O.T. (serious) - article about foam in furniture catching fire.
(This is quite long. If you read even a small portion of it, you will definitely get the idea).
April 17, 1999
Furniture Fires Kill As Feds Debate
Filed at 11:18 a.m. EDT
By The Associated Press
AUGUSTA, Ga. (AP) -- Karen Wright spent her last moments huddled in the
bathtub of her mobile home, breathing poison.
The teen-ager escaped the flames that started when an electrical spark ignited
a living room love seat. But she couldn't elude the swirl of deadly cyanide gas
and carbon monoxide that forms when foam inside sofa and chair cushions
burns.
The poisonous cloud knocked her 11-year-old sister, Dee Ann, unconscious
within reach of the front door. There, the intense heat from two flaming
couches seared 96 percent of her body. Since the Feb. 4, 1998, blaze, she
has remained in an Augusta hospital, her hands and feet gone, her lungs
scarred, her heart failing, and her body draped for months with pig and
cadaver skin until doctors could graft laboratory-grown skin.
Karen and Dee Ann never knew a sofa could burn as easily as gasoline.
The government did.
Federal regulators and furniture makers have known for more than two
decades that the foam in most sofa cushions is highly flammable, emits
deadly gases when it burns and kills hundreds of Americans each year.
Firefighters call the foam ''solid gasoline.''
For decades federal prisons, airline regulators and the state of California have
outlawed furniture that isn't fire-retardant. But after 27 years, the federal
government is still working on a rule that would give similar protection to the
rest of the nation.
Due to lobbying by the furniture industry and a congressman from a furniture
town, it won't be enacted this year either.
''It would be nice if someone else never had to go through this,'' said Dee
Ann and Karen's mother, Jeannie South, who quit her job to spend each day
in Dee Ann's hospital room, caressing and reading to a child who cries and
speaks only in rare monosyllables.
''Sometimes all you need is a chance. My room was closed off, so I had a
chance,'' she said. ''They didn't.''
The blaze that swept their North Augusta, S.C., home is all too common.
Each year about 10,000 fires start in upholstered furniture, causing more than
500 deaths, 1,100 injuries and more than $150 million in property loss,
according to federal fire statistics. Those fires account for one in four fire
deaths and kill more Americans than chain saws, off-road vehicles or any of
the 15,000 other products regulated by the Consumer Products Safety
Commission, a federal agency.
The reason lies inside the cushions of millions of chairs and sofas.
What gives 90 percent of upholstered furniture its softness is polyurethane
foam, a spongy material that's much less expensive than down but is created
from a petroleum base that makes it highly flammable.
When it burns, it spreads in seconds and radiates an intense heat that can
roast flesh, even if the victim isn't touched by the flames. After the fire at
Dee Ann and Karen's house was over, a stack of compact disks lay melted
on Karen's dresser in a room the fire never reached. Dee Ann was in the
blazing living room.
The foam also gives off a deadly cloud of poisonous gases. Among them:
carbon monoxide, the lethal vapor Dr. Jack Kevorkian used to help patients
commit suicide, and cyanide, the gas used to execute prisoners in some
states.
No warning labels are required to notify consumers of the danger. The
strongest warnings are on labels the public never sees.
One manufacturer ships foam to furniture makers with a tag that reads ''This
foam can burn fast ... resulting in great heat, generating dangerous and
potentially toxic gas and thick smoke ... If foam starts burning -- get out.''
Few furniture makers pass those warnings on to consumers, although some
give toned-down warnings that urge caution.
Firefighters are among the few Americans who understand the hazard. Randy
Sellnow, fire chief in Oregon, Wis., can't shake the memory of one of his
first fire calls, when toxic fumes killed three children who were playing with
matches on an upholstered chair. The fumes acted so quickly the children
couldn't escape.
''The victims that we had that day -- there's one I'll never forget as long as I
live. An 11-year-old girl,'' he said. ''She had two small burns. Beyond that
there was nothing ... . But it was a terribly smoky fire.''
For years manufacturers have known how to make furniture fire-retardant.
Some spray chemicals on the back of the covering fabric. Others treat the
foam with fire retardants or place a fireproof barrier between foam and
fabric.
At the urging of state fire marshals, the Consumer Products Safety
Commission has drafted a regulation to require upholstered furniture to meet
minimum fire-retardant standards. If the agency's three commissioners vote
to approve it, the rule would have the force of law. As it stands, the draft rule
would require furniture fabrics to resist an open flame for 20 seconds.
This extra safety comes at a price -- the cost of three pizzas.
Furniture makers could meet the planned rule for $22 to $28 per sofa, the
agency says. Treating a dining room chair would cost $4 to $6.
''That's a small price to pay for the life of a child,'' said Ann Brown,
chairwoman of the consumer protection agency.
Requiring all furniture in the United States to meet the standard would cost
the $16 billion retail furniture industry $460 million to $720 million, regulators
say, although some of that cost might be passed along to the consumer.
Furniture makers don't quarrel with those numbers, but say there are better,
cheaper ways to cut furniture fires, like requiring smoke detectors in every
home.
''There's a recognition in our industry that we produce one of the products
that's involved in residential fires,'' said Russell Batson, spokesman for the
American Furniture Manufacturers Association. ''But it is worth questioning
whether there are approaches that, while not product-specific, would have a
broader impact. ... For better or for worse, we're living in a universe of finite
resources.''
New Hampshire Fire Marshal Don Bliss, who has led the campaign by state
fire marshals for a national standard, disagrees.
