ISO 26367-1:2019

Overview

ISO 26367-1:2019 - "Guidelines for assessing the adverse environmental impact of fire effluents - Part 1: General" is an ISO umbrella document that frames how to assess the environmental consequences of fire effluents. It focuses on emissions and run-off from fires in commercial, domestic, industrial, agricultural and transport settings (road, rail, maritime). This second edition (2019) is intended to guide development of protocols for assessing local and remote impacts, post-fire analyses, and collection of data for environmental fire hazard assessments. It is not intended for direct acute human toxicity issues or wildland fires.

Key topics and technical scope

• Definitions and terminology related to fire effluents, receptors, primary/secondary effluents, run-off, ecotoxicity and enclosed vs unenclosed fires.
• Fire effluent generation and stages (including enclosed fires, ruptured enclosures and effects of intervention).
• Pathways and emissions: air (fire zone, plume, deposition), terrestrial (soil), and water (surface water, groundwater, fire-water run-off).
• Adverse environmental impacts: considerations for short‑term vs long‑term/ecotoxic effects.
• Intervention and sensitivity of receptors: how firefighting tactics and receptor vulnerability influence environmental outcomes.
• Assessment and sampling: guidance on establishing sampling requirements and sampling options for emissions to air, water and land.
• Informative annexes with significant incident examples and an overview of relevant regulations and guidance documents.

Note: ISO 26367-1 sets the scene and priorities; it does not provide exhaustive methods or models - those are addressed in other parts of the ISO 26367 series.

Practical applications and who uses it

ISO 26367-1 is designed for practitioners who need a consistent framework for environmental fire impact work:

• Firefighters and fire investigators - to plan mitigation, sampling and post-fire environmental assessments.
• Building owners, facility operators, storage and logistics managers - for preventive measures and incident response planning.
• Materials/product manufacturers and insurers - to evaluate product/environmental risk and liability.
• Environmental regulators, public health authorities and civil defence - for policy, permitting and emergency response coordination.
• Environmental consultants and researchers - for data collection and hazard assessment studies.

Use cases include post‑fire contamination investigations, design of monitoring/sampling programs after major fires, environmental risk assessments, and development of site emergency response plans.

Related standards

• ISO 26367-2 - methodology for compiling data on environmentally significant emissions from fires.
• ISO/TR 26368 - environmental damage limitation from firefighting water run-off.
• ISO 13943 - fire safety vocabulary (terminology referenced by this document).

Keywords: ISO 26367-1:2019, fire effluents, environmental impact, fire-water run-off, post-fire analysis, emissions sampling, enclosed fires, unenclosed fires.