A New Dawn for Smoke Alarms

This summer, long-awaited changes to the standard that sets the performance requirements for smoke alarms went into effect, marking a new era for the technology. For the first time, smoke alarms must now pass a test to show they are resistant to nuisance alarms triggered by cooking smoke. On today’s podcast, smoke alarm researcher Thomas Clearly from NIST joins to discuss the evolution of smoke alarm technology, the challenges of nuisance alarms, and how effective this new generation of smoke alarms are at reduceing nuisance alarms from cooking (4:44). Then, on Code Corner, engineer Shawn Mahoney discusses what NFPA standards say about smoke alarm placement (38:25).