Otago Witness Illustrations.

Otago Witness, Issue 2811, 29 January 1908, Page 43

Otago Witness Illustrations.

The Dunedin City Corporation's Waitati- Leith Water Supply: Views in the Vicinity of the Intake.

DANGER IN FLANNELETTE.

INTERESTING EXPERIMENTS.

Warnings of lurking danger in flannelette clothes have often been issued, and Mr William Thomson, F.R.S.Ed., has carried out some experiments at the request of the Manchester and Salford Sanitary Association to test the iustification for ths supposed excessive inflammability of this

material. The difference between ordinary calico or cloth and flannelette, it may be explained, is that the latter has a " nap '" which is produced upon it by " raising " one or both surfaces by passing it over revolving rollers provided with steel teeth. It is this "nap" which produces the feeling of warmth that has made flannelette so popular, and it is in this also that the danger from fire is believed to reside. Mr Thomson's experiments, however, show that though the nap is easily ignited the flame does not, under ordinary conditions, spread far, nor does it contain sufficient

TRACK THROUGH THE' WAITATI BUSH, LEADING TO THE INTAKE.

heat to 6et fire to the body of the flannelette. With a view of studying what happens when the clothing of a child takes fire, Mr Thomson made up a dummy form of a child, put over it a nightdress 25in long, and brought a flame into contact with the dress near the feet. It was necessary to keep the flame in contact with the dress for ' quite a considerable time before it ignited — say from three to five seconds. The flame of a Bunsen burner sin long. | could be passed leisurely over the fabric without igniting it. When, however, the

(Photos by Stuart.)

fabric became ignited the flame would reach the face of the child within three seconds in the case of the lowest class of flannelette, and in four seconds in the case of good calico. It is calculated that it would be possible to 6ave the life of the child if the flame were extinguished within three seconds of the ignition taking place, and that the child would probably be fatally burned if seven seconds elapsed between the ignition and the extinguishing of the flame.

The conclusions at which Mr Thomson arrived are that it is advisable for chil-

ANOTHER VIEW FEOM THE TRACK, LOOKING TOWARDS WAITATI

dren's dresses to be made of wool, or * mixture of wool and cotton, or of flannelette which has bgen treated to render it non-inflammable; but, in his opinion, there is no more danger in clothing children in flannelette than in the cloth previous to its being "raised" or converted into flannelette. He states that he wa6 struck by th» fact that none of the retail dealers whom he visited had in their shops any flannelette which had been rendered non-inflammable, and he was told that very few of the customers regarded ordinary flannelette a 6 dangerous.