Safety Moon Shot: How Fire Research Cut Deaths by Half in a Generation

In the 1970s, NASA researchers developed a device that could detect smoke on a space station.  

While smoke alarms existed previously, they were expensive and large. 

After this advancement in technology from NASA, fire researchers at NIST (then known as the National Bureau of Standards) wrote a paper about how to create standards for these devices and drastically reduce their size and cost. 

That paper was shared with Underwriters Laboratories — the organization that still sets standards for smoke alarms. This helped lead to the smoke alarms we have today in homes and buildings that have saved countless lives. 

Around the same time, Congress passed the Federal Fire Prevention and Control Act of 1974, a law designed to create a unified government approach to preventing and responding to fires. At the time, there were more than 6,000 fire deaths per year. 

The Fire Safety Moon Shot 

In 1976, John Lyons, who led NIST’s fire research, set an ambitious goal of reducing fire deaths by half within a generation. This was the fire equivalent of the race to the Moon. 

“Many naysayers said it would never happen,” said Richard Gann, who spent nearly all of his 52-year fire science career at NIST and is now a senior scientist emeritus. “It was especially impressive when you think that houses last much longer than 20 or 30 years, so building changes take a long time to have an effect. Some of these changes involved flammability of mattresses, and people only buy new mattresses every seven to 10 years. It’s a long haul between the research and the full realization of the payoff.” 

But thanks to government efforts, responsive product manufacturing and societal change, the U.S. met that goal. Today, fire deaths still hover around half that number while the U.S. population has increased by more than 120 million. 

Many factors contributed to the decrease in fire fatalities. High on the list was smoke alarms being installed in nearly all homes. Another cluster of factors involved cigarettes: a decline in the number of Americans who smoked and regulations that made cigarettes less likely to start deadly fires. 

In the 1980s, Gann led a study that found it was possible to create a cigarette that was less likely to cause furniture and mattress fires. Further NIST research over the next two decades, along with laws that mandated less fire-prone cigarettes, led to a 30% reduction in cigarette-initiated fire deaths in the U.S. 

Burning Burgers to Build a Better Smoke Detector 

More recently, NIST researchers studied the sensitivity of home smoke alarms. The goal is for the devices to detect fires more accurately while recognizing the difference between smoke from an actual fire and smoke from cooking. 

This involved cooking food — often to a well-done state — in NIST’s fire laboratories.

“NIST staff found out that frozen hamburger patties were serious offenders for setting off the detectors. They burned a lot of hamburgers in our fire lab,” Gann explains with a laugh.  

Smoke Alarm vs. Bacon

Researchers have shared this information with Underwriters Laboratory, and new requirements for smarter smoke alarms went into effect earlier this year. 

This is life-saving research because every time someone pulls a smoke alarm from a ceiling due to a nuisance cooking alarm and doesn’t put it back, the detector can’t do its job. 

NIST has made many major impacts over the last 50 years to improve fire safety and save lives. As part of the law’s anniversary observation this week, Gann and NIST’s Fire Research Division have documented this history on NIST’s website.

Measuring Fire 

NIST Fire Research Division Chief Matthew Hoehler emphasizes that one of NIST’s critical roles in fire safety is advancing the understanding of fire behavior. 

NIST fire research provides essential data, enabling policymakers and industry professionals to make informed decisions on fire safety regulations and policies. NIST’s findings are used to update building codes that reflect the latest fire science. 

“As an organization, we’ve had a sustained focus for decades on giving people tools to quantify fire and its effects on people, property and the environment. In the absence of that information, you’re poking around the dark,” Hoehler explains.  

As wildfires become more common and spread into populated areas, NIST’s fire researchers are increasingly focused on understanding a fire’s impact on communities and sharing that knowledge with other federal agencies and the public. Last year, NIST released reports offering wildfire preparedness recommendations. This included guidance for communities that do not have enough time to safely evacuate their residents. 

 “We’re not just running experiments, but we are also in the field documenting the impact of wildfire on communities and developing new measurement technology and techniques to understand important phenomena,” Hoehler said.  

While wildfires are a scientific challenge, NIST’s fire researchers are determined to keep learning how to help us protect ourselves and our homes. The work does require a long-term perspective, as this research sometimes takes decades before it affects building codes or practice. 

“You need perseverance when you work in this field, but we know we’re impacting people in a way that’s very direct,” Hoehler said. “We’re making a difference.”