As
part of our first-year, Pulitzer-finalist coverage of the Station Fire, The
Providence Journal invested significant resources into researching fire safety.
Working with the National Fire
Protection Association and other private and government agencies, and retaining
a West Coast laboratory to conduct our own tests, including a controlled burn
of flammable foam, we produced this four-part series. I co-wrote with my late
colleague and friend, Peter Lord.
FATAL FOAM - PART ONE: It's just about everywhere.
G. WAYNE MILLER and PETER B. LORD
Publication Date: September 28, 2003
Page: A-01 Section: News Edition: All
This is the first of a four-part
series on the dangers of polyurethane foam in our homes.
FUELED
by polyurethane foam, a substance so flammable that firefighters compare it
to gasoline, The Station nightclub fire spread with stunning speed. Superheated
air and poison gases filled the club and combustion sucked the oxygen away. Within
minutes, 100 people were dead or dying, and more than 200 were hurt.
The magnitude of that toll horrified Americans. But the material that ignited
during the West Warwick disaster is behind a
larger, though far less-publicized, tragedy: the deaths of hundreds of people
around the country every year in home fires involving foam. Some of the victims
are elderly. Some are children. Some go to sleep and never wake up.
Many would be alive now if the federal government had done its job, or if
industry had done all it could.
For three decades, most upholstered furniture and mattresses sold in America have
contained flexible polyurethane foam, the plastic material that was used as
soundproofing around The Station nightclub stage. It's found in couches, love seats,
chairs, recliners, mattresses, mattress pads and mattress toppers, pillows,
carpet cushioning and many other places. More than 2 billion pounds of foam
enters the U.S.
market every year.
Foam is comfortable and comparatively cheap - and once ignited, it can be
lethal. Mattress, bedding and upholstered furniture fires killed almost 30,000
Americans from 1980 to 1998, the latest year for which National Fire Protection
Association (NFPA) data are available. Another 95,655 people were injured.
From 1980 to 1998, mattress and bedding fires killed 12,712 Americans,
according to the NFPA - 10 times more than all those killed by tornadoes and
hurricanes combined. During the period, mattress and bedding fires injured
almost 56,000 people, some horribly and for life. Direct property damage (which
includes damage to a building and its contents, but not such costs as medical
care or relocation) totaled $5.5 billion, as a fire starting in a bed often
engulfs a bedroom and then damages or destroys more rooms or an entire house.
During the same period, upholstered furniture fires killed 17,108 and injured
almost 40,000 others. Direct property damage surpassed $4.3 billion.
These numbers could have been lower - dramatically lower, advocates say.
For years, the technology has existed to make household foam harder to ignite:
chemical flame retardants can be used, and fabric flame barriers can be built
into beds and upholstered furniture to shield the foam within from outside
ignition. England
requires such protective technology, and it is credited with saving hundreds of
lives since the 1988 introduction of tough flammability standards, according to
a June 2000 British government study.
America
has no such tough national regulations.
U.S.
manufacturers of mattresses and upholstered furniture must meet only lesser
national flammability standards - and for the furniture makers, the standards
are voluntary, drawn up by the makers themselves.
There is a federal agency with the power to require safer products: by law, the
Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) is charged with regulating the
flammability of mattresses and furniture. But despite studies and the calls of
firefighters and fire-safety advocates, the CPSC for three decades has failed
to adopt stricter regulations.
"Different folks have different ideas about what to do - and the
regulatory process is, to say the least, quite burdensome," CPSC chairman
Hal Stratton said in an interview.
Meanwhile, the death toll mounts.
"I am shocked that leaders charged with our protection would allow kids to
die while they dallied for three decades," said Whitney A. Davis, personal
injury lawyer and director of the California-based Children's Coalition for
Fire Safe Mattresses.
"I have no way to explain to the burned children in my group, whom I have
flown around the country promising that what they are doing will help save
others, that the U.S.A. has placed grownups in power that have proven that the
kids' skin was given in vain."
IN ITS ESSENTIAL features, the fire that killed four in Westerly two summers ago is typical of what
can happen at home.
In the early morning of July 17, 2002, Robert Ingram, his two young daughters,
his stepson, and the stepson's girlfriend were sleeping in bedrooms in their
Colonial-style house; family friend Jessica Sjostedt and her 2-year-old
daughter were asleep on a living room couch. A quilt for kittens was next to
the couch, and a love seat was next to the quilt. The furniture contained
flexible polyurethane foam, investigators believe.
Sometime in the early hours, a fire began at the base of the couch.
Investigators would be unable to definitively determine the cause of the fire,
but they would theorize that kittens may have chewed through an electric lamp
cord, shorting it and creating the heat for ignition.
Flames licked at the couch.
Shortly before 6 a.m., the fire woke Sjostedt. She grabbed her baby and began
to scream.
Her panic woke Ingram's stepson, Neil Rosenberg, 23, who had been sleeping in
one of the upstairs bedrooms. Rosenberg
ran down and managed to get Ingram, 68, who is wheelchair-bound, safely out of
his first-floor bedroom. Sjostedt found a portable phone and followed them with
her baby outside.
By now, the couch was engulfed, and the love seat was catching.
Lethal smoke filled the living room, and the temperature soared past 1,000
degrees. Through an unusually cruel twist of fate, investigators theorize, the
heat shorted out a thermostat, which turned on the furnace. The forced hot-air
heating system began to act like a bellows.
