Hey new reason to go hippy granola in your household furnishings.

Plastic is very flammable. "from a fire perspective, a typical couch is akin to a block of gasoline."

"As flames rip through Los Angeles County, burning restaurants, businesses, and whole blocks of houses, it’s clear that the threat of urban fire has returned to the United States. But this time, the urban landscape is different: Modern homes are full of plastic, turning house fires into chemical-laced infernos that burn hotter, faster, and more toxic than their predecessors.

Firefighters are warning that the smoke pouring out of neighborhoods in Southern California is a poisonous soup, in part because of the ubiquity of plastics and other petrochemical products inside them. “It’s one of the reasons why we can’t put firefighters in front of these houses,” the Cal Fire battalion chief David Acuna told me on Monday. After any lifesaving work has been done, keeping firefighters in the toxic air is too great a risk."

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2025/01/los-angeles-fire-smoke-plastic-toxic/681318/