By Peter Eisler
USA TODAY
Copyright 2006 Gannett Company, Inc.
All Rights Reserved
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Thousands of people died in furniture fires over the past decade as federal regulators failed to set fire-resistance requirements for couches, chairs and other upholstered items.
Today, the nation’s fire marshals and victims of furniture fires are launching an awareness campaign meant to pressure the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) to set national fire safety standards for upholstered furniture.
The federal government first reported in 1972 that standards were needed, but efforts by the CPSC to adopt enforceable rules have been derailed repeatedly by disagreements among fire safety groups, the furniture industry and commission staff.
“Consumers don’t deserve this,” says Hal Stratton, who chaired the CPSC from 2002 until this July. “Nothing should last as long as (this) process. With the right standard, they can save a significant number of lives.”
Fires involving upholstered furniture kill more people each year than any other type of blaze, accounting for just over 20% of fire deaths nationwide, according to the CPSC and the National Fire Protection Association. From 1999 through 2002, the most recent period for which fatality totals are complete, those fires claimed an average of 10 lives a week.
“The foam (in upholstered furniture) is a petroleum-based product. I compare it to sitting on a bag of gasoline in your living room,” says Maine State Fire Marshal John Dean, president of the National Association of State Fire Marshals. “Once it gets ignited, you end up with a raging fire very quickly.”
Survivors’ suffering
Caroline Rouen Dixon was 5 years old when the government decided it should set fire-resistance standards for upholstered furniture.
She was 20 when a couch fire sent her fleeing out a third-story window. She suffered third-degree burns over 65% of her body, and foot and back injuries from her plunge onto concrete.
Dixon is 39 now, disabled for life.
She is one of several victims of furniture fires telling their stories as part of the campaign by the fire marshals to push the CPSC to get rules in place.
“You hear about the people dying, but think about all the people who live,” Dixon says. “They have a lifetime of scars and injuries. I can’t play piano. I can’t play soccer with my kids. If they can stop this from happening, why not do it?”
Since the Commerce Department first acknowledged the need for rules in a study 34 years ago, the goal has been a two-pronged standard: one for a piece of furniture’s resistance to a small open flame, and one for its resistance to a burning cigarette.
The CPSC has been stymied by disagreements over the type of tests that should be used to assess flame resistance and the sort of chemicals that could be used to create that resistance.
“Think of all the components,” says Stratton, now a lawyer in Washington. “There’s the polyurethane foam component, the fabric component, the people who manufacture the chemicals, the furniture industry. You need to get consensus.”
Scott Wolfson, a CPSC spokesman, says the problem in setting standards for upholstered furniture has more to do with “complex fire science issues.” He says the commission is committed to getting rules in force, because of the “tremendous potential to save lives and prevent serious burn injuries.”
The CPSC estimates that more than half of the 9,000 upholstered furniture fires each year could be covered by national standards. Commission analyses suggest that deaths in those fires would drop from about 360 a year to fewer than 150.
Dean, the head of the fire marshals association, says furniture manufacturers have “persuaded the commission not to go forward.”
Concerns about chemicals
Furniture industry officials argue that the fire-resistance standards considered so far would require them to treat furniture with chemicals that could pose health risks to furniture makers and consumers.
Andy Counts, CEO of the American Home Furnishings Alliance, a manufacturers’ trade group, says the industry already worries about retardants because many manufacturers use them voluntarily to protect against cigarette burns, which cause 29% of all fatal furniture fires.
Counts says the industry wants a national standard that addresses concerns about mandatory use of retardants. “We can’t trade a known, controllable (fire) risk for an unknown, uncontrollable (chemical) risk,” he says.
Dean and other fire officials say those risks pale next to the death toll from furniture fires. They note that a CPSC analysis found that common retardants are used in such small quantities that they are “unlikely to present any appreciable health risks to consumers.”