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Image: Soot by sunlight, by Tim Sandle.
We all have a basic notion of what smoke is. For example, maybe you have witnessed a home on fire. You see flames coming out of a window or a roof, but mostly, what you see are billowing clouds of black, grayish and even some white smoke.
After firefighters extinguish the blaze, the floors, furniture, ceiling, carpets and just about everything inside the structure will be coated in black soot.
The difference between smoke and soot is distinct. Simply put, smoke is that substance that is airborne and escapes upward into the atmosphere. Soot is solid matter that is deposited on physical objects.
Think of it this way: Smoke is what flies up a chimney and out into the air. Soot is that which sticks to the side of a chimney and can build up dangerously to pose hazards, such as a chimney fire. That’s why chimney sweeps are needed to clean away soot build-up on the interior surfaces of chimneys as a matter of routine maintenance.
So, smoke creates soot, although soot is also generated and deposited directly by a burning substance. Most people think of the byproduct of burning to be ash. However, there is a difference between ash and soot. Ash is defined as “inorganic, incombustible residue” that is generally gray or white in color but can also be black.
Soot, on the other hand, is most often black and sticky and manifests as a “coating” on surfaces. Ash is generally deposited on the ground or inside a burning device, such as a wood stove.
Toxic and Dangerous
Both soot and smoke are highly toxic substances.
For example, smoke from a house fire may contain up to 265 known cancer-causing agents. Smoke is made up of tiny particulate matter of wide variety. A combination of heat and atmospheric dynamics is what gives these billions of tiny particles to act as that flowing and amorphous “cloud” we identify as smoke.
Breathing in smoke is dangerous because the toxic particulates can be deposited inside the soft human tissues of lungs. That includes smoke from natural substances, such as trees in a forest.
However, smoke from man-made items tends to be far worse and more dangerous. Think of all the different chemicals and substances that make up, say, a chair or items of plastic. Both are comprised of dozens of different chemicals, synthetic substances along with natural fibers and other components.
Soot is also riddled with hundreds or even thousands of different substances that have their origin in the objects that were burned. Scientists say that determining the number of different substances in soot is virtually impossible because of the enormous amount of complexity and the high rate of variables from which soot is produced.
Suffice it to say that soot, like smoke, is highly toxic both when inhaled and exposed to the skin.
Coping with Smoke and Soot
Smoke and soot are a part of life, whether they are generated by a natural forest fire, the smokestack of a chemical factory, soot build-up inside a chimney or the soot that clings to and penetrates everything inside a home in the wake of a fire.
That’s why there is an entire industry of professionals who are highly trained to resolve damage issues related to soot and smoke in the aftermath of a fire -- or for routine maintenance, as when a chimney sweep professional removes soot and ash build-up as a preventative measure.
Written by Taylor McKnight, Author for Fresh Sweeps
Pharmaceutical Microbiology Resources (http://www.pharmamicroresources.com/)