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Spontaneous self-combustion

El_Spectre said:
Perhaps it's a matter of scale... static shocks can be fairly high voltage, perhaps something metal on the door (knob, other decorations) zapped the shirt in passing?

Edited to fix spelling and vagueify my claim.
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That's my new pet theory. Somehow, Gayle built up a MASSIVE electrical potential in her body. Poorly grounded shower drain, lots of hair combing..whatever.

She's out on the porch, and her shirt brushes the door..hits a metal door knob, perhaps a metal screen.

It makes a small noise, but it's masked by sounds of the street. Her shirt starts burning, but she doesn't notice as soon as she might have because she had just come out of a hot shower and her skin was somewhat desensitized.

OK, now here's my problem. Given the above fairly rational explanation, I would expect Gayle to have 2nd degree burns, maybe third. But fourth? In more than one place? Is the burning temperature of cotton enough to burn through layers of epidermis and actually ignite subcutaneous fat in a matter of seconds?

Something is misssing. Could someone get me a dozen cadavers and meet me at Gayle's house? Thanks.
 
Re: oils and spontaneous combustion- Linseed oil often has 'driers' added, if so, it's labled "boiled linseed oil". These driers are actually oxidizers that promote polymerization of the oils by catalyzing the chemical process. VERY condusive to SC. On the other hand, lube oils are loooaded with anti- oxidants. I know personally of a couple cases of linseed based products heating up, but with twenty years of exposure in auto and machine shops, never even heard of SC in lube oils. Web searchs don't show any either....
 
The mystery continues ....

It was a clear day, no clouds. I don't know about lightening. I live in a valley, at the very bottom of the eastern mountain. It's called a mountain, but it's actually a high hill that rises abruptly from about 660 feet above sea level to 3000 feet. The hills are forested. We have one or two lightening storms a year.

The doorknob is metal. The screen in the wooden screendoor is wire mesh, not nylon mesh. I could easily have touched the metal. The porch was concrete with a roof that was supported by wooden uprights. It has since been replaced by a wooden veranda.

Most of the body lotions I use contain mineral or vegetable oil. I have two different lotions here and they both contain soy oil. I'm allergic to linseed/flax oil. If a product contained it, I would use it once or twice and realize the problem and I'd dump or give away the product. I have no idea what body lotion products I might have been using prior to the incident.

I like Dragonrock's idea about oil in a freshly laundered shirt. I'm sure I never dropped a shirt into a tub of oil, but I can see repeated exposure to oil-based body lotions as having a similar impact on hidden oils in the fibers of the shirt.

Stand on porch ... feel heat on back ... see flames ... jump off porch ... see doggie doo on lawn ... rip shirt off over my head ... run into house ... look in mirror ... EEEEEEEKKKKKK! ... jump in shower.

It sounds like a lot, but it all happened in moments. I would swear I was on the porch for less than a minute when I felt the heat. One step off porch, see, rip, run. It didn't take long.

But, then, we know that eyewitnesses are totally unreliable.
 
Self heating of oil impregnated rags/cloth happens in bulk, when they are crumpled, so that the heat generated cannot escape properly. I don't think that this would be the case with a shirt being worn, the heat from self heating would dissipate,

Dave
 
supercorgi said:
You do recall correctly. Essential the body becomes an inside-out candle. The clothes on the outside act as the wick and the fatty tissues on the inside provide the fuel. CSI even had an episode on this where they did the pig wrapped in a blanket experiment. I'm not sure but Myth Busters may have also done an episode on this.
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Not any of the Mythbuster's I've seen (pretty sure I've seen them all, except maybe the most recent ones). They have done several disgusting things with dead pigs though. I can't rewatch the one with the dead pig in the corvette. too gross.

The CSI episode on this was pretty neat.
 
There is no impertinence, especially if it leads to an experiment.

