IMHO - Yes

Flammable within CHIP and fire safety is defined by the flash point (temp at which sufficient vapours are given off to easily ignite)
Cardboard has a very high flash point and will not give off sufficient vapours to burn until it is very hot. So by the definition in CHIP will not carry the label flammable.
It will however combust on direct contact with a heat source.... this is hurting my head now, it's too early for chemistry :)

I just found the definition of a flammbale solid and i dont think its would be applied to cardboard?


Flammable solids are any of the following three types of materials:

Flammable solids are any of the following three types of materials:

Desensitized Explosives: explosives that, when dry, are Explosives of Class 1 other than those of compatibility group A, which are wetted with sufficient water, alcohol, or plasticizer to suppress explosive properties; and are specifically authorized by name either in the 49CFR 172.101 Table or have been assigned a shipping name and hazard class by the Associate Administrator for Hazardous Materials Safety.
Self-Reactive Materials: materials that are thermally unstable and that can undergo a strongly exothermic decomposition even without participation of oxygen (air). Certain exclusions to this group do apply under 49 CFR.
Generic Types: Division 4.1 self-reactive materials are assigned to a generic system consisting of seven types. A self-reactive substance identified by technical name in the Self-Reactive Materials Table in 49CFR 173.224 is assigned to a generic type in accordance with that Table. Self-reactive materials not identified in the Self-Reactive Materials Table in 49CFR 173.224 are assigned to generic types under the procedures of paragraph (a)(2)(iii) of this section.
Readily Combustible Solids: materials that are solids which may cause a fire through friction, such as matches; show a burning rate faster than 2.2 mm (0.087 inches) per second when tested in accordance with UN Manual of Tests and Criteria; or are any metal powders that can be ignited and react over the whole length of a sample in 10 minutes or less, when tested in accordance with UN Manual of Tests and Criteria.

I had the same discussion here as well.

IMO, you are correct in your argument.

Andy

Cambridge on-line dictionary describes the word Flammable as 'something that burns easily' see: http://dictionary.cambri...h/flammable?q=flammable.

My old (1949) Oxford dictionary describes this word as '(rare and chiefly in none-) for inflammable'. Arguably using flammable alone is a miss-use of the word.

In light of your argument, you are both right or both wrong!

I recall discussions in my early training as a fire surveyor. Combustible was applied to anything that will burn, given an ignition source eg roof timbers, furniture, cardboard boxes, pallets, clothing, paper etc, whilst highly flammable referred to gases, liquids that had a flash point lower than paraffin (probably Petroleum Consolidation Act or Highly Flammable Liquids etc Regs). I can't now remember what were the criteria for flammable. Non-combustible construction was stone, brick or concrete.

I have noted that the terms combustible and flammable now seem to be more interchangeable although I still refer to everyday solid items that burn as combustible and liquids and gases as flammable.

Notwithstanding the above, the original question did not mention anything about FRAs...

I was asked only the other day what is the difference between flammable and inflammable. I responded nothing, they are one and the same. Now try explaining that one to a layman!

Oh and Sorry Ray... original question said.

See Stuff4Blokes who I think has the answer. The word you should be using is combustable. In a fire RA you should be looking for the triangle - oxygen- nearly always present, a source of ignition hot enough and sustained long enough to ignite a combustible material and a material that will support combustion (i.e. not self extinguish). By example sparks from an angle grinder can strike cardboard with little outcome for sometime but sparks on methanol will cause ignition. Cardboard is Flammable (Flame-able) but only with an ignition source hot enough and sustained long enough to create a flamable vapour. (remember it is NOT the cardboard that burns but the vapours given off when they exceed their flash point)

teh_boy, apologies you are correct - must get down to Specsavers...

thanks for all the comments, I will continue to call cardboard combustible.:).and continue to have the view that its substances such as petrol, propane etc that are flammable!..cheers

I do remember being told by a cardboard box manufacturer that the cardboard flats were incombustible. I had asked him to improve his FLT charging arrangements and had explained the high fire risk involved due to their stock.

When he said "incombustible" I had to check he wasn't joking, then I was just speechless.

