Composite pallets spark debate
Sprinkler code changes for pallet storage could cost industry billions.
By Chris Gillis
A composite wood pallet ' is it wood or plastic?
According to the National Association of State Fire Marshals' standard for building sprinklers, they should be designated plastic. This means that many warehouses used to store pallets may be operating with insufficient sprinkler systems and risk penalties from state fire marshals.
'The type of pallet used for the design then becomes a condition of occupancy to ensure the sprinkler system can do its job effectively if a fire occurred,' said the fire marshals group in a September 2008 bulletin. 'Unfortunately, due to changes in the pallet industry, thousands of facilities across the nation now contain pallets that are in violation of the initial consideration, which will cause a fire to overwhelm the level of sprinkler protection present.'
To maximize nail withdraw resistance and dimensional stability, the shipping industry has embraced wood pallets containing composite blocks, made from wood chips and sawdust bound together by resin.
The 2007 edition of the National Fire Protection Association 13 code ' 'Standard for the Installation of Sprinkler Systems' (section 3.9.1.16), which the state fire marshals follow, considers wood composites a form of plastic, requiring pallets that contain the material to either have an Underwriters Laboratories 2335 listing, a two-commodity class sprinkler protection upgrade, or large 16.8 k-factor sprinkler protection. Only pallets made entirely of wood with metal fasteners are defined as 'wood' pallets, according to the NFPA-13.
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'The job of the inspector enforcing a model fire code includes assessing if any changes have been made to the occupancy or activities that would negatively affect the operation of the automatic fire sprinkler system,' the NASFM bulletin said. 'A change in pallet type would be an example of a potential violation.'
The NASFM warned that if pallets don't meet the building sprinkler's design approval, 'they should be ordered out of the facility immediately and until such time the system is upgraded to handle the increased fire loading or an analysis is provided documenting the capability of the existing systems to handle the increased fire load.'
The National Wooden Pallet and Container Association, whose more than 700 members represent 40 percent of the wood packaging industry, said the NASFM's proposal would significantly alter the existing compliance standards for pallets, potentially costing product manufacturers, agriculture, trucking companies, warehouses and retail stores billions of dollars to comply.
| Scholnick |
'I was told by a safety engineer from a national food distributor the cost to his company would be approximately $2 billion, and that's just one company,' said Bruce Scholnick, president and chief executive officer for the National Wooden Pallet and Container Association.
It's estimated in the United States that more than 100,000 facilities at any given time store pallets as part of their business. There are about 1.2 billion wood pallets and about 75 million plastic pallets in circulation throughout the country.
'When addressing the use of composite blocks in wood pallets, it should be recognized that 95 percent of the pallet remains wood,' Scholnick said in comments to the NASFM's proposal. 'The blocks themselves are primarily wood chips bound by an adhesive (urea formaldehyde) that does not contain chemical components similar to those of plastic. Furthermore, that material does not make a wood pallet a plastic pallet any more than the nails used to hold boards together make it a metal pallet.'
Wood pallet suppliers warn that enforcement of the NASFM proposal would be challenging at best for inspectors.
'Because a wood pallet containing one or more composite wood blocks looks very similar to a nine-block all-wood pallet, inspectors and business owners alike will be hard pressed to judge whether an idle stack of pallets meets the NFPA-13 definition of 'plastic' or wood,' said Kevin Shuba, group president of CHEP Americas, the largest U.S. wood pallet pool operator, in its comments to NASFM. 'It will surely look like a stack of wood pallets.
'This difficulty is compounded by the fact that wood pallets are frequently repaired during their lifetimes, and those pallets may contain a mix of composite and all-wood blocks,' he said.
Of the 1.2 billion wood pallets on the market, less than 1 percent would meet the NASFM's proposed certification requirement. 'This requirement would obviously provide a lucrative new revenue source to a certification entity,' Scholnick said.
Allbusiness.com estimates that there are about 15 fire fatalities in warehouses each year, but offers no evidence that pallets are the cause of the fires.
'Given the nature of sprinkler protection in most manufacturing and shipping facilities, which were designed to contain wooden pallet fires, we believe that the idle storage of all wood or wooden pallets containing composite wood blocks is properly managed and protected,' Shuba said.
Since both Factory Mutual and Underwriters Laboratories are in the process of reviewing their product standards that would apply to the idle storage of wooden pallets containing composite blocks, Shuba said it would be premature for NASFM to enact its proposed changes until this work is complete and fully reviewed.
Not everyone is opposed to the fire marshal association's initiative to count composite wood pallets as plastic.
Nicholas S. Galakis, managing director of ACS Group, a risk management firm in the insurance industry, called NASFM's bulletin 'a clear path to audit, evaluate and remediate a potentially hazardous situation.
'My experience with this issue is that if ignored it can create a very high uncontrolled exposure hazard,' he added. 'While plastic pallets have gained much notoriety as a potentially high fire and life safety exposure, little attention has been given to their wooden counterparts. My guess is that people are complacent about wood pallets due to their familiarity with them and the false comfort people have with wooden products in general.'
'The NASFM draft should be issued and implemented in its current form without further delay,' said Rex Lowe, president of Intelligent Global Pooling Systems, operator of an all-plastic pallet pool. iGPS, relatively new to the market, has promoted the safety of fire retardant decabromine encased in its plastic pallets.
Decabromine, which is U.S. government-approved for household and workplace products, such as upholstery, carpet, drapery, television and computer cabinets, and electronic wire insulation, has its own safety concerns. Washington and Maine have banned the use of decabromine, and six others are considering taking similar action. Dell and IKEA have already phased out the use of the chemical in their products.
A May 20, 2008 CBS Evening News report pointed up potential conflicts of interest between NASFM and the decabromine industry. The report noted that the association accepted money from decabromine makers Albermerle and Chemtura, and shares a lobbyist with the industry, Sparber & Associates. In addition, the International Association of Fire Fighters, which represents about 300,000 firefighters, has raised health and safety concerns about exposure to decabromine during fires.
'The properties of wood have not changed in thousands of years,' Scholnick said. 'The fact that minute particles are being added to wood does not change those properties to a degree that would warrant alteration of existing warehouse infrastructure.'
The NASFM held an industry stakeholders meeting at the Underwriters Laboratories' offices in Northbrook, Ill., on March 12 to discuss fire safety issues regarding stored pallets and to solicit feedback.
Numerous pallet industry representatives attended the meeting, including CHEP, iGPS, American Pallet Co., PalletOne, PECO Pallet, Treen Box & Pallet, IFCO Systems, and the National Wooden Pallet and Container Association.
'The meeting went well and NASFM's intentions were made clear. We also heard the concerns of various segments of the pallet industry,' Jim Narva, NASFM chief project manager, told American Shipper.
'It is NASFM's approach to resolving issues that we work using an 'enterprise' approach where all the stakeholders are part of the discussions and we work collaboratively to find solutions. That takes cooperation and communication as well as honest efforts and understanding to accomplish,' he said. 'We're hopeful this issue will proceed in that manner and expect that it will.'
NASFM agreed at the stakeholders meeting to form a working group of interested parties to develop a training and education program for use by code enforcement personnel who inspect the adequacy of fire protection for pallet storage. NASFM said it would form the working group by April 15.
'It's expected that the training and education program would be provided on a regional basis where NASFM, code enforcement officials, as well as those within the various segments of the pallet industry, and others would be welcome to participate,' Narva said.
A rollout of the training program, or a report of its development, is expected at the NASFM's annual conference in Redmond, Wash. on June 19-21. For more details and updates access www.firemarshals.org/programs/code-enforcement-training-and-support/.