The smoke and superheated gases poured upstairs, and the living room was just
moments from flashover - the point at which everything combustible in a room
ignites. No more than about three minutes had passed since the furniture caught
fire. It burned now like gasoline.
Hoping to save his girlfriend and Ingram's daughters, Rosenberg ran back into the house. Neighbors
reported hearing the girls, Crystal Ingram, 10, and Carol, 9, screaming inside
their second-story bedroom.
Rosenberg made it upstairs, but he was too late:
carbon monoxide and other poison gases had silenced the girls, and Rosenberg's girlfriend,
Tara Verrier, 21, apparently was overcome and never roused from her sleep.
Rosenberg himself quickly succumbed. The living room flashed over and the whole
house was an inferno. Neighbors attempting a rescue could not get in - and when
firefighters arrived, just four minutes after the first call, the heat was too
intense for them to attempt a rescue, even in their protective gear.
"We used to say you had seven minutes to get out of a burning
building," says Deputy State Fire Marshal Richard U. James. "Now,
with the things we have put inside, it's about three."
OTTO GEORG Wilhelm Bayer, a German chemist, invented polyurethane in 1937. The
first form of this plastic material was rigid. Among its early uses was in the
wings of Luftwaffe airplanes, and in the soles of Nazi soldiers' boots.
The foam form came when chemists figured out how to put tiny bubbles into
polyurethane - an innovation that created a product that could be easily
manufactured in many sizes and shapes. Flexible polyurethane foam was
comfortable, durable and relatively inexpensive - and starting in the 1950s, it
began to replace the horsehair, cotton, wool, feathers, latex rubber and other
materials then used inside mattresses and upholstered furniture (and car and
airplane seats and other places). By the 1970s, polyurethane foam was
ubiquitous in America.
"Flexible polyurethane foam (FPF) is one of the most versatile materials
ever created. We're literally surrounded by it in our lives," says
industry group Alliance
for Flexible Polyurethane Foam on its Web site, www.afpf.com/furnguide.html.
Dozens of companies make foam or supply the raw materials used in its
manufacture, including the multinational giants Dow Chemical, BASF, Bayer and
Shell. The leading manufacturer of foam in the United
States is Foamex, based in Linwood, Pa.,
with $1.25 billion in annual revenues.
"You'll find Foamex foams inside, around and under thousands of products
from hundreds of manufacturers," the company says on its Web site,
www.foamex.com. "They protect automobile passengers on the highway and fragile
electronic components in shipment. They help consumers sleep sounder and
furniture manufacturers create more comfortable products. They add to the
luxury, comfort and performance of home and commercial carpeting." Foamex
also makes retail products, including Eggcrate brand mattress toppers.
"Sleep Better Night after Night with Foamex Pads," reads an ad.
Foam makers have long understood the dangers of their product. They know that
all carbon-based products will burn - but the open-celled structure of flexible
polyurethane foam provides easy access to the oxygen that combustion requires.
Insurers also have long understood how foam burns. In 1968, Factory Mutual
Research Corp. (now FM Global, headquartered in Johnston) issued a report warning its industrial
clients about the dangers of warehoused foam. "Foamed Polyurethane: the
Solid That Burns Like a Flammable Liquid," the report was titled.
Today, foam manufacturers go to lengths to keep flexible polyurethane foam
(FPF) from burning during production, storage and shipment to consumer-product
manufacturers. "FPF should not be exposed to open flames or other direct
or indirect high-temperature ignition sources such as burning cigarettes,
matches, fireplaces, space heaters, forklifts, welding sparks or bare light
bulbs," the alliance declares at www.afpf.com/furnguide.html. "As an
added precaution, it is recommended that all areas where FPF is stored or
handled need to be protected by automatic sprinkler systems."
But consumers do not always understand the perils of foam.
THE DANGERS of polyurethane generated headlines - and government concern -
after a series of deadly fires involving the plastic material in the United States
and abroad during the late '60s and early '70s.
The most catastrophic was on Nov. 1, 1970, in a French nightclub whose interior
had been sprayed with foam to create the illusion of a cave. The foam ignited,
unleashing a vortex of fire, superheated air and poison gas that killed 146
people, including many teenagers. "A huge flame leaped into the air and
suddenly plunged down to the main floor like a whirlwind," a survivor told
the United Press International. "Everybody was screaming, screaming, and
suddenly nothing more except the sounds of the sirens...."
Even before the French fire, Congress established the National Commission on
Fire Prevention and Control, a panel that issued a 177-page report in 1973. The
panel warned that the increasing use of flammable plastics in homes and in
businesses had created hazards rarely seen before: synthetic materials such as
polyurethane burned extremely hot and fast, producing toxic gases and
byproducts that could quickly kill even at a distance from flames. In essence,
a plastic-fueled fire could transform a house into a gas chamber.
"What makes plastics relevant to our discussion of materials is not only
that many of them have introduced hazards previously uncommon," the
commission wrote, "but that they are sold and used without adequate
attention to the special fire hazards they present."
The commission urged safer products and safety education - and warned of a
potential conflict of interest: "The economic interests of manufacturers,
installers, vendors and others often run counter to stringent fire safety
requirements."
Clearly, government had a role to play if lives were to be saved and injuries
prevented.
FOAM CAN BURN inside a bed or a chair, but government regulators and
firefighters' associations have traditionally drawn distinctions between the
makers of mattresses and the makers of upholstered furniture: a person sleeping
faces a different sort of hazard than someone sitting. The manufacturers of
mattresses and upholstered furniture have separate trade associations and
lobbies.