I always meant to go back and ask him why his warehouse burnt down 3 months later (a disgruntled ex-employee) if the cardboard had been incombustible.

Inflammable.

Word used in petroleum licencing legislation that for many years has been due for consolidation not least as a very significant proportion of the population think that it means non-flammable.

Stevie40 - Though I'm not sure what cardboard flats are, I guess you were referring to individual pieces of flat cardboard or more likely stacks of such pieces. Though it's agreed that cardboard is combustible, it's probably quite difficult to ignite stacks of the stuff in the same way that it's difficult to ignite telephone directories or reels of paper without plenty of heat and air (to provide the oxygen). The same goes for sizeable pieces of wood.

However, expanding the surface areas of such substances, e.g. by machining wood to create wood shavings & sawdust or scrumpling up some pages from a telephone directory, will make them readily combustible. This underlies why people use scrumpled paper and fine peices of wood (kindling) to get wood fires or even coal fires going. If cardboard box maker's warehouse mostly contained stacks of flat cardboard, the disgruntled employee no doubt would have made sure of getting one or more good fires going (perhaps using flammable or highly flammable liquids) in order to provide sufficient heat to get the stacks well alight. If he also opened doors and vents, this would have helped to provide plenty of air.

By contrast, about 10 years ago two older pupils in one of my employer's primary schools decided to start a fire in the small storeroom of their classroom during a morning break. (The girls weren't being malicious or from troubled family backgrounds, just wanting some excitement - perhaps "cotton wool" kids - and curious to see what would happen if a fire occurred at their school.) Using matches from home they tried to set fire to a tall stack of A4 sheets of paper. Fortunately the girls were far from competent in their fire-raising intent: Only the top few sheets of the stack burned. Also, the girls closed the storeroom door after starting the fire. Therefore, the amount of oxygen available from the air in the room became limited and subsequently hindered combustion. Thus, when the class teacher next went into the storeroom sometime after the break, she was surprised to smell smoke inside and see some charred pieces of paper on top of the paper stack.

Pikeman's comments are spot on. Even if most people don't understand the terminology involved in this topic and the differing properties of substances in different forms, it is imperative that OS&H professionals do and furthermore take available opportunities to enlighten others.

Peter Gotch rightly mentions petroleum licencing legislation. The people who first drafted it many years ago probably had little grasp of accurate terminology, and perhaps used or even devised a petrol variant of "inflammation" (reddening/swelling of skin or muscle, etc.) as used in medical terminology. If so, this was probably in spite of the prefix "in" being well established as a simple means of reversing the meaning of words, e.g. edible & inedible, and, of course, combustible & incombustible!

And of course, the medical term inflammation is directly related to inflammable. When there is inflammation, something is inflamed - that is, as if on fire. It's all from the same Latin root (and in Latin, the prefix "in" can mean either "in" or "not").

Many thanks to Kate with her knowledge of Latin for clearly explaining the origin of "inflammable". Fare better than guesses like mine. I wish I'd done Latin at school - it was available as an optional subject but, like most of my fellow pupils, I didn't think it was of much use at the time. In retrospect it would have come in handy, not least for tackling difficult crosswords.

However, prompted by Bleve's concluding line below, I recall from reading "Fahrenheit 451" as part of school English Literature that the book's title refers to the temperature at which paper will combust (auto-ignite?).

I couldn't remember the name of the author, so have just googled to find it's Ray Bradbury - and also that the actual combustion temperature of paper is cited as 852 degrees F (450 degrees C). The webpage I looked at said Bradbury chose "Fahrenheit 451" as the title because it looked better. However, Bradbury apparently said later that someone at his local fire department (USA) told him that "Book-paper catches fire at 451 degrees Fahrenheit".

Aren't these forum posts great?

I would have never thought I would read such an entertaining, educational and passionate discussion about cardboard!

I notice that there has been a number of references to a high flash point associated with cardboard within this thread. For clarity, flash point has no relevance wrt solid materials. We should be making reference to piloted and unpiloted ignition by way of temperature or heat flux.

WRT the reference to a triangle of fire, on a professional level it is better to consider a tetrahedron ;}