This study collected powder extinguishers with 6-10 years of elapsed life from January 2012 to January 2017 in market, factory, and apartment areas to experiment with changes in fineness and to examine the characteristics of extinguishing power. First, in the case of ABC powder, 98.3 wt% of the 8-year market area and 98.6 wt% of the 10-year apartment complex were found to be inappropriate in the first, second, and third arithmetic average analysis of the powder extinguisher from 6 to 10 years. That is, the fine distribution and size of the powder extinguishing agent particles should be managed within an appropriate range. It is analyzed that the powder fire extinguisher may experience a change in the fineness of the powder depending on the external environment exposure, placement, management status, and age of use, resulting in a decrease in digestive power or inability to radiate. Second, the fire extinguisher cannot be used in the initial fire suppression depending on the place of deployment, the environment of deployment, the progress of the number of years of use, and maintenance, so it is necessary to strengthen the device that enables fire extinguisher maintenance and inspection. Third, in the manufacturing process, the charging method should also be reviewed in consideration of the conditions of the workplace, the humid season, and the rainy environment.

The definition of an apartment is a building more than 5 stories high and which is the standard law. Currently, the number of apartments is increasing much faster than detached houses. Owning an apartment is a normal trend these days. However, the increasing number of apartments has been increasing the number of apartment fires which also has been making social problems. Therefore, this study was conducted for the fire extinguisher among other fire facilities because it is important for initial fire suppression. The research subject is on the fire extinguisher that is in the underground parking lot of 40 apartment complexes which are more than 10 stories. Survey and analysis were conducted for 80 fire extinguishers. There are two fire extinguishers for each apartment. The result of this study is that all installed fire extinguishers are ABC dry chemical type, 92% of them is 3.3kg and that meet the legal height(less than 1.5m). However, the condition such as appearance, inspection, manufactured year, appearance of signs, material of signs, size of signs, etc. was insufficiency. So improvement of law and system that are fire facility construction, maintenance implementation and additional designation of type approval about sign will be needed in my opinion.

Preschoolers are the most effective age to start fire safety education. But, if the education contents are inappropriate, they may form the wrong habit to preschoolers. Many educational contents of fire safety in Korea are not so obvious in the principle and order of priority about what to do during fire and they often contain unnecessary contents to preschoolers such as how to use fire extinguisher. This paper has analyzed fire safety awareness of preschoolers and teachers and, based on the results, has claimed unsuitability of training on how to use fire extinguisher and has suggested the improvement of fire safety education.

Recently, the explosion of powder fire extinguisher led to the replacement of old extinguishers with new ones in Korea. As a result, the amount of waste fire extinguishing agents from discarded fire extinguishers has been increasing. In this study, to determine the recyclability of the fire extinguishing agents, content and leaching test were conducted to identify their health hazards in accordance with the Korean standard method for waste and soil. To this end, nine powders in four new products and five discarded products were sampled from five companies. Analysis of discarded powder of fire extinguishers showed that levels of heavy metals (Pb, Cd, Cr6+,Cr, Hg, Cu, Ni, As, Zn), organic phosphorus, oil, TCE, and PCE were within the levels set out in the Wastes Control Act, the Fertilizer Control Act and the Soil Environment Conservation Act. Only arsenic level in some new and discarded powder of fire extinguisher samples exceeded the acceptable levels as set forth in the Wastes Control Act (1.5 mg/L) and the Soil Environment Conservation Act (25 mg/kg) but within the acceptable arsenic level of 45 mg/kg as set forth in the Fertilizer Control Act. Concentrations of arsenic in the samples ranged from 0.039 to 2.578 mg/L, 6.72 to 38.36 mg/kg. The most commonly used chemical for ABC dry chemical extinguisher is mono-ammonium phosphate, which generally contains up to 0.005% of arsenic and be used as fertilizer. The result confirmed that powder of fire extinguishers could be recycled as fire extinguisher powder or fertilizer as practiced in Japan, USA and UK. But it is necessary to pretreat and meet the regulation of fireextinguisher and fertilizer.