Beady, and all, it's okay to ask questions that might seem rude in ordinary conversation. I've offered myself up here as a survivor of (falsely-named) spontaneous human combustion, so none of these questions strike me as offensive.

I have very little body hair, except in the usual places. What body hair I do have is invisible to the naked eye. Even looking with a magnifying glass, it's sparse and very fine. Not much fuel for a fire.

I'm thinking of an experiment.

I have an old pillowcase that has tatting (fine crocheting) around the edges, done by a great-grandmother. The pillow case is basically a rag, but the tatting has sentimental value. I'm going to remove the tatting and pour some oily body lotion on the pillow case. The fabric is from the 1920s, so it's natural fiber and not chemically treated with flame retardants. It's also about the same weight as the shirt was. I'll let it set for a few days soaking up the body lotion, just as a dirty shirt would in the laundry hamper. Then I'll wash it by itself in the washing machine, dry it, and let it hang in the closet for a day or two.

I'll buy a chicken, warm it to room temperature, and then soak it for a while in hot water -- shower temperature. That'll warm up the chicken's body. I'll dry it thoroughly, using toweling and a hairdryer to make sure there's no excess moisture in the body folds and cavity. Then I'll rub the wings and legs with soy oil to simulate rubbing myself down with body lotion.

I'm as hairless as a plucked chicken, and my back is no more fat than a chicken's back ... maybe less so. A chicken's back has two nice little chucks of meat (muscle) which would nicely simulate the amount of muscle on my back. My skin isn't as thick as a chicken's skin, and I don't think I have as much subcutaneous fat as a chicken does. But it's the best I can come up with.

I will heat the house to around 75 degrees F, which was about the temp on that fine June morning. I'll spash some Old Spice into my hands and rub it on me in the usual manner and then dry my hands on the pillowcase.

The chicken will go inside the pillowcase, just as I went inside the large, loose, shirt. I'll use a tool of some kind to set the chicken upright, so it's simulating a human standing on two legs. Those kitchen tools can be bought for less than ten dollars and I've wanted one anyway.

The dressed chicken will go into a cast iron frying pan and the pan will go inside the fireplace. Safety first.

I'll then try various methods of lighting the pillowcase on fire. I'll do my best to set that pillow case aflame. Then we'll see if the chicken catches fire or gets some serious burns. I'll time the whole thing.

At the end of the experiment, if the chicken is not burned to cinders, I'll wash it in salt water, cook it and feed it to some poor unsuspecting person who will wonder what that wonderful marinade is.

A pig in a blanket would have more chance of catching on fire, I think. The blanket offers more external fuel than a thin shirt and pigs have a thick layer of fat. They do. I don't. I have body fat in the usual female places. The lower back is not one of those places.

Any comments or suggestions to improve the chicken in the pillowcase experiment?

It's snowing here today so it will be a long time before I can play with mirrors and summer sunlight again. As you can probably tell, I'm less concerned about how the shirt caught on fire than I am about how I went up in flames.

However, both issues remain unresolved in my mind right now.
 
Gayle said:
Any comments or suggestions to improve the chicken in the pillowcase experiment?
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Trying to find some way to see just how much heat you need to catch the pillow case on fire might be useful to test some hypotheses as to just what started the fire in the first place.

If you have a digital camera, you might take some pictures to document the method and results. You might also try video taping things so you can watch what happens a few times and slow it down if necessary.

I shouldn't be posting here (PhD student at the end of the semester,) but you're just too awesome, Gayle. If I could hold up one example of what skepticism is all about to the people who don't understand, it would be this thread.
 
Rather than just throwing a match on the pillow case, try lighting it with something hot but not flaming, like a soldering iron. That would better simulate the hear from focused light.
 
Gayle, before you go to a lot of trouble you don't need to, have you considered approaching a high school or college science teacher with the problem? They have both knowledge and equipment that you don't.

For that matter, where's Mercutio when we need him?
 
Thank you for the kind words. I've asked a Forest Service scientist who has expertise in fire to help with the experiment. I have a firm maybe.

Beady, was there some other ideas you had regarding knowledge or equipment that might be available through a science teacher? I do know one. Plenty of knowledge. I don't know about equipment. Did you have anything in particular in mind?

Dragonrock, we're thinking along the same lines. Holding a match to a piece of cotton fabric is not likely to cause it to flame. Kitchen towels will smolder if they touch a hot burner on the stove. I've never had one go up in flames, but they may be treated with flame retardant.

Before I attempt to immolate the chicken, I'm going to attempt to catch some woven cotton clothe on fire. I've pulled out some old cleaning rags. They're clean, look just fine, as far as rags go. But one of them was thoroughly soaked in oil at one time ... just like your shirt. I'm going to see how that burns.

I want to test various methods of catching fabric on fire before I dress up the chicken in the pillowcase. It's not so easy to find fabrics these days that are not treated with flame retardants. I'm sure the pillowcase is too old for that. It's large enough to simulate the kindling power of the shirt. Once it's gone, it's gone ... no more shirt-size pieces of fabric that haven't been treated. The cleaning rags are small.

I'm also trying to work up my courage to go on up the road to the fire station to ask the fire chief or fire marshall for some advice. Nice guys. I've worked with them on land use issues and I'll probably work with them again. Maybe we could turn this into a story on what to do if your clothes catch fire. That would be a nice newspaper story for the holiday season, with all the candles people have going.

Any other suggestions before I have the fire guys rolling on the floor laughing? (Note to self: must take cookies to fire guys.)
 
Facinating story Gayle. Thank you for sharing.

I have some experience with rags + oil which I use to make torches to ignite piles of brush to dispose of them in the winter (proper permits obtained in season). I have even used old Hawaiian Tropic sun tan oil for the purpose. My wife buys the #4 stuff and I want her to use #25 so the #4 is considered waste oil to me. :)

Of all the lotions you mentioned I don't remember you mentioning sun tan oil so I would ask if you used that on your back in years past, then wore the shirt. The shirt sounds like the kind of thing my wife uses as a beach cover up which is why I ask.

One possibility occurs to me about how the shirt burned. Perhaps a large section of the back of the shirt separated itself from the rest of the shirt. When you tore the shirt off you were only tearing off the front half of the shirt. That might explain why there was so little of it left on the side walk later. The back portion of the shirt collapsed on itself and landed on the small of your back where it bunched up with the flames on the inside of the bunch and in contact with your skin. This provided a lot more fuel than you would expect other wise. The ashes from the back of the shirt were still burning when you looked in the mirror. Perhaps there was a tiny corner of the shirt wedged into the waistband of the shorts you were wearing. When you got back in the shower the last bit of unburned shirt and the ashes were washed down the drain. This doesn't explain your flesh catching fire but it does explain a greater heat source.

RE. initial ignition: In your first post you said "We spent time catching cotton cloth on fire with a piece of mirror and sunlight." It sounds like you proved the possibility. Did you do this with the small broken bit or some different mirror?

P.S. I've had a number of small burns from burning ashes which landed on my shirt from the burning brush piles. I'll be a lot more careful from now on!!
 
YoPapa, I may have used suntan lotion, not oil, in the decade I owned that shirt before the fire. I remember lots of outdoor activities, but when it comes to suntan lotion, my memory is a blank.

In thinking about the possibility of the back of the shirt separating from the rest of the shirt ... It's possible. I don't know.

I have to go back to the white shorts. They were new white shorts and we were truly surprised there were no ash marks or scortched areas on the back of the shorts. It was especially lucky for me because they were pull-on shorts with an elastic waistband. Elastic melts. That would have created very painful second and third degree burns.

Thinking about all this, I think I'm in danger of suffering witness suggestibility. Or witness stubbornness. I'm trying to avoid both.

I'm no longer convinced the fire was started by the mirror. We played at starting fires with mirrors later, after I felt up to it, but not with the mirror. I tossed it in the trash immediately after we found it. I was emotional, as you might guess, and I focussed my anger at the mirror. I swore at it, called it names and threw it away. It did wonders for my mood.

If the mirror didn't start the fire, then the mystery is bigger.

I do think it's likely the shirt poofed up into flame because it had oils embedded in the fibers. It could have been very hot. The means the mystery of me catching on fire might not be quite as mysterious as I thought.

My next task is to burn some cotton rags and come back and report. I need an oven thermometer. They're cheap, they withstand heat and measure temps up to 550 degrees F. Above that, I don't know how to measure how hot the cloth burns.
 
Gayle said:
My next task is to burn some cotton rags and come back and report. I need an oven thermometer. They're cheap, they withstand heat and measure temps up to 550 degrees F. Above that, I don't know how to measure how hot the cloth burns.
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Please remember that any thermometer will only give you the temperature of the thermometer. It will need a lot of care to ensure that this temperature is related to the temperature you want to measure.

Also, as a general rule visible (luminous) flames usually have a temperature around 800-900 deg C.

Dave
 
Gayle said:
Beady, was there some other ideas you had regarding knowledge or equipment that might be available through a science teacher? I do know one. Plenty of knowledge. I don't know about equipment. Did you have anything in particular in mind?
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No, nothing in particular. The thought just struck me that, if you're looking for a scientific explanation, it may be an idea to go to a scientist. He would have an entire lab with all kinds of toys, and could try out various scenarios.

Dragonrock, we're thinking along the same lines. Holding a match to a piece of cotton fabric is not likely to cause it to flame. Kitchen towels will smolder if they touch a hot burner on the stove. I've never had one go up in flames, but they may be treated with flame retardant.
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I once had Mrs Beady go up in flames. She was leaning back against the stove with one hand on the kitchen counter, when her sleeve caught on the pilot light. The sleeve started to burn like a torch. Luckily, I was standing a couple of feet away, facing her, and the sink was between us, off to the side.

I love my wife, but she has absolutely no sense of either safety or security.

Before I attempt to immolate the chicken, I'm going to attempt to catch some woven cotton clothe on fire. I've pulled out some old cleaning rags. They're clean, look just fine, as far as rags go. But one of them was thoroughly soaked in oil at one time ... just like your shirt. I'm going to see how that burns.
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Now, this is one reason I suggested a science teacher and his equipment. We're entering the "Don't try this at home" realm, and seem to be in the early stages of shooting one of those Vonage "People do stupid things" commercials.

Have you been talking to my wife?
 
Beady, I don't live in a university town. We do have a community college and high schools. But science teachers do not have labs full of equipment they can use for anything except teaching their classroom assignments. Such personal use could cause them big trouble.

The forest service scientist who I've asked for assistance teaches forest fire crews how not to get burned, how not to do stupid things, and how not to die. Seeing that these crews are made up of young men who drop into fires from helicopters and such like, it seems that we're already dealing with daredevils. My "assistant" will have no trouble on insisting on safety first.

So ... WARNING TO VIEWERS ... do not try these stunts at home without proper supervision from fire experts. Your stuntwoman is not properly trained, and she knows it.

Honest, I promise I will not do anything stupid. Or if I do, I'll have experts present to stop me. Catching on fire once was enough!
 
Just a thought, haven't seen anyone mention it but I may have misssed it...

Did you put on cologne (or anything alcohol based) before or after you put on the shirt, and what was the time difference?

You've said it was a high-quality shirt, meaning a high thread count, and thus might be somewhat effective at holding a vapor. Would there be a possibility that the shirrt might have held vapors from the alcohol close to your body? This would explain why more severe burns might be in areas where the shirt hung away from your body (more vapor gathers there), as well as the blue flame (most alcohols I've seen burn blue).

Any ideas on the feasibility of this idea?
 
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