''It costs somewhere in the neighborhood of $150 to $200 to make the
average couch, which costs $800 or $900,'' he said. ''We question the need
for the added cost even to be passed on to the consumer.''
Furniture makers note that retailers get a large share of markups.
Federal regulators have known since the early 1970s that upholstered
furniture poses an especially potent fire hazard. At the time, they stood at the
vanguard of fire safety.
The Department of Transportation set fire safety rules for car seats in 1971.
A year later the Department of Commerce published ''A Possible Finding of
Need for a Flammability Standard for Upholstered Furniture,'' pointing out the
high death toll and the technology available to curb it. Airline regulators set
rules to protect passenger seats, and the Bureau of Prisons issued rules
requiring fire protection for prison furniture.
But after the Consumer Products Safety Commission assumed oversight of
furniture in 1973, it declined to enact rules on household furniture. In 1981,
the agency voted not to require flame-retardant furniture.
One of the agency's biggest critics is Ms. Brown, who has been running it
since 1994.
''This is an agency that was all bun and no beef. It was inactive,'' she said.
''I would agree with the fire community that the agency was not doing its job
before, and I'm glad to say that we are doing so now.''
California officials, tired of waiting for a federal standard, passed their own in
1974. Britain followed suit in 1989.
Gordon Damant is a fire-safety consultant who helped write California's law.
The way he sees it, the federal government could have spared the lives of
thousands of Americans had it acted when California did.
''If you can give people even a few seconds to escape a fire, you can save
their lives,'' Damant said. ''Look, the technology exists. Furniture
manufacturers are, in fact, complying with it in California.''
Damant is testifying in Jeannie South's lawsuit against two furniture makers.
Neither he nor her lawyers, David Zacks and Ray Chadwick of Kilpatrick
Stockton, would comment on the case.
California requires cover fabric to resist an open flame for one second and
foam to be treated with fire-retardant chemicals. The planned federal rule
would require treatment of fabric only.
California regulators say the state's rule has saved lives. The state had 18
deaths compared with 700 nationally in 1991, according to a study. With
about 10 percent of the national population, California would have had 70
deaths at the national rate.
Furniture makers acknowledge that furniture fire deaths in California have
decreased much faster than nationally. But they point to other reasons: strict
smoke-detector requirements and fewer smokers.
The reason the federal government hasn't given consumers the same fire
protection it gives prisoners lies in Washington and in furniture-making towns
like High Point, N.C., and Tupelo, Miss.
As the federal government considered regulations in the 1970s, the furniture
industry sought to avoid them by creating a voluntary standard. It requires
that furniture fabrics resist smoldering cigarettes, but not fires from matches
and other open flames.
Although only about 260 of the nation's 1,500 furniture makers and importers
agreed to it, consumer regulators say 83 percent of furniture complies. The
industry says it's 92 percent.
Deaths from furniture fires started by cigarettes and cigars fell from 1,150 in
1980 to 410 in 1994. But the number of deaths related to furniture set afire
by open flames such as matches, candles and cigarette lighters has changed
little in the last two decades, with nearly 100 dying and 460 becoming injured
yearly in 3,100 such fires.
There may be another problem with the voluntary rule: Federal researchers
found that chemicals used on fabrics to resist smoldering embers of
cigarettes might actually make fires from open flames faster, hotter and more
toxic.
When federal regulators used those numbers in considering the fire marshals'
request to adopt California's standard nationally, furniture makers turned to
Congress. They appealed to Rep. Roger Wicker, a Republican from Tupelo,
where furniture makers employ more workers than any other industry.
Wicker inserted a clause in a congressional bill last summer, forbidding the
safety commission from setting a furniture standard until the National
Academy of Sciences conducts a study on whether fire-retardant chemicals
are safe for workers and consumers. The commission already did that study,
identifying at least five chemicals that could be used that are not considered
hazardous by the Environmental Protection Agency. The academy's results
are expected in January.
Wicker said he didn't trust the CPSC. He said he's worried about safety and
the environment.
Ms. Brown points out that Wicker hasn't been a leader among
environmentalists. The League of Conservation Voters has consistently given
Wicker among the lowest ratings in Congress for his votes on environmental
issues.
''This is a congressman responding more to the special interests of his
constituents than to the health and safety needs of America's families,'' Ms.
Brown said.
The furniture industry is clearly behind Wicker.
Since Wicker was elected in 1994 he has received $29,200 from furniture
makers. His top contributor over the past two years has been the American
Furniture Manufacturer's Association, which gave him $8,000.
''I'll tell you who also is behind me,'' Wicker said. ''That is the thousands --
thousands -- of upholstered furniture workers throughout the country who
want to work in a safe place. ... They want to have confidence that they
don't have an increased risk of cancer.''
Furniture makers have been even more generous to federal lawmakers and
their political parties at large -- giving $3.1 million since 1991, an amount
equal to Dee Ann Wright's medical bills so far.
Her mother had hoped to take her home as early as April, but the child is now
recovering from a second heart attack. Dr. Joseph Still says her case is the
worst he's seen since he founded the burn unit at Columbia-Augusta Regional
Medical Center 20 years ago. When she does come home, she'll have to
remain in a climate-controlled environment for the rest of her life, because
her grafted skin will leave her unable to sweat.
''I haven't even told her about Karen, although I think she senses it. We're
going to have to work with her to deal with her grief,'' Ms. South said.
''Right now we're just trying to keep her alive.''
Copyright 1999 The New York Times Company |
