Eco-Toxicological Evaluation of Fire-Fighting Foams in Small-Sized Aquatic and Semi-Aquatic Biotopes

Abstract

A variety of chemicals including foaming agents are used to aid in the protection of forest resources from the wild land fires. The fire-fighting foams (FFFs) are formulations composed principally of surfactants. As a part of Japanese national project, environmentally inert FFFs have been developed. There is an emerging need for testing the impacts of these FFFs on the living organisms composing the typical landscapes or eco-systems in Japan. In the present report, we aimed to describe our latest attempt for assessing both the short-tem and long-term impacts of FFFs in aquatic (fresh water) and semi-aquatic (wetland) eco-systems, by employing the laboratory-sized model assays (preliminary studies) and the biotope-based observation, respectively. In the biotope assays which was based on the observation in compact biotopes mimicking the fresh water environments and wetland, both the acute and long-term eco-toxic impacts of two FFFs (soap-based and synthetic detergent-based) were assessed. Spraying of synthetic detergent-based foam formula was shown to be more toxic compared to soap-based formula and mock water treatment.

Effect Of Inorganic Components Of Fire Foaming Agents On The Aquatic Environment

“…Detergents (20), alkyl sulfonates (21), fatty acids (22), natural compounds (23), and fluorinated derivatives (24) are used as the main active ingredients.…”

Potential production of palm oil-based foaming agent as fire extinguisher of peatlands in Indonesia: Literature review

“…In some countries, including Indonesia, concerns about environmental damage from the use of synthetic foam cause the switch to using foam derived from natural ingredients and has extensive forest fire fighting [9]. The use of soap based foam is has much lower toxicity for aquatic organisms in rivers, lakes and the ocean compared with the synthetic foam [13,39,40,41]. Applications of peat lands firefighters in Indonesia needs to be examined to obtain foaming agents which capable form foam for firefighter, wrap, and cooling peat burning area.…”

“…Firefighter foaming agent will continue to be needed in Indonesia because of fires will recur from year to year, especially in the dry season, along with an increase in the number of land for plantation and drought in some forests and peat lands [51]. Raw materials of foaming agent from fatty acid of palm oil is abundant, environmental friendly and rapidly degraded to soil and water [12,13,39,40].…”

“…Firefighters using foam is more quickly than water because foam wrap the burning material so that air does not enter into it. In addition, the use of foam is also make more efficient in the use of water [4,9,10,11,12,13,14].…”

Development of Eco-Friendly Soap-Based Firefighting Foam for Forest Fire

“…The soap is much lower in toxicity to aquatic organisms compared to synthetic detergents with environmental water in river, lake and sea (Lin et al, 2006;Kawano et al, 2007;Goto et al, 2007;2008;Kawano et al, 2014). The reason why the toxicity of the soap is lower to aquatic microorganisms and fish is that it reacts with metal ions such as calcium ions that exist in the environment to form metal soap.…”