Starting in 1974, the U.S. Commerce Department required that all mattresses
sold in the United States
be resistant to smoldering cigarettes, considered by experts then to be the
paramount household ignition threat. But the federal government passed no such
requirement for another type of ignition: so-called small open-flame sources
such as candles, matches or lighters.
Some states, however, did adopt the tougher open-flame standard - for prison
mattresses. In the United
States today, incarcerated criminals sleep
more safely than children.
Nor did the federal government require upholstered furniture to be safer. The
industry adopted its own, voluntary standard - compliance is optional - in the
1970s. But like the mattress standard, the upholstered furniture standard
addresses ignition only by smoldering cigarettes, not small open flame.
Three decades later, nothing has changed.
THOUSANDS DIE or are injured every year in home fires involving mattresses,
bedding and upholstered furniture, but the casualties mount in small numbers:
one dead here, another somewhere else. The incremental and localized nature of
these tragedies means they fail to achieve critical mass in a society where
news of 100 dead in West Warwick goes global - but four dead in Westerly doesn't warrant
a sentence of national coverage.
Even when a home fire makes headlines, the materials that burned are not always
mentioned. A typical first-day news account notes that a fire "is under
investigation," and sometimes that is the last published word. Even in
follow-up stories, investigators may identify only the point of origin of the
fire - bed, sofa, chair - but not the material commonly found within.
Because foam burns so ferociously, destroying potential evidence, lawyers have
difficulty mounting the sort of high-profile court cases that have focused
public attention on tobacco, asbestos and other potentially dangerous
substances.
"One of the problems with litigating in the area is that the stuff burns
so good that when you're looking at the remains of it, a lot of times you're
not able to identify who made it, and then you've got no case," says Robin
P. Foster, a lawyer in Greenville, S.C., who has represented victims of
upholstered furniture fires in claims against manufacturers.
"You're relying on physical evidence, you're relying on the information
from the clients or from the occupants, and a lot of times these fires occur in
areas of low socio-economic housing where the family - you know, they get their
furniture from Uncle Joe who got it from a yard sale 10 years ago, and it was
handed down two generations. ... It gets handed down a lot and you get where
you can't identify it and you're stuck."
STILL, ADVOCATES occasionally break through.
Whitney Davis did on Feb. 7, 2000, when he urged the CPSC to adopt tougher
flammability standards for mattresses. Davis
brought three young boys badly injured in mattress fires to a hearing in Bethesda, Md.,
and when it was over, one of them, 10-year-old Damon Bihl, spoke at a press
conference that made national news.
Dressed in a suit and tie - but with a bandage covering most of his head - the
boy said he had come to Maryland from his home
in California
"so that other kids don't get burned like me." Damon lost his left
hand, left ear and portions of his face when he played with matches on his
mother's bed and the mattress caught fire. At the time, Damon was 3.
Seven years later, his wounds had still not healed.
"It hurts a lot," the boy told the reporters. "Most of all I
want the doctors to give me a new hand. Then I could play baseball."
Fox News, MSNBC, ABC News and other national outlets carried the dramatic
story, as did many local TV stations. One, Boston Channel 7 (WHDH), later aired
a report called "Burning Beds" about the dangers of foam in
mattresses. The report was presented by then-reporter Jeffrey A. Derderian,
co-owner of The Station nightclub.
But the publicity faded. The issue of household foam returned to the shadows,
to a small government agency headquartered in Bethesda.
ESTABLISHED BY Congress with the 1972 Consumer Product Safety Act, the CPSC has
the power to set standards and rules, initiate recalls and ban dangerous
products. More than 15,000 products fall under the agency's jurisdiction,
including toys, children's clothing, home appliances, batteries, extension
cords, even noncommercial fireworks.
No items under CPSC jurisdiction play a deadlier role in home fires than
products that usually contain foam, a fact the commission acknowledges. On the
very first page of an October 2001 report on the flammability of upholstered
furniture, the CPSC stated:
"Upholstered furniture-related fires account for more residential fire
deaths than any other category of consumer products under the commission's
jurisdiction. A disproportionate number of these fire losses, including
one-third of the deaths, were to children under 15."
According to the NFPA, 543 people died in 11,600 fires involving just
upholstered furniture in 1998, the last year for which data are available;
another 1,425 were injured and direct property damage totaled $224.5 million.
The CPSC assessed the total "societal cost" in that one year at $2.4
billion. (Most upholstered furniture sold today contains some polyurethane
foam, according to the CPSC.)
And these numbers do not include the toll from mattress and bedding fires in
1998: 398 deaths, 2,309 injuries and $292 million in direct property damage.
The October 2001 furniture report is called a "briefing package," a
document produced by the CPSC staff for the agency's three commissioners, who
today continue to consider a tougher, open-flame resistance standard. With
appendices, the report ran to 922 pages and was years in the making.
It was just one of many reports, studies, hearings and tests involving the
flammability of foam over the last three decades.
Industry and the federal government have excelled at identifying the problem.
But they have not solved it.
"People are sleeping and sitting on pieces of furniture filled with solid
gasoline," says Davis.
"For a few bucks, we could eliminate the risk."
* Read more safety tips online:
http://www.projo.com/extra/2003/foam/
* * *
Fire safety tips
* Never smoke in bed.
* Do not store old mattresses in your attic or basement.
* Keep matches and lighters out of the reach of children.
* Install smoke detectors in every bedroom and in closets of children's
bedrooms - sometimes children hide in their closets to play with matches.
* Leave at least 3 feet between beds and portable heaters or fixed space
heaters.
