I live in an apartment building. Another unit recently caught on fire, and the building was evacuated. Smoke was everywhere. No heat reached my part of the building. I have not seen any soot, either.
I tried googling it, but I haven’t been able to find a good answer that relates to things like chip packaging. They still have air in them, and the packaging doesn’t fully match the descriptions of what foods to throw away.
Are things like this ok to eat after smoke exposure, or should I throw *** every *** type of food out? Thanks in advance.
I would imagine that anything that’s in an airtight sealed container, such as chip bags, would be fine. That would also include cans. Your refrigerator and freezer, also, would probably count as a sealed container.
Smoke in a building fire can contain all sorts of weird chemicals from burning plastics and whatnot that could get deposited onto stuff, so even if you can’t see any soot in your apartment I wouldn’t dismiss all concerns. How tight is your budget?
Yeah, I’d be generally concerned sleeping in the apartment, but your advice concerning the food seems sound.
The budget isn’t super tight, but nothing is open yet where I am. I’m just a bit hungry at the moment, because I missed eating for most of yesterday.
When the stores do open, I’ll be at work and will have to wait until after my shift to buy more food.
I hadn’t heard about this aspect of fire safety before today, so I figured I would see if anyone on here knew more about it. Thank you for responding!
If you can, perhaps talk with your boss about the situation. “I am hungry as my apartment building had a fire and all my food might be covered in toxins”, is a one off that gets some extra dispensation.
Edit: your response as 6 hours ago. You either are the chips, or are at work.
People have put worse things in their bodies. Some mildly contaminated chips won’t kill you and probably won’t even give you cancer.
Let’s be honest, though… a standard bag of chips is already kind of bad for you – maybe you should toss them out because you’re better off without them either way? It’s just a bag of chips at the end of the day.
Who said it was only 1 bag of chips? Who only buys 1 bag of chips every time anyway?
Usually 4, since I intend on not having to go back to the store for more again in a couple days
For a lot of people, chips are a treat, and they buy only a single bag occassionally
The soot from a building fire will absolutely give you cancer. Most deaths from a building fire are caused by the contaminants in the air and not the fire itself. It’s very nasty, and I wouldn’t shrug it off. At the very least, it will taste nasty. At most, it will give you health complications.
I think it’s a little unfair to escalate my talking about a presumably invisible and flavorless level of contamination into somehow advocating for choking down soot-blasted cancer nachos.
For the record: that’s not what I meant and I think any reasonable person would not have interpeted it as such having read the context of the post. It’s a sealed bag of chips – they have functioning taste buds and eyeballs for Pete’s sake!
Seems you’ve gotten your answer, but leave an update after you eat and let us know how it went (and to make sure you didn’t die :P )
Upholstery-soot ( the fire-retardent version of polyester, etc ), is evil smog/fumes.
If your food was sealed-away from the smog/fumes, then it should be fine.
I’m saying that after learning 1st-hand how evil upholstery-smoke is.
( guy down the hall fell asleep with a cigarette )
_ /\ _
If you have to ask, you’re not hungry enough to take that risk. Toss those chips. Don’t take unnecessary chances with your body.
