UK Upholstered furniture regulations - 20 years of fire safety

Events are being planned in the UK to commemorate 20 years of controls on the fire safety of domestic upholstered furniture.

The Furniture (Fire safety) Regulations were introduced in 1988 following widespread public concern on the high number of fire deaths and injuries caused by the involvement of flammable furniture in fires in the home.

The hazards came from the use of easily ignitable coverings and highly flammable foam fillings which gave very little escape time once the furniture became involved in fire, in many cases escape became impossible in as little as 3 minutes after ignition.

The Regulations require all upholstered furniture to be resistant to ignition by cigarettes or matches and foam and other filling materials used, to be slow burning to allow more escape time.
Independent research estimates that in the first fifteen years the regulations contributed to saving over 4,000 lives and preventing approximately 40,000 injuries.

The 20th anniversary will commemorate the work of the fire service, furniture manufacturers and material suppliers, together the enforcement agencies, in what has been a remarkable consumer safety achievement and will urge the adoption of similar standards throughout the European Union.

Czech legislation

In June the Czech Ministry of the Interior published a Draft Decree on the technical requirements for the fire protection of buildings. It is proposed that it will come into force 1st January 2008. The Decree sets down the technical requirements for fire protection in the design, construction and use of buildings.

Whilst all buildings are covered, of particular interest are the requirements for family homes to have independent smoke alarms fitted in the route leading to the exit and in larger apartments also in circulation areas. In apartment buildings each individual apartment must have an independent detection and alarm system. Hostels must have a higher level of protection and also upholstered furniture in hostels must be resistant to match ignition when tested in accordance with EN1021.

The regulations in some cases are retrospective so that certain buildings already in use will need to comply within 6 months of the regulations coming into force.

It is encouraging to see that one of the more recent countries to join the EU is setting much higher fire safety standards than some of the original Member States.

Children and Fire Safety

Child safety is understandably very high on the list of priorities for consumer safety organisations throughout the EU. There have been laudable campaigns for improvements in many areas and most recently we have seen action on the fire safety of children’s nightwear, cigarette lighters and possibly RIP cigarettes which will go some way to reducing the number of fire related deaths and injuries each year in the EU, a significant proportion of which are children.

Children playing with fire cause many domestic fires, but are unfortunately much more frequently the innocent victims of fires in the home caused by the acts or omissions of adults or defects in domestic appliances and services. Most of these fires start very small and it is clear that however hard we try there are some that cannot be predicted or prevented by the householder e.g. the malfunction of an electrical circuit. The danger from these small fires comes from the involvement of the contents of the home, for example upholstered furniture, which results in rapid fire growth, toxic smoke and survival time being reduced to less than 5 minutes.

Regulations which came into force less than 20 years ago in the United Kingdom controlling the ignitability and flammability of furniture has significantly reduced the number of fires caused by children and the number of children killed and injured in all fires in the home.

1991. Children < 16 years-121 deaths-2000 injuries. Total fire deaths 608, injuries 11,000. Approximately 20% made up of children aged 16 years or less.

2005. Children < 16 years- 26 deaths-1400 injuries. Total fire deaths 374, injuries11500. Approximately 7% made up of children aged 16 years or less.

In 1991 there were 54,000 accidental dwelling fires of which 2,900 were caused by matches.

In 2005 there were 47,000 accidental dwelling fires of which 400 were caused by matches.

There is a lesson here. In the EU it is probable that the main risk to children comes not from their own behavior, but that of their parents and other adults and they, at present, have no choice in the safety of the furniture they purchase as it is only in the UK and Ireland that effective fire safety controls exist.

It is also probable that around 20% of the estimated 4,000 fire deaths each year in EU are children.

This must be the biggest risk to child safety in the EU and it should be addressed without further delay.

Fire safety of Upholstered Furniture

In 1988 the UK government introduced regulations controlling the ignitability and flammability of upholstered furniture.
This followed intense media coverage of fatal fires and campaigning by the fire service.

The regulations required furniture to be resistant to ignition by cigarettes and matches and also banned the use of standard polyurethane foam and fillings presenting a similar risk.

There have been several scientific and technical assessments of the benefits of the regulations and all have been very supportive.

Thanks to the detailed and comprehensive fire statistics collated by the UK authorities it is possible to make some simple and direct comparisons of the situation in 1988 and 2005, the most recent statistics.

In 1988 there were 4,800 dwelling fires involving upholstered furniture in the UK. These fires claimed 245 lives and caused 1891 injuries.
In 2005 there were 1417 dwelling fires involving upholstered furniture in the UK. These fires claimed 50 lives and caused 569 injuries.

One can only wonder how many of these lives were saved by the ignition resistance requirements preventing fires or by the flammability constraints slowing the fires down and allowing people time to escape. It is probable that the wider use of smoke alarms may also have aided early detection of some fires which the occupier might have extinguished and consequently were not reported to the fire brigade.
However, the improvement is of major dimensions and it is clear to experienced fire officers that this has resulted from the manufacture of safer furniture.