* Don't run electrical cords over or under a bed and don't jam them between
beds and walls.
* Keep candles away from bedding, curtains and sleepwear.
The series:
SUNDAY
Polyurethane foam, used to soundproof The Station nightclub stage, is
everywhere in American homes - in upholstered furniture and mattresses, in
pillows and carpet padding. When foam catches fire, it can kill with deadly
speed. Yet most of us are unaware of its dangers.
MONDAY
Upholstered furniture fires killed 17,108 Americans from 1980 through 1998, the
latest year for which complete figures are available. Most of the upholstered
furniture sold today contains some polyurethane foam, which burns intensely and
releases gases that can quickly render a person unconscious.
TUESDAY
Mattresses and bedding sold in America
could be safer, but the federal government so far has not required tougher
national flammability standards. The technology exists to make our beds safer,
but the government and industry have been slow to embrace it.
WEDNESDAY
The Providence Journal commissions a fire
laboratory in Washington
state to burn a bed - and the results demonstrate the ferocity of household
fires involving polyurethane foam.
SERIES STAFF
This is staff writer G. Wayne Miller's 12th series for The Providence Journal. His earlier topics have
included NASCAR auto racing, the invention of open-heart surgery, the toy
industry, Newport
society, a year in the life of a high school boy and pediatric surgery. Miller
is also the author of six books. Visit him online at www.gwaynemiller.com
Peter B. Lord 's has covered environmental issues at The Providence Journal for more than 20 years.
His last series was on lead-paint poisoning in children. Lord has traveled to
the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, to the Shetland Islands to cover an oil
spill, and to Belize, Guatemala
and Costa Rica
to write about development issues. Lord is a co-director of the Metcalf
Institute for Marine and Environmental Journalism and recently served on the
board of the Society of Environmental Journalists.
>>>>>>>>>>><<<<<<<<<<<<
FATAL FOAM - PART TWO: It's in our upholstered furniture.
G. WAYNE MILLER and PETER B. LORD
Publication Date: September 29, 2003
Page: A-01 Section: News Edition: All
This is the second of a four-part
series on the dangers of polyurethane foam in our homes.
* * *
THE VIDEO
opens with the outside of a two-story house. It could be any house, in any
suburban neighborhood. All is peaceful.
The camera moves inside, to a living room furnished with everyday taste.
Curtains adorn the windows, and wall-to-wall carpeting covers the floor. A
couch sits in the middle. A chair, a lamp, an end table and a coffee table
complete the decor.
The camera zooms in on a wastebasket, filled with newspapers, at the bottom of
the couch. As the narrator of this National Fire Protection Association (NFPA)
fire-safety documentary talks about careless disposal of cigarettes, a hand
empties an ashtray into the basket.
In about the time it would take that person to climb the stairs to bed, the
newspapers catch.
Flame quickly peels back the cover fabric of the couch, exposing a flexible
polyurethane foam cushion. The foam ignites, sending up thickening black smoke.
It looks like a car-engine fire. It looks like burning gasoline.
"After only 90 seconds," the narrator says, "the room is filled
with toxic smoke and gases. The smoke detector has not yet sounded. Even with a
fire this large, a family asleep upstairs could be unaware of the danger."
The fire intensifies.
"One minute, 45 seconds after the fire started," the narrator
continues, "the smoke detector sounds. Smoke begins to move
upstairs."
The smoke carries a lethal cocktail of gases, including hydrogen cyanide and
carbon monoxide, which at high concentrations can quickly render a person
unconscious, then kill him or her.
The camera cuts to the stairway, then back to the living room, where the smoke
fills the top half of the room and presses lower and lower. Only a third of the
couch is burning, but the fire already is terrible trouble.
"Three minutes have elapsed. Smoke engulfs the upstairs hall, making
escape difficult. Outside, there is no evidence of a fire."
The camera shows the house exterior. All still seems peaceful.
Inside the living room, the burning foam and other materials have sent the
temperature past 1,000 degrees. The fire has reached flashover, the point at
which the heat is so intense that everything combustible in the room ignites -
even objects not directly touched by flame. The camera shows the couch, chair,
tables, curtains and carpeting all burning savagely. The smoke swirls like a
tornado.
"In less than four minutes, everything in the living room ignites
violently. The temperature is more than 1,400 degrees Fahrenheit. For the first
time, flames and smoke are visible outside. Deadly smoke and toxic gases fill
the rooms inside."
By now, the fire rages uncontrollably and the smoke is blinding. The chance of
anyone getting out alive drops with every passing second. Even a firefighter in
full protective gear would enter this house at peril.
"A real fire is not like what you see in the movies," the narrator
concludes. "Real fire is fast, hot, choking, and too often deadly. Now
that you know, plan to protect your family from the power of fire."
Produced by the NFPA to educate a public audience, this video of an
unscientific demonstration of a burning room in a real house graphically
illustrates what firefighters, fire-safety groups, government and the
manufacturers of upholstered furniture have long known: when foam ignites, it
can kill.
The 11,600 fires involving upholstered furniture in the United States
claimed 543 lives in 1998, the latest year for which data are available,
according to the NFPA; another 1,425 were injured, and direct property damage
was $224.5 million. The Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) calculated
the total "societal cost" of upholstered furniture fires that year at
$2.4 billion. And it determined that one-third of the deaths were to children under
15, the age group some experts say is most likely to play with matches,
lighters or candles.
Many ordinary consumers, though, have only a vague awareness of the dangers of
foam in furniture (and mattresses) - if they are aware at all.
