Cotton, Polyester and safety.

I recall from chemistry lab that we weren’t supposed to wear anything made of polyester or other plastics, because in a fire or other accident it would melt and stick to the skin. I believe they did allow blends, but not below a certain percentage of natural fibers. On the other hand, searching about it turns up some pages like this: link that say that 100% polyester or nylon are safer for kids to wear because they don’t readily ignite.

I’ve been buying some new clothes lately. I figure I might be involved in a fire, car accident or chemical spill sometime in my hopefully long life, and if I am I won’t know when it will happen ahead of time. I’m not clear on which is the greater danger, ignition or melting, but because of those lab rules I’ve been avoiding synthetics. Am right in doing this? What kind of fabrics are safest for me to go about wearing?

NOMEX is fire-resistant. Pretty pricey stuff. On the plus side, chicks dig flight suits!

No, I’m talking about everyday clothes. I only have one flight suit, it was made in 1958 and I don’t know if they had Nomex back then. I haven’t tried it out on the chicks, but it’s a heavy insulated one so I guess I could in the coming months.

I realize that the title should have been Cotton, polyester and safety.

I’m far from an expert on clothing safety, but cotton can be very flammible. Particularly if it’s frayed and fuzzy. One old survival trick is to lighiting a fire is to take pick at some cotton(prefferably from a sock since it’s less tightly woven anyway) and pick at it until you have a very loose ball. Then any simple spark will ignite it very easily.

Former USAF & Commercial pilot …

Nomex came into USAF flight suits in the mid-late '60s. Your 1958 model is almost certainly cotton with wool insulation. It may have once had a fire-retardant coating, like kids PJs do now, but that would have washed out after a few washings.

USAF procedure in the 1980s was that all your underwear, etc, had to be non-synthetic. Standard airline safety advice for both crews & passengers is to avoid synthetics as well.
The point to ponder between which clothing to avoid is to decide which threat you’re trying to avoid.

Airplane accidents create truly massive & intense fires. If you are in the fire, whether your clothes are flammable or not is immaterial; you’re a crispy critter either way.

Aviation avoids synthetics because you can easily be far enough from the fire not to get seriously burnt, yet the heat flux will still melt your nylon jacket onto your bare arm. At that same distance, your frayed cotton jacket wouldn’t even begin to char, much less catch fire from the same heat flux.
OTOH, if you are often exposed to small open flame, say bunsen burners, then frayed anything is dangerous. The cuff of a cotton shirt with dangling cotton threads will catch fire about as readily as a poly shirt with poly threads. Heck, I believe that most cotton or poly shirts are put together with poly/cotton thread, so the initial ignition source is equally vulnerable regardless of the shirt’s primary material.

I question that website’s assertion that 100% nylon or polyester is hard to ignite or tends to self-extinguish.
For avoiding flash burns and minimizing the effect of chemical spills, wearing long sleeve shirts & long pants vs short is more important than what they’re made of. Two layers are better than one, e.g. lab coat over long sleeve shirt at work, windbreaker over long sleeve shirt out in public.

If you’re concerned about large spills of noxious stuff, cowboy boots are much better than loafers or sneakers. A sock full of even a moderate acid/base will damage your foot pretty quickly, which can impede your escape. Ditto jet fuel or other petroleum products.

If you have occupational exposure to a specific threat, I’d say wear what’s prescribed as best for that threat. Your non-work life is real unlikely to contain specific threats for which your work clothes are a truly bad choice.
Bottom line:

Absent specific information to the contrary, personally I’d still avoid the plastic over the natural, simply because the natural is easier & quicker to extinguish & a fire doesn’t spread as readily. Natural fibers are much more chemically complex than a synthetic and are therefore IMHO less likely to react en masse to a particular contaminant whatever it may be.

But I don’t know if my opinion is well-founded or just a reaction to a professional lifetime of being told plastic=dangerous, natural=safe, and being safe is job #1.

I just noticed my personal wardrobe is all-but 100% cotton, wool, or silk; all long sleeve or leg; and almost always includes boots. I never bought any of it thinking of safety. I guess that subconscious conditioning stuff works.

This http://www.osha.gov/dts/osta/otm/otm_viii/otm_viii_1.html is OSHA’s take on chemical hazard protection.

It appears the best advice on fire protection is available from here: http://www.nfpa.org/aboutthecodes/AboutTheCodes.asp?DocNum=2112 & http://www.nfpa.org/aboutthecodes/AboutTheCodes.asp?DocNum=2113

Unfortunately, the NFPA charges money for their valuable & well-researched advice.

Here’s some more expert advice Workplace Safety and Health Topics | NIOSH | CDC

Do they have rules regarding contact lenses? Hubby works in a prison and was always warned that some of the gasses that they use could cause big problems with people wearing contacts and thus, it’s safer to wear eyeglasses.

All the welders where I used to work wore leather boots, and cotton from ankle to neck. The gloves were “hot mill” gloves, thick fuzzy cotton. The first thing the welders did after putting on a new pair was to use a torch to burn off the surface fuzz. They all wore cotton hats, too. Cotton will burn, of course, but when you strip off a burning cotton garment, it won’t stick to your flesh.

Contact lenses are generally barred in labs, and are considered a bad idea anywhere you might be exposed to chemicals. A friend of mine has had to get waivers to wear her contacts in the lab; she’s so nearsighted glasses don’t really correct her vision.

The basic problem is that the lenses make it difficult to flush chemicals out of the eye. They physically trap chemicals (and dust, etc.) against the eyeball, and a lens-wearer may hesitate to flush the eyes when it means rinsing the lenses down the drain. Glasses can somewhat shield you against dust and splashes, though not fumes (they’re never a substitute for proper goggles, of course!), and they’re easily removed to rinse the eyes.

One would have to balance the fire-resistant properties of cotton (whatever they may be) against the moisture-retaining properties that can contribute to hypothermia. It is up to you to decide which risk you are exposed to more often. It would be a bit ironic to congratulate yourself for the campfire sparks snuffing out on your jeans while they slowly freeze solid.

I once got a rather unpleasent burn on my fingers from melted nylon. Once. I’ll never make that mistake again. I was fusing the end of a rope (melting it together so it wouldn’t fray), and forgot to dunk it in water before handling it. Of course, I immediately dunked it (and my hand) after the burn, but it was still stuck to me a little. Cotton might not be too hard to ignite, but it’s also not going to be too hard to extinguish, and you won’t get very much heat out of the small patch of cotton that’s actually going to burn before you can douse it.

While putting out a house fire I grabbed a bead headboard that had melted nylon curtains on it. That burn became infected and my hand rotted to the point I could see the bones in one place on my palm.

A long painful recovery on that one.

Heat that sticks = bad.

bead = bed ::: sheesh :::