Aerosol suppressants, sold as fire sticks, fire sprays or extinguisher sticks, are small hand held canisters that discharge a chemical mist. They are light, cheap and easy to store in a car or a kitchen drawer, and they have a genuine domestic use. The problem is that they are frequently presented as equivalent to a portable extinguisher, and they are not.
What they are
A small aerosol containing a suppressant agent, usually operated like a spray can. Reputable products are tested against recognised fire tests and state what they extinguished. Their capacity is very small and their run time is short, so their honest description is a first response for a fire that has just started in front of you.
What the rating question is
A portable extinguisher carries class ratings from a standardised test series and those ratings are what a fire risk assessment specifies. An aerosol product that has not been tested to the portable extinguisher standard cannot carry those ratings, so it cannot satisfy a provision that was specified in them. Read what the can claims and against which test.
Where they are useful
In a domestic kitchen beside a blanket, in a car alongside or instead of nothing, in a caravan or a boat where space and weight matter. In each case they widen what an untrained person has to hand, which is a real gain even if it is a small one.
Where they are not
As workplace provision. A workplace that replaces its rated units with aerosols has reduced the provision the assessment called for, and would have to justify that on the assessment rather than on the product literature. Nothing about the products is dishonest; the substitution is.
Questions people ask about fire extinguisher sticks
Do fire sticks work?
On the small fires they are tested against, within their short run time, yes. That is a narrower claim than the marketing usually makes, and it is the claim to check on the can.
Can an aerosol replace a fire blanket in a kitchen?
A blanket deals with a pan fire by excluding air and stays in place. An aerosol does not stay in place. They are complementary rather than interchangeable.
Do they need servicing?
They carry an expiry date and are replaced rather than serviced. A workplace using them at all still has to maintain whatever it provides for use.