"Foam cushions us; we sleep on it; it cradles our babies," says
Whitney A. Davis, director of the California-based Children's Coalition for
Fire Safe Mattresses. "Nobody knows that the foam is solid gasoline that
incinerates entire families in less time than it takes for the fire department
to arrive at the blaze."
AMERICA'S household-furniture manufacturing industry is concentrated in
California and the South, notably Mississippi, Tennessee and North Carolina,
where the city of High Point calls itself The Furniture Capital of the World.
According to Andy S. Counts, chief executive officer of the American Furniture
Manufacturers Association, based in High
Point, the upholstered furniture industry consists of
about 1,000 firms, with the 50 largest - including the most popular brand names
- accounting for more than two-thirds of wholesale shipments of $10.2 billion
last year. According to the CPSC, most upholstered furniture sold today
contains some polyurethane foam.
It is a competitive business with relatively small profit margins, one in which
consumers are highly price-sensitive - as evidenced by the many retail
advertisements in newspapers and on TV. The ads speak to beauty and comfort,
not the dangers of foam.
Manufacturers have understood that danger for decades, and it was the federal
government's mandate that mattresses be made resistant to ignition by
smoldering cigarettes that prompted the furniture makers to adopt - with CPSC
approval - a voluntary standard of their own in the 1970s. The standard is
administered by the Upholstered Furniture Action Council (UFAC), an independent
group also based in High Point.
"UFAC was formed to allow upholstered furniture manufacturers the
opportunity to work with the CPSC in a meaningful way to design safety
standards which are effective, cost-effective and workable from a manufacturing
standpoint," UFAC explains on its Web site,
www.homefurnish.com/UFAC/manufacturers.htm. "The only logical course of
action for the furniture industry was to create a voluntary program that would
develop a better safety record for the industry, at a lower cost, than the
proposed government regulations."
Manufacturers participating in UFAC agree to sell a product that resists
ignition to lit cigarettes that come into direct contact with upholstered
furniture. There is no requirement to resist ignition by open flame, such as
from matches, candles or lighters, or the blazing trash that ignited the couch
in the NFPA video.
Counts says that "upwards of 90-plus percent" of U.S.
manufacturers comply with the cigarette standard, a figure in agreement with
CPSC estimates. Imports are another matter. According to Counts, imported
upholstered furniture grew at an annual rate of 21 percent from 1996 through
2002, accounting now for over $1.4 billion in annual sales. Counts does not
know how many overseas manufacturers comply with the voluntary standard, nor
does the CPSC, the agency with the power to regulate every piece of upholstered
furniture sold in the United States.
UFAC PROVIDES manufacturers with the test criteria to meet its
smoldering-cigarette standard. It also conducts a safety-education campaign,
using a page on its Web site, "Home Safe Home,"
www.homefurnish.com/UFAC/homesafehome.htm. "Home Sweet Home has taken on
new meaning for today's consumers," UFAC says, "and as Americans
increasingly turn to their homes as havens for enjoying their family and
friends, they are looking for these comfort zones to not only be comfortable
and inviting, but safe and secure as well."
UFAC also offers the 26 "ABCs for safe home furnishings." They
include M, "for matches, which should be kept away from children. .
." and N, "for nighttime, when it gets dark. When the sun goes down,
lighting should come on. . . . Candles are a nice touch for evening, but use
caution near upholstery and bedding." The ABCs end with Z, "for the
great ZZZs you'll catch when you know your family is safe at home."
But the centerpiece of UFAC's campaign is its safety tag, which manufacturers
can choose to attach to their products. The voluntary tags are written in
English, Spanish and French, and contain a "Safety Warning" on the
gold-colored front. The back provides small-print detail, warning consumers to
be careful when smoking and to properly install and maintain smoke detectors.
"Keep upholstery away from flames or lit cigarettes," the tag also
advises. "Upholstery may burn rapidly, with toxic gas & thick smoke.
Keep children away from matches and lighters. Fires from candles, lighters,
matches or other smoking materials are still possible."
Firefighters and fire-safety advocates contend that even when manufacturers use
the tags, the message is sometimes poorly communicated to the consumer, if
communicated at all. A recent spot check of several furniture stores in Rhode Island confirmed
that the presence of safety tags is far from universal. It was difficult to
find any tags in two stores. Clerks seemed unaware of the dangers of foam. One
said he assumed all of the furniture was "fireproofed."
Even if every piece of furniture carried a tag, the warnings would have
inherent limitations, since most preschoolers cannot read - and no tag can
eliminate the age-old temptation of fire to children.
Robin P. Foster, a Greenville,
S.C., lawyer who has represented
the victims of upholstered furniture fires in claims against manufacturers,
says, "No matter how well we try to educate our public to keep our kids
away from cigarette lighters, they're pretty crafty and they get a hold of them
and they defeat the child-resistant features and they start fires. And that's
going to continue to happen."
Foster adds: "A lot of people erroneously believe that they can put these
fires out, and they go try to put water on them and so forth and they waste
valuable escape time. By the time you realize it, you're not able to get your
family out in a lot of circumstances."
AS BEST AS INVESTIGATORS will ever be able to determine, the fire that killed
Frances M. Passineau, of Woonsocket,
in the early hours of April 4, 2002, started as she sat in an upholstered
chair. A heavy smoker, the woman was apparently having a cigarette.
At some point, investigators suspect, she fell asleep.
