Chemistry is a "closed book" for many people. The voluntary nature of dealing with it is therefore also rather low. But especially in the fire department, which is strongly characterized by volunteerism, a reasonable basic knowledge of chemistry is indispensable if you want to understand the interrelationships.

And this applies not only to those firefighters who are on duty in the hazardous materials groups/brigades and are entrusted with combating NBC hazards. Or the plant fire departments in the chemical industry, who - it is thought - come into contact with hazardous materials much more frequently. It concerns all fire department members - even if depending upon size and range of tasks in different characteristics. The participant in the basic firefighting training course has just as many "chemical" topics as the graduate of the German B-IV course (= company leader of the whole-time fire brigade). The whole is deepened both in the NBC specialized courses, in training to CBRN / CBRNE danger situations or the regular out and advanced training of crews and high-level personnel.

This book explains scientific facts and relates them to possible hazards at the incident site. Safety-related key figures are explained on the basis of chemical-physical properties and their relevance for operations is explained. Embedded in the basics of general, inorganic and organic chemistry, questions concerning the selection of binding agents, the neutralization of acids as well as the fire behavior of plastics and the effect of flame retardants are addressed. In addition, the areas of radioactivity and radiation protection, chemical warfare agents and bioweapons, and the processes involved in burning and extinguishing are covered, so that the entire spectrum of "chemistry for the fire department" is covered.

The Author

Torsten Schmiermund has worked as a chemical technician in the chemical industry for many years and has been a district instructor for the volunteer fire department since 2005.

This book is a translation of the original German 1st edition Das Chemiewissen für die Feuerwehr by Torsten Schmiermund, published by Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature in 2019. The translation was done with the help of artificial intelligence (machine translation by the service DeepL.com). A subsequent human revision was done primarily in terms of content, so that the book will read stylistically differently from a conventional translation. Springer Nature works continuously to further the development of tools for the production of books and on the related technologies to support the authors.