At present the European Commission is considering a French notification to improve the fire safety of upholstered furniture. We hope they will recognise the potential benefits for European consumers of controls similar to those in the UK and Ireland.

For more information on the fire safety of Upholstered furniture, please see:
www.acfse.org

Burning behaviour of childrens nightwear

The fire safety of children’s nightwear is an understandably emotive issue and the appearance of a European standard EN14878:2007 has raised hopes that only “safe” nightwear will allowed to be offered for sale. Unfortunately it is not that straightforward. In the UK for instance legislation has set much more rigorous nightwear standards than these since 1985, however they exclude close fitting children’s pyjamas. Similar situations may exist in other member states.

The adoption of this new European standard will no doubt result in a wider range of nightwear being covered, but to a much lower fire safety standard than is presently required in some member states. So countries will have to decide whether they retain existing legislation or take up the new standard. Why have they been put in such a predicament? I have no doubt that the mandate to the standard makers from the European Commission was to define a “safe product” but I fear the technical committee may have been swayed by what the suppliers wanted rather than what the consumer needed.

For more information on Consumer Fire Safety: www.acfse.org

TV fires - still a danger to European Consumers

For over 10 years ACFSE has been highlighting the fire risk presented by flammable TV enclosures. Rene Hagen of NIBRA in the Netherlands initially raised concerns following fires caused by tea lights igniting the casings of televisions.

Following media coverage the UK DTI commissioned a study which concluded that European televisions could be set on fire by low energy sources such as tea lights whilst in Japan and the USA the use of V0 flame retarded plastics prevented this happening.Public demonstrations were carried out, most notably by the Berlin Fire Chief Albrecht Broemme, showing how a TV fire started in this way can lead to the entire contents of the room burning (flashover) in just a few minutes. SP Sweden’s fire test laboratory reported that a TV can be equivalent to 4.5 litres of petrol if allowed to burn.

A private demonstration to Philips in the Nederlands resulted in them immediately committing to the use of flame retarded plastics for their brand. Look for the label!

Sony and Panasonic joined a voluntary agreement to use similar materials for their CRT televisions. However the majority of manufacturers supplying the European market remain resistant to the idea of providing televisions as safe as those they supply to the US markets.
The technical committee, TC108, responsible for the European Standard covering televisions have finalised a specification which when introduced into the standard could go some way to resolving the problem. However the IEC recommended that this should only become obligatory 8 years after publication. I presented the ACFSE case to Member States experts at their meeting in Brussels in March this year with the outcome that this specification will now apply within 3 years. For more details read our position paper.

A few weeks earlier an inquest had been held in Hertfordshire into the deaths of two fire-fighters and the woman they were attempting to rescue. The fire was started by two tea lights placed on top of a television which burned through and set fire to the plastic casing. In this instance there was no doubt about the cause as the electricity had been disconnected to the flat before the fire. (Incidentally the European Commission had been advised by the TV industry experts that a TV would need to be operating and warm for ignition to occur in this way!) ACFSE supplied information for the Coroner and he has formally asked the British Standards Institute if fire resistant materials can be used for televisions.ACFSE will continue to press this issue. We feel it is not necessary to wait 3 years for safe TVs, models are changing every 12 months or less and there is no reason why manufacturers cannot implement improvements sooner.

For more information, please see:

http://www.acfse.org/index.php5?module=articles&section=2

Deadly Furniture Fires

Early in June a mother and her three children died in a dwelling fire in Gironde, France, when according to firefighters synthetic furniture caught fire.


The deaths of nine firefighters in Charleston USA this week, reminds us that what presents a hazard to the occupants of a dwelling when it catches fire, also when displayed or stored in quantity in a store or warehouse, presents a similar and deadly hazard to professional firefighters.


I say ‘reminds us’ because we have been here before and there is a long line of human tragedy, both civilians and firefighters, stretching over the years where fires associated with synthetic filling materials, particularly foam, has been identified as the major contributory factor in the rapid fire spread.


These fires have occurred in the factories using the materials and the shops, stores and homes containing the finished product.


In the UK controls have been introduced at each and every level and have successfully reduced the risk and hazards.


In the USA there will be some soul searching over the firefighters deaths, as there should be, and it is inappropriate to comment other than to offer deepest sympathies to the berieved families, friends and colleagues.


It is time that all involved in supplying upholstered furniture recognised and accepted that what is without doubt a life enriching product, can also in foreseeable circumstances take lives.
There will have been dwelling fires in recent days where people will have died due to the inhalation of toxic fumes from burning upholstery. They will not feature in the news like the Charleston fire, but will in all probability exceed the numbers involved.


The technology to reduce the risks, hazards and consequences of furniture fires is well known and applied by law in the UK and Ireland and some States of America. If the industries are unwilling to change, then the regulator should act.



For more information, see:
http://www.acfse.org/index.php5?module=articles&section=3