At some point, the cigarette left her control. Perhaps it first ignited
newspapers or trash, as in the NFPA video. No one will ever know, for fires
often destroy that kind of evidence.
Whatever the sequence, the chair caught fire. The burn pattern on Passineau's
body suggested that the woman continued to sleep as the fire started to blaze.
Eventually, it woke her. Passineau began screaming for help.
Her cries awakened others who lived in the triple-decker on Social Street, and they all got out
safely. Someone ran to a pay phone and dialed 911. The first respondent, a
police officer, arrived almost immediately. Hysterical residents told him that
someone was trapped in the first-floor front apartment. The officer saw flames
pouring from the windows.
"His report indicates that he truly attempted to make entry into the front
apartment on the first floor, but conditions were not tolerable," the
Rhode Island Fire Marshal's office stated in its official report.
According to the report, Passineau, 51, was a "mentally challenged
individual" who was receiving assistance from Northern R.I. Community
Services, a mental health agency. Her condition may have affected her
reactions. The agency would not discuss her case.
Somehow, Passineau made it the short distance from her chair to the kitchen,
where her body was found on the floor. Investigators think she may have been
seeking water to fight the fire.
But a glass or pan of tap water would not have helped. The fire apparently had
reached flashover - and when firefighters finally quelled it, the apartment
house was a total loss. Nineteen people, including children, were left
homeless.
Investigators examining Passineau's apartment wrote that "the charred
'shadow' of the chair's presence was seen on the floor" - and "what
appeared to be coil springs," nothing more. Investigators believe the
chair had contained foam, but an exact determination of even the chair type was
impossible. "That this chair was most possibly a recliner-rocker with a
pillow seat might be a valid assumption," is all the officials could
conclude.
WITH GREATER USE of smoke detectors, UFAC's voluntary standards, and other
factors, deaths and injuries from upholstered furniture fires did decline
significantly during the 1980s and 1990s. From a peak of 1,360 in 1981, deaths
in American homes dropped to 543 in 1998.
But by the mid-1990s, the death rate had plateaued, flattening out at an annual
average of 636 from 1994 to 1998, according to the NFPA. And while reduced, the
cigarette risk was not eliminated. According to the NFPA, "abandoned or
discarded smoking materials" (a category that includes a small number of
cases involving cigars and pipes) caused upholstered furniture fires that
killed 45 percent of all those who died in such fires on an annual average in
the 1994-1998 period.
Advocates and firefighters say that substantial further progress will require
furniture that meets an open-flame standard - furniture like that sold in England, where
a tougher standard has been in place since 1988.
Seeking such a mandatory national standard, the National Association of State
Fire Marshals (NASFM) in 1993 petitioned the CPSC. The agency seemed to be
persuaded: in June of 1994, it published an advance notice of proposed
rule-making, signaling its intention to begin considering such a regulation.
Nine years later, the agency is still considering.
Studies have been conducted, hearings held, briefing packages prepared. And a
congressman added to the delay.
REP. ROGER WICKER represents Mississippi's
1st District, where upholstered furniture factories employ thousands. From 1997
through June, the latest Federal Election Commission reports show, he received
$19,000 from the American Furniture Manufacturers Association.
Learning of CPSC's consideration of an open-flame regulation, Wicker in 1998
succeeded in passing an appropriations rider to the CPSC budget preventing such
a mandate pending further study of flame-retardant chemicals, one way a tougher
national mandate could be met. The chemicals, Wicker told a congressional
hearing on July 16, 1998, might be a health hazard. "There can be very
harmful effects to the workers and also to the consumers, and we need to let
the scientists look at this," Wicker said.
But New Hampshire
state Fire Marshal Donald P. Bliss, now the president of NASFM, told The
Washington Post: "We don't see any issues with regard to toxicity or
carcinogenic effects, particularly when you compare it with the loss of life
from these furnishings." Then-CPSC chairwoman Ann Brown told the paper:
"The commission ought to be able to do its job."
A study by the National Academy of Sciences' National Research Council
concluded that 8 of the 16 chemicals under consideration presented
"minimal risk," according to the study's chairman. But that study was
not released until April 2000, at which point the CPSC had bogged down again.
ONE OF THE LAST major public developments involving a tough flammability
standard was in June 2002, when the CPSC held two days of hearings. Counts told
the agency that he supported a mandatory national standard and that he and his
industry would continue to work with the CPSC to help achieve it.
In a letter sent this past May to CPSC chairman Hal Stratton, Counts said that
a mandatory flammability standard for upholstered furniture should address
ignition by small open flame and also by cigarettes, now the subject of the
voluntary UFAC standard. But he repeated his contention that writing
regulations is no easy task.
"For a number of years," he wrote, "the American Furniture
Manufacturers Association (AFMA) has worked with CPSC and other stakeholders to
identify a sensible regulatory approach to reducing the flammability risk
associated with upholstered furniture.
"Like the other participants, we have at times felt confounded by the
complexity of this issue and the elusiveness of a straightforward, effective
solution that would account for the variety of fabrics, cushioning materials,
ignition sources, and patterns of human behavior underlying this hazard."
Among the many factors complicating adoption of a national standard, Counts
wrote, are uncertainties involving the flame retardants that could be applied
to upholstered furniture fabric: cleaning or "wear and tear" could
compromise effectiveness, as could use of slipcovers. And, he wrote, one study
of flame retardants showed that some of these chemicals provided resistance to
open-flame ignition - while "losing" resistance to cigarette
ignition.
