Every year more and more various construction and finishing materials appear on the market. Some of them become popular and exist for a rather long time, adjacent to new products, while the fashion for others is so fleeting that not everyone can directly work with them.
Currently, the real “warming boom” is taking place in the construction industry: due to the constant increase in energy costs, residents of private houses began to think about saving. The best solution is to reduce
heat loss at home in the cold season. This can be achieved in several ways, one of which involves the use of polystyrene, also known as polystyrene foam. This material, perhaps, can be called optimal in relation to heat conservation. 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 health is increasingly appearing on the network and on the pages of printed publications. Now the harm of expanded polystyrene is not negotiated only by the lazy. What is really going on?
The eternal question
Before we consider this issue, let us take a small digression. Everyone should understand that to maintain a modern standard of living, it is necessary to compromise.
Electronic devices surround us everywhere, generating magnetic fields and directing current to the human body; water in a centralized system is periodically chlorinated; laminate in the room and particleboard in furniture emit formaldehyde; even many people consider plastic windows to be dangerous, since polymers when heated (direct sunlight) 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 expanded polystyrene does exist. The question is, is it big, and is it better to cover the house with clay and build a
thatched roof?Harm of polystyrene foam: true or fiction
Surely, everyone in childhood tried to set fire to the foam. It burns very intensely, and the color of the fire is blue and the smoke is black. This suggests that during oxidation, not only carbon dioxide and water vapor are released. It is believed that the composition of the combustion products includes phosgene gas, which causes a malfunction in the respiratory organs. Indeed danger exists. At the same time, such damage to expanded polystyrene can be considered partly exaggerated, since a non-combustible modification (self-extinguishing) is now being carried out. Modern polystyrene foam does not support combustion.
It is also known that carcinogenic styrene is gradually released from the material. It would seem - the harm is obvious, but it's not so simple. Open foam is relatively quickly destroyed, so it is always hidden under the facing materials. The exception is indoor slabs, but they have almost abandoned such finishes in modern construction. In addition, there is extruded polystyrene, in which the structure is changed, and the potential damage is less.
Thus, when using polystyrene foam, like any other modern material, certain safety measures must be followed, and then its harm to humans will be minimal.