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An LACoFD plane dropping retardant on the fire. Photo by Jeri Seratti-Goldman.

How To Clean The Red Phos-Chek Off Your Property

While the luckier victims of the Sand Fire will come home to houses in tact, they might notice a red, flame-retardant substance on their property. #SandFire


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Phos-Chek fire retardants have been assisting in firefighting efforts for more than 50 years, a sight many might recognize from the red powdery trail that it leaves when it’s dropped from a C-130E Hercules onto a brushfire.

But once people find out their home is OK, the next question might be, “Now, how do I get the red powder off my property?”

“The most important thing to know is that it’s 100 percent water-soluble,” said George Matousek, a longtime employee and “product steward” at Phos-Chek.

While many try to go the pressure-washer route, that’s a bad idea, Matousek said, because the force is too much and it can push the powder farther into whatever surface one’s trying to remove it from, especially if it’s a porous surface like concrete.

“Just use your regular, municipal water supply with a hose, you don’t need a special nozzle,” Matousek said.

The steps to remove it are simple, he said. Simply wet down the area, soaking it thoroughly where the powder has been dropped, let it sit for five to 10 minutes and then rinse and repeat.

The product should come out on its own after a couple washing, but if there’s a trail, a gentle nylon brush should be enough to scrub away the rest, Matousek added. “You don’t want to damage the surface.”

Matousek also warned against the accumulation of puddles. The Phos-Chek flame retardant is nontoxic, but it has a high salt concentration that can irritate an animal’s digestive system.

And as with most cleaning, the faster you get the red powder off your property, it’s likley the easier the removal will be, Matousek said.

“The best way to get it off is to get to it as soon as possible,” Matousek said, adding he knows sometimes evacuations can make that difficult, “the sooner the better.”

Originally in Ontario, and now in Rancho Cucamonga, the company, which is owned by ICL Performance Products out of St. Louis, protects lands around the world from fire.

 

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How To Clean The Red Phos-Chek Off Your Property

2 comments

  1. Can Phos-Chek be used in a pre-fire prevention mode, i.e., drop it on ridges or areas the fire might burn prior, so it creates a fire barrier. Drop it along brush areas near Fwys (14; 5N) or in areas that haven’t burned, but potentially could with say a truck or car fire?? Just a thought, any ideas why it’s not done?

  2. The USFS takes over 2 years conducting “rigorous” tests to ensure that the chemicals are safe for firefighters, citizens and the environment.

    As part of a lawsuit brought against the US Forest Service by Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics, in 2008, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service admitted that toxic chemicals dumped on forest fires threaten the existence of dozens of federally protected species of plants and wildlife. In the two most comprehensive Endangered Species Act opinions in history, both agencies exhaustively documented the environmental threat posed by these chemicals.

    The NMFS found that chemical fire retardant is likely to jeopardize the continued existence of 26 of our nation’s most imperiled fish species. The FWS analysis painted the same grim picture for scores of threatened plants.

    The California EPA brought in Professor Scott D. Cooper to determine what killed fish in Maria Ygnacio Creek following the Jesusita Fire in Santa Barbara County, CA in mid-May 2009.

    The fish kill was noted immediately after Phos Chek was dropped on a hot spot in the upper Maria Ygnacio basin and occurred downstream of sites where Phos Chek was observed in the stream, so it seems likely that Phos Chek elevated ammonia levels resulting in the fish kill.

    Professor Cooper noted that the Material Safety Data Sheet provided by the USFS for Phos-Chek 259F are within the range of values reported in the literature; however, the 96-h LC50 values for rainbow trout reported on the Material Safety Data Sheet for Phos-Chek D-75F (> 1000 mg/L) are clearly in error, being approximately an order of magnitude higher than Phos-Check 96-h LC50 values reported in the literature.

    The Material Safety Data Sheets for these Phos-Chek formulations also are misleading because they list both forms of Phos-Chek as being “practically nontoxic” based on reported 96-hr LC50 values. Given the vast hatchery, aquaculture, aquarium, and fisheries literature on the toxic effects of ammonia on fish and on ways to mitigate ammonia impacts, it is very puzzling that Phos-Chek is listed as being
    practically nontoxic to aquatic life. Conclusions of the toxicity of a material depend on both concentrations of the major toxic component (e.g., ammonia)occurring in affected water bodies, as well as on the concentration of this component which kills aquatic organisms.

    Because fire retardants are applied as highly concentrated solutions, Gaikowski et al. (1996) concluded that “the possibility of concentrations close to the 96-h LC50 in the environment are real and render the terms “practically” and “relatively harmless” in this scenario to be irrelevant”. Although the Material Safety Data Sheets use the Passino and Smith (1987) system to develop their hazard ranking (“practically nontoxic”) for each material, this system does not appear to be applicable when fire retardants directly hit or enter streams.

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About Perry Smith

Perry Smith is a print and broadcast journalist who has won several awards for his focused, hyperlocal community coverage in several different regions of the country. In addition to five years of experience covering the Santa Clarita Valley, Smith, a San Fernando Valley native, has worked in newspapers and news websites in Los Angeles, the Northwest, the Central Valley and the South, before coming to KHTS in 2012. To contact Smith, email him at Perry@hometownstation.com.