Environmental and Health Impacts of Fire: Primary and Secondary Effects in Local and Global Scale

Dear colleagues,

Environmental engineering remains correlated with fire safety engineering. Both domains share similar objectives—protecting people and the environment; applied methods—mass transport modeling and risk analysis; and fields of interest—construction and industry. Despite these close relationships, there are still gaps in the holistic evaluation of human-induced fires on the environment. The domain of fire safety engineering is mostly concentrated on fire dynamics and its immediate and local impact on people or property, ignoring mostly long-term and global-scale consequences for humans and the environment. On the other hand, environmental engineering scientists discuss mostly the problems of global-scale monitoring of the environment, the impact of pollution on life expectancy, as well as tracking back the source of the pollution. However, the type of burning material and the impact of air access to the fire on the particle formation, their transport and toxicity as well as the effects of firefighting tactics on the global health are rarely on the agendas of environmental engineers’ discussions.

The relationship between fires and the environment with respect to fire combustion processes seems crucial in the light of recent research. Regarding the scientific reports, enclosure fires are linked with human health exposure by primary and secondary contamination of the environment. Addressing these problems efficiently requires cooperation both fire safety engineering and environmental engineering. The joint effort of these two domains which can be also beneficial in large open fires that affect the environment is considered known. All the research improving existing solutions related to the limitation of the scale, consequences, duration and the health exposure of all types of fires will be very welcome.

The primary goal of this Special Issue is to bridge the gap between fire safety engineering and environmental engineering, creating the space for discussion related to the primary and secondary effects of fires on global health and the environment. Moreover, the Special Issue is also interested in practical methods and activities aimed at the limitation of the local and global consequences of fires.

Prof. Wioletta Rogula-Kozłowska
Prof. Paweł Ogrodnik
Prof. Adam Krasuski
Guest Editors

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