In an interview, Counts said that the environmental safety of flame retardants
also remains an issue. And he raised public health concerns about retardants,
especially the ones known as polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs), which
Europe is banning - and which are showing up in high concentrations in the
breast milk of American women, according to a study released just last week.
Counts also questioned how even a harmless retardant might affect the aesthetic
appeal of a fine fabric such as silk. "If you backcoat certain fine silks
and other fabrics," he said, "you're going to make them very rigid
and boardlike."
Counts saw possibilities in barrier technology, but not immediately. "This
is an emerging technology that has just recently been developed for mattresses
which we cannot carry over into residential furniture at this point, but it
does show some promise," he said.
At least one manufacturer of barrier materials says it could meet demand for
residential furniture: the North
Carolina firm of McKinnon-Land-Moran, which
manufactures a tough heat- and flame-resistant fiber called Basofil, recipient
of the California Fire Chiefs Association 2002 Award for Innovation in Fire
Protection. The company describes Basofil as a white, dyeable, soft,
comfortable, non-allergenic, odor-free, synthetic fiber that can be woven into
fabrics with existing technology and machines.
According to Frank Land, president and chief operating officer of
McKinnon-Land-Moran, Basofil today is used in airplane seats and firefighters'
suits and is available for use in the manufacture of residential mattresses and
household upholstered furniture. Basofil (and Allesandra, a fabric containing
Basofil) would pass an open-flame resistance test such as that which the CPSC
is considering, Land said.
"We will step up to the plate and meet whatever the demand is in the
marketplace," Land said.
THE LAST PUBLIC development involving the flammability of upholstered furniture
was last Wednesday, when the CPSC held a morning-long hearing at its
headquarters in Bethsesda, Md. Dozens of representatives of the textile,
fabric, furniture and foam industries attended, as did fire-safety experts.
Almost everyone who spoke said they favored a tougher national standard - but
the CPSC was left to resolve the many issues that representatives raised, a
process that a CPSC analyst said could take several months or more. Would the
use of barrier materials or treating fabrics with flame retardants best meet a
new standard - or should the foam inside most upholstered furniture be treated
with retardants, too? Do retardants pose a health hazard? How long should an
open-flame test last? What would it cost to comply with a new standard?
To that, NASFM president Bliss said: "We did not encourage burn survivors
to attend today's hearing, but as we consider the economic hardships that any
regulation inevitably imposes, let us not forget those who have lost so much
from these fires. Their suffering is by far the concern of greater merit."
Foster doubts the industry is ready to accept mandatory tough flammability
standards. "They don't want to be regulated," he says. "It's
just a giant industry with a lot of lobbying effort that creates a lot of
inertia to change."
And Foster maintains that inertia is reflected in the CPSC. He says, "They
send out a proposal and they wait to get feedback from all of these groups: the
polyurethane foam industry, the textile industry - they're all huge - furniture
makers. It's trying to move a juggernaut."
But the CPSC could move, Foster maintains.
"They've got the power to do it," he says.
* * *
Upholstered furniture fires in U.S. homes
Year Deaths Injuries
1980 1,356 2,972
1981 1,360 2,626
1982 1,185 2,532
1983 1,099 2,698
1984 1,093 2,313
1985 931 2,331
1986 1,068 2,197
1987 1,030 2,145
1988 1,098 2,291
1989 883 2,116
1990 867 2,052
1991 676 2,053
1992 631 1,657
1993 653 1,955
1994 669 1,708
1995 659 1,676
1996 652 1,608
1997 655 1,444
1998 543 1,425
Totals 17,108 39,799
SOURCE: National Fire Protection Assoc.
* * *
IT BEGINS: Seconds after an ashtray is dumped into a wastebasket, flames erupt.
* * *
OUTSIDE: There is no evidence from the street that a fire is growing inside the
house.
* * *
STILL QUIET: Though fire is sweeping through the living room, other rooms in
the house are still unaffected.
* * *
IN 90 SECONDS: The living room is filled with toxic smoke and gases, but the
smoke detector has yet to sound.
* * *
IN THREE MINUTES: Dark poisonous smoke fills the upstairs hallway, making
escape difficult.
* * *
UNDER FOUR MINUTES: Everything in the living room erupts in flame, and smoke is
visible outside the house.
* * *
ENGULFED: Deadly smoke and toxic gases fill the house.
>>>>>>>>>>><<<<<<<<<<<<
FATAL FOAM: PART THREE: It's where we sleep.
G. WAYNE MILLER and PETER B. LORD
Publication Date: September 30, 2003
Page: A-01 Section: News Edition: All
This is the third of a four-part series on the dangers of polyurethane foam
in our homes.
* * *
THE FIRE
BEGAN in a bedroom. It was early morning on Nov. 5, 1999, and most
of the 20 or so residents of the fieldstone castle at LaSalette Shrine in Attleboro, Mass.,
were asleep.
The Rev. Paul H. O'Brien, 43, a British priest who was staying at the shrine on
a sabbatical, was in Room 330, a small third-story space furnished with a bed,
a chair, a bureau, a bookstand and a lamp.
O'Brien was smoking.
Investigators believe he dropped a lit cigarette onto his comforter and then
fell asleep. For an unknown period of time, the cigarette smoldered.
Eventually, investigators believe, it ignited the comforter.
Owned by the Roman Catholic Missionaries of Our Lady of LaSalette, the castle
had been built in 1903 as a sanitarium. It was longer than a football field and
featured a stone exterior and post-and-beam wood construction inside. The
interior walls were made of ash, trimmed with mahogany and oak. The castle was
equipped with smoke detectors, but not sprinklers.
