0

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