large scale fire tests. Furniture of naturally flame-retardant materials is much safer than foam with fire retardants. Environmental and health issues The environmental behaviour of flame retardants has been studied since the 1990s. Mainly brominated flame retardants were found in many environmental compartments and organisms including humans, and some individual substances were found to have toxic properties. Therefore, alternatives have been demanded by authorities, NGOs and equipment manufacturers. The EU-funded collaborative research project ENFIRO (EU research project FP7: 226563, concluded in 2012) started out from the assumption that not enough environmental and health data were known of alternatives to the established brominated flame retardants. In order to make the evaluation fully comprehensive, it was decided to compare also material and fire performance as well as attempt a life-cycle assessment of a reference product containing halogen free versus brominated flame retardants. About a dozen halogen free flame retardants were studied representing a large variety of applications, from engineering plastics, printed circuit boards, encapsulants to textile and intumescent coatings. A large group of the studied flame retardants were found to have a good environmental and health profile: ammonium polyphosphate (APP), Aluminium diethyl phosphinate (Alpi), aluminium hydroxide (ATH), magnesium hydroxide (MDH), melamine polyphosphate (MPP), dihydrooxaphosphaphenanthrene (DOPO), zinc stannate (ZS) and zinc hydroxstannate (ZHS). Overall, they were found to have a much lower tendency to bioaccumulate in fatty tissue than the studied brominated flame retardants. The tests on the fire behaviour of materials with different flame retardants revealed that halogen free flame retardants produce less smoke and toxic fire emissions, with the exception of the aryl phosphates RDP and BDP in styrenic polymers. The leaching experiments showed that the nature of the polymer is a dominating factor and that the leaching behaviour of halogen free and brominated flame retardants is comparable. The more porous or “hydrophilic” a polymers is the more flame retardants can be released. However, moulded plates which represent real world plastic products showed much lower leaching levels than extruded polymer granules. The impact assessment studies reconfirmed that the improper waste and recycling treatment of electronic products with brominated flame retardants can produce dioxins which is not the case with halogen free alternatives. Furthermore, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (US-EPA) has been carrying out a series of projects related to the environmental assessment of alternative flame retardants, the “design for environment” projects on flame retardants for printed wiring boards and alternatives