Thermal decomposition products of polyvinyl chloride

When plastics are involved in a fire they may yield toxic decomposition products. Some quantitative data on the decomposition products of plastics are available in the literature, but it is difficult to assess the danger from the different amounts of various products because of the absence of a suitable method of evaluation. The authors have proposed a method of evaluation based on pyrolysis followed by gas chromatographic analysis and have used it to assess toxicity from various thermal decomposition products of polyvinyl chloride. Hydrogen chloride was found to be the main toxic decomposition product.