At about 4 a.m., the smoke detector in O'Brien's room began to sound.
Something - perhaps the alarm, perhaps the nascent fire - caused O'Brien to
stir. He managed to get out of his bed.
By this point, the comforter, the mattress and the floor under the bed were
burning.
The detector's alarm woke the priest in the bedroom next door. The Rev. Ian
Robertson thought at first he was hearing an alarm clock. But when he stepped
into the hall, he saw smoke pouring from a crack above the door to Room 330.
Robertson grabbed a fire extinguisher, opened the door and cried out for
O'Brien. The room was black, except for the glow of a small fire by the bed.
Robertson could not see O'Brien in the smoke, but he heard him coughing.
O'Brien had made it a few feet from from his bed before he collapsed and fell
unconscious.
Standing in the doorway, Robertson emptied his fire extinguisher, but it was
futile: the fire was growing rapidly, its smoke and heat intensifying by the
second. The priest went for another extinguisher, and he began to yell
"Fire!" Other priests awoke. One ran to Room 330 with an
extinguisher. But by then, it was too hot to enter.
At 4:10 a.m., the heat stopped O'Brien's wristwatch.
A priest called 91l. Attleboro
firefighters were on scene within five minutes. Learning that O'Brien was
trapped inside, they headed for Room 330. The fire was nearing the point of
flashover, when everything combustible goes up.
Chief Ronald Churchill, Deputy Chief Russell Goyette, and Capt. Scott. Jacques
fought their way into the room with a 13³4-inch hose and found O'Brien near his
bed. He was lying on the floor, his knees bent, his hands folded.
A priest later told reporters that O'Brien apparently had been kneeling in
prayer before dying, but investigators believe that is simply the position in
which, overcome by superheated air and gas, he collapsed.
Jacques grabbed the priest's arm, but it was burned so badly that it began to
break off at the elbow. O'Brien was beyond salvation.
The fire spread into the attic, made of century-old wood posts and beams.
Inside Room 330, the temperature soared past 1,000 degrees and the aluminum
window casings began to melt and burn. Seeing the flames cascading over their
heads, Chief Churchill feared the ceiling would collapse, trapping his men. He
ordered them out.
Soon, all of the massive building was ablaze. Some 200 firefighters from three
dozen departments joined the battle, but it took until 10 a.m. to get the fire
under control. They could not get back into Room 330 for another hour to
recover the seared remains of the priest.
"The autopsy showed O'Brien's esophagus and lungs were lined with heavy
amounts of soot," an official report states. "This indicates O'Brien
had inhaled smoke and superheated air while he was alive." The cause of
death was determined to be "smoke inhalation and third-degree thermal
burns to 95 percent of O'Brien's body." The castle was destroyed, at a
loss Massachusetts State Police estimated at more than $20 million.
O'BRIEN'S DEATH was no freak occurrence. According to the National Fire
Protection Association (NFPA), bedding and mattress fires killed 12,712
Americans and injured another 55,856 from 1980 to 1998, the latest year for
which data are available. Direct property damage over the two decades totalled
$5.5 billion.
During the most recent five-year period, 1994 through 1998, an average of 508
Americans died in these fires every year, and another 2,555 were injured.
Many were children. Many were poor.
As is often the case in a fire investigation, the remnants of O'Brien's
mattress were not analyzed. But it likely contained flexible polyurethane foam:
foam has been used in about 90 percent of all mattresses sold in the United States over the last 30 years, according
to Gordon Damant, a flammability expert with City Testing and Consulting Corp.,
in Sacramento, Calif.
Mattresses and bedding sold in America
could be safer, but the government so far has not required tougher national
flammability standards.
"Meanwhile our kids die," says Whitney A. Davis, director of the
California-based Children's Coalition for Fire Safe Mattresses.
IN DOLLAR VOLUME, California, Florida and Texas lead
the way in U.S. mattress
manufacturing, according to the Census Bureau's 1997 Economic Census; Ohio, North Carolina and
New Jersey
follow behind. Mattresses are made in at least 35 states, according to the
report, including Connecticut and Massachusetts, which
together reported 25 factories.
American makers shipped almost 39 million mattresses and box springs last year,
at a wholesale value of $4.76 billion, according to the International Sleep
Products Association, the industry group based in Alexandria, Va.
Mattresses are big business. Dozens of companies make them, but a few giants
account for more than half of wholesale revenues.
As did their counterparts in the upholstered furniture industry, mattress
makers more than three decades ago understood the danger of the polyurethane
foam they increasingly favored in their products. So did the federal government
and the State of California.
The California
legislature voted in 1970 to require all mattresses sold there to be resistant
to ignition by lit cigarettes, which experts had concluded were the biggest
fire threat. The next year, the U.S. Commerce Department approved a similar
standard for all mattresses sold throughout the country beginning in 1974.
The standard did not address another common means by which mattresses can
ignite: small open flame, such as a candle or a cigarette lighter, or when
smoldering bedding catches fire. According to Davis, some small manufacturers in the 1970s
called for an open-flame standard, which they said would add only pennies to
the cost of a mattress - but the CPSC, which administered the lesser federal
standard, declined to adopt one.
There the matter stood until the 1990s. While England
mandated tough standards, and U.S.
manufacturers produced open-flame resistant mattresses for use in hospitals,
hotels and prisons, the American consumer continued to sleep on a product that
could have been safer.
THE LIT-CIGARETTE standard in place now for almost 30