1. Introduction
Flammability is defined by Hawley’s [1] as how easy a substance
is to ignite and how rapidly it burns. Flame retardants, such as
polybrominated flame retardants, are used in products such as
clothing, bedding and computer chassis in order to meet flame
safety requirements. The purpose of the flame retardants is to delay
ignition and/or the rate of fire spreading in the materials so that
people have time to escape the fire. The material will still burn if an
ignition source continues to be present. However, there has been
a growing concern of environmental and health impacts of the
polybrominated flame retardants (PBFRs).
There has been a tremendous amount of development of bioplastics
production worldwide for the past few years. There are
many products that can be made from bioplastics. Until recently,
two of the bioplastics made in the United States (US) are polylactide
(PLA) made by Natureworks under the trade name Ingeo and poly-
3-hydroxybutyrate (PHB; CAS number 26063-00-3) which is made
by Metabolix/Telles under the trade name Mirel. The two
biopolymers have been made from corn in the US. In the future,
bioplastics could be made from wastes rather than food crops, and
will not build up in the oceans, which would help solve the ocean
debris problem. There are no published data on the testing of