Tardigrades for flame resistant materials

Flame retardant materials are not just used for Firefighters and stuntmen although they also certainly appreciate the fire resistant capabilities of modern textiles. The business has expanded, and chemicals used as flame retardants are to be found practically everywhere in our lives. Most structural wood elements such as paneling are treated with products and chemicals to make them more fire resistant. Plastic is also flammable and is the dominant material replacing traditional materials like wood and metal. So it too is often sprayed with chemical products to become more fire resistant.
The main chemical families of flame retardants are inorganic chemicals (including antimony, aluminum and tin compounds); primarily the products used are bromine, phosphorus, nitrogen, and chlorine based retardants. The use of some of these chemicals in flame retardants has come under increased scrutiny due to their suspected negative health and environmental impacts, especially the use of brominated flame retardants in polymer formulations. Firefighters, for example, are at risk from potentially toxic chemicals that are created when products containing flame retardant burn. These same chemicals are also potentially dangerous even to children who are at risk from many plastic toys they play with, also covered with similar flame retardant chemicals. 

Tardigrades, commonly known as “water bears” because of the way they walk with their stubby legs and claws, are water dwelling, very small microscopic animals (adults are between 0.1 mm to 1.5 mm long), and found everywhere, from hot springs at the Himalayas to more than two miles beneath the sea. They are polyextremophiles, meaning the can survive in harsh environments that would kill most animals, and can survive temperatures from above 300 degrees Fahrenheit to nearly absolute zero, making them the toughest animal on Earth. More than 1000 species of tardigrades have been discovered and they date back thousands of years.
Recently these "water bears" became the first species to survive in space’s harsh environment, flying aboard the European Space Agency's FOTON-M3 spacecraft in September, 2007. As part of the flight the animals were exposed to the vacuum of space as well as unfiltered solar radiation 1,000 times greater than that at the Earth's surface. Amazingly the little animals survived. Scientists were able to find that the tardigrades even retained the ability to reproduce after the spaceflight. Perhaps, the scientists speculate, the tardigrades did this by somehow repairing their DNA, but also evidence about the species skin, behavior, and composition gives suggestions to how this is possible. This also is amazing because it shows that life could have been created somewhere else in the universe and traveled through space to Earth.
Using microscopic images to a study the many different species of tardigrades that live in harsh hot temperatures and becoming more knowledgeable about the ways the species survives in such environments can help lead to the design and creation of a more organic product that acts as a non-toxic flame retardant. The animals salty cells are able to better retain water even when exposed to high concentrations of salt water, special enzymes, dubbed extremozymes, resemble regular enzymes but have a much stronger bond, and special sugars, called trehalose’s are rapidly produced when faced with dry conditions acting as substitutes for water molecules. These Tarnigrade attributes, as well as others, found from studies provide useful knowledge that would be very helpful in developing this product.
The product would be used as an alternative to the commonly used flame retardant chemicals we presently are stuck with using. It would help eliminate many of the harsh toxins currently found in available products and would lead us to advance in keeping not only our fire fighters more safe, but also our society as whole, who is constantly in contact with materials treated with flame retardant chemicals.