> I'm conflating them for dramatic effect, perhaps unfairly.

And that's exactly the sort of thing I'm objecting to. Conflating things for dramatic effect is also known as "lying".

> If MMA is on fire, it will produce acrolein.

Citation needed. It burns hot enough that in open air the vast majority of the carbon will go to CO₂ or CO. Oxygen starved, I'd expect the hydrogens to burn off leaving soot. There may be some trace amount of acrolein, but that's true of cooked food too.