Fire Safety Science Digital Archive

An experimental study was conducted in order to clarify a degree of human emotional instability under smoke condition. Mental arithmetic and walking speed were adopted as indices of the emotional instability, and furthermore an annoyance of smoke and heat was investigated by questionnaire. The emotional instability caused by physiological factors, such as smoke irritation, is found to be important as well as a psychological unrest under high irritant smoke. Such fire smoke affects the thinking power and walking speed. Especially the heat from smoke is found to reduce the thinking power in the range between 2,030 kcal/m² h and 1,370 kcal/m² h.