What's So Bad About Soot?

7/11/2021 (Permalink)

Where there’s smoke, there’s fire. And there’s also soot, which can actually be one of the most tedious and difficult to deal with aspects of fire damage cleanup and restoration. Despite its appearance as black dust or dirt, soot is chemically different than any regular soil that you’d encounter in your home, and it takes a professional to deal with it effectively. 

How can you recognize soot? Usually, it’s brown or black and powdery. It’s what makes something that’s been exposed to fire look charred, but it can also fly around your home and settle on things that were not seriously damaged by the flames.

In fact, soot is made up of the things that were burned by the flames. It’s the leftover particles that were not totally combusted. To that end, not all soot is the same - its qualities are dependent on what was actually burned.

Because of that, the cleaning process for soot is also very dependent on what was actually burned. The chemical composition of burnt plastic, for instance, varies greatly from that of burnt proteins, and must be handled accordingly.

No matter the type of soot, though, you don’t want it in your home. The presence of soot, even if it isn’t obviously visible, can lead to drastically reduced air quality, which in turn can lead to serious health effects. If you have soot in your home, don’t take any chances - leave the cleaning to the professionals.