Can you hear anything? No? Well that's a huge problem because this working "smoke detector" should be freaking out right now but it thinks everything is just fine have been claiming that the
most common smoke alarms Americans use are dangerously flawed Did not go off until the room
was filled with thick smoke They will not detect certain types of
common fires in a home in a timely fashion The most common type has an alarming rate of failure… Alarming rate of failure…. Oh and here's the insidious part if I move that same smoke alarm to my kitchen where I'm cooking food and I open the door I think many of you know
what's about to happen <Alarming> Why is it alarming over nothing? Why is it alarming over nothing but also ignoring dangerous smoke? I got to the bottom of this and I want to show you how a flurry of engineering, science and regulation came together to save our lives but also left us with a dangerous
blind spot in detecting fires By the end we'll find out how this smoke alarm sausage is made and supposedly how these issues have finally been fixed in 2024 with these the new generation of alarms Let's talk about what that means and whether you can stop waving the white towel This video is brought to you by Novium more on them later Most of you know what a smoke alarm does, sense a fire and make a loud sound to get you out The earliest alarms started to be commercially available in the 1890s and
these were really simple: a thermometer and an alarm But the problem is when a
fire starts in another room, by the time the heat reaches the detector, your home is burning and you probably aren't making it out alive So inventors thought Why don't we detect smoke instead? You can see signs of a fire way before any heat reaches you In the 1930s the Ionization Alarm was invented and today make up 87% of all American alarms probably the ones you have at home But to understand why they're not detecting some types of smoke we need to take a closer look at the sensor So let's pop off the dome and see what's inside… Whoa! Radiation! In the middle is a small radioactive puck shooting out alpha particles like a
miniature fireworks show Ionizing aka charging the air above it with electricity which creates an electric current that the alarm can monitor When smoke crashes the party it's packed with a whole ton of smoke particles that act like a group of bullies knocking away the alpha particles and dropping the flow of electricity As more of these troublemakers rush in the current takes a nosedive and once it falls below a certain point the alarm goes off letting you know there's a problem <Alarming> This new technology was a game-changer! By the 70s these alarms were selling by the millions and have saved tens of thousands of lives since They've also brought with them a new source of frustration I can be cooking and seeing no smoke and the fire alarm goes off you're panicking you have to get a towel to wave at the fire alarm And it’s all really stressful So then What's the cause of all these false alarms? Turns out when you're cooking a meal there's a whole bunch of tiny
particles flying off your food and most of them are too small to see with your naked eye But to your ionization alarm it's a massive flood of particles
that look just like smoke That quickly drop the voltage and then… Sigh… how annoying But here's the thing that same sensitivity that drives you crazy is actually a lifesaver when it comes to detecting a type of fire called a flaming fire You know when you're cooking you get distracted cuz you're chatting up your girl and your food suddenly catches on fire Flaming fire This also gives off a ton of tiny particles that an ionization alarm quickly reacts to giving you time to put it out or escape your home So then, why is it sleeping on the job here? Turns out the sensor is detecting them, but it needs more smoke before it goes off because this is a different type of fire and it produces a different type of smoke particle Let me explain Let's say you're at home and you go to sleep with a cigarette in your hand or more likely today your power strip overheats and
it starts burning the material There's no flame but a ton of smoke This is a smoldering fire Just like what's happening here notice no flame but it's burning Zoom in And the smoke particles this time are HUGGGEE which is why the smoke is so visible Compared to what was coming out of the oven So then, why isn't the alarm going off? That's because smoldering fires
release way fewer particles and an ionization sensor is all about the number of particles It can't actually see how thick this smoke is So smoldering smoke has to
keep building and building before it finally goes off and during this time it's filling your home with
an especially toxic smoke Now imagine you're sleeping your sense of smell is on vacation, here comes carbon monoxide and other chemicals that put you into a deeper and deeper sleep... forever… But let's say the smoke doesn't get you Get out of here! Nobody likes you! If you don't extinguish a
smoldering fire fast enough… <PFFFFFFFFF> Thanks to modern construction
your sofa or mattress can become a roaring inferno
in as little as 3 minutes compared to 17 plus in vintage furniture and that's because older furniture was made from natural materials like linen and cotton Today we use synthetic
materials as they're cheaper, easier to clean but they also burn way faster thanks to their chemical structure Check this out natural materials are like a net they are bound together and require more time and energy to break apart while synthetic materials
are like gasoline for fire simple, uniform, and quick to release energy When working on my animations I sometimes reach for paper to think through ideas like whether I would show the
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story on ionization alarms and how they were slow to
the smoldering fire party Ionization alarms were accused of being too slow to save your life in a fire So couldn't manufacturers
just increase the sensitivity? Problem solved right? Well not quite as false alarms would happen even more and I think we know what most people will do next <Garbage, cat screaming> Wow, this is a problem and starting in the 90s This was getting public attention. They don't detect smoke, They're...uhhh they're nothing more than a flame detector I would have had the visibility
in order to find those keys, open those doors, get me and my children out of there and I wouldn't be talking to you today There are many people in graves today in Australia because they thought that they had the right type of alarm when they didn't When he says the 'The Right Type' he's talking about these a Photoelectric alarm and according to some firefighters and scientists these will save your life in a fire If we could wave the magic wand right now and eliminate all the ionization smoke alarms and replace them with photoelectric in the US we would save 1500 lives a year We would cut our fire deaths in half To understand why they thought
photoelectric was so much better let's get inside and see what makes it tick The most important change is the sensor and once I lift the dome it looks
completely different underneath as it now uses a light source and a light detector not radiation to pick up smoke Under normal conditions an LED creates light which bounces off the dome
and away from the light sensor but if we add a little smoke the light scatters and the sensor can detect more and more light until it passes a threshold triggering the alarm Remember the large, but few
particles in smoldering smoke? Now, it's easily seen and easily detected and those pesky cooking particles? They remain invisible until
you start burning your food which means you'll have far less false alarms that come out of nowhere So all those ionization
haters were telling everyone Ban Ionization! Photoelectric is the way to go! There's opposition though other experts and manufacturers who were like woah, hold on slow your roll Photoelectric sensors have a weakness they take longer at detecting flaming fires compared to ionization as visible smoke needs to build up first Trouble was, no one in the 90s really knew who was right as the current
studies were inconclusive The government, caught in the middle feeling the heat and were like "Fine, I'll do it myself!"😤 In the early 2000s a few agencies came together and forked over a million dollars to NIST The National Institute of Standards and Technology They bought buildings and wired them up with fancy equipment and
set different kinds of fires to understand how that affects smoke alarms For example how a smoldering chair in the living room will produce a different result from a flaming mattress in the bedroom or cooking oil in the kitchen area In the end 50 tests were run looking at
variables like type of detectors their location and whether doors were open or closed That study produced this 396 pages worth of documentation that only nerds would love Luckily for us There's an official Q&A that summarizes "do ionization detectors provide
enough time to save lives?" And here's what they found: in flaming fires both types of alarms provided
enough time for you to escape with ionization being a little faster In smoldering fires, ionization still gives you enough time
to escape but this time Photoelectric is faster… By 30 minutes! HUGE BIG This was the smoking gun for ionization critics <gun cocking>
See you in hell They used this data to lobby And require photoelectric alarms
to be used in a few states but unfortunately for them the study came to a different conclusion that both types of alarms are safe Most states kept the status quo legally you can use any alarm but they recommend in the fine print you should really have both
types for the best protection Of course barely anyone knows this and it never fixed the real problem Why can't we go to a store and buy a smoke alarm that works against all fires Well good news! That finally exists you just need to look for the new 8th generation of smoke alarms To understand we need to talk about who actually decides what's safe You see I used to think the government handled all safety standards But by the powers of the federal government private companies like UL are given the authority to set safety rules on some products
that manufacturers have to follow This includes smoke alarms and in America that standard is called UL 217 and starting June 30, 2024 all newly produced alarms must follow the new 8th generation standard which finally fixes the problems found in the government test The first deals with false alarms from cooking A hamburger is broiled and these new alarms have to resist the smoke created until there's a dense amount of it Second, it needs to quickly detect
smoldering polyurethane foam Remember this? That's polyurethane and over the last 40 years it has become the primary cushioning material in things like your mattress pillows and sofa It's also the deadly reason behind
the 30 minute delay in ionization alarms. When polyurethane foam smolders it produces 10x less particles than the paper
and wood used in UL's older tests and ionization alarms which rely on detecting particle numbers are incredibly slow at detecting this new common, and dangerous type of fire But all of that has finally been fixed with these new 8th generation alarms and they're available right now just like one... Wait, what? This is an ionization alarm?! It passed the new standard?! Weren't we just talking about how ionization was no good?! Well, I did some research and the solution is ingenious! In 2015 UL commissioned this enormous study on the characteristics of smoke, most importantly documenting
what different types of smoke look like to different sensors Like this graph Which shows how an ionization sensor sees smoldering wood and foam as being very different than broiling hamburgers manufacturers used data like this
to create new detection algorithms for 8th generation alarms Which are far more complicated
than older generation models that set off the alarm once smoke goes over
a programmed threshold In comparison In 8th generation alarms as smoke levels approaches the threshold it starts a giga-brain mode It’s analyzing the data coming in seeing how fast it's rising the smoothness, etc to see if it's a real fire or cooking smoke This is a simplified explanation of how decades
of science and engineering finally came together to finally fix the problems
with smoke alarms in America We can finally stop waving the white flag So you might be wondering should you rush out and replace your alarms with
these 8th generation models? First of all Check if the ones you have now actually work An old model is better than nothing On what to replace, here's my thoughts If you have ionization-only alarms in your house if any are older than 10 years or they go off while you're cooking It's time to replace them You can check if your alarm is ionization by looking at the back,
seeing if it has an "I" logo or says ionization or radiation. As of May 2024 only three companies offer
8th generation smoke alarms and if you're looking to get one, I've put together a comprehensive guide with my personal recommendations and additional research that'll save you time and energy helping you to decipher critical
features like interconnection which links up all your alarms in your home You can find that guide in the description below Finally, check out our sponsor Novium I really like their Hoverpen
2.0 Interstellar edition it writes wonderfully and it's a fantastic addition to my desk. It also makes for a great gift Use the link in the description Thanks to all of you who are still watching this has taken months to put together and I hope this makes a difference in your life See you in the next one Subscribe for more
