Recent activities in flame retardancy of wood-plastic composites at the Forest Products Laboratory

For a variety of reasons, wood-plastic composite (WPC) products are widely available for some building applications. In applications such as outdoor decking, WPCs have gained a significant share of the market. As an option to improve the efficient use of wood fiber, the USDA Forest Service, Forest Products Laboratory (FPL), has an extensive research program on WPCs. Although often ignored in discussions of WPCs, the flammability of WPCs can be a significant factor in certain building applications. This paper reviews past, present, and planned cooperative FPL research projects on fire-retardant treatment of WPCs and related topics.