This document describes and classifies a range of laboratory ignition sources for use in fire tests on plastics and products consisting substantially of plastics. These sources vary in intensity and area of impingement. They are suitable for use to simulate the initial thermal abuse to which plastics are potentially exposed in certain actual fire risk scenarios.

Different standards developing organizations have issued many standard test methods, specifications and regulations to assess fire properties of plastics or of products containing plastic materials. Many of those standards contain ignition sources associated with flaming and non-flaming ignition. This document describes the ignition sources and references the associated standard.

This compilation of ignition sources does not discuss the application of the standard where the ignition source is described and is likely not to be a fully comprehensive list of ignition sources.

This document does not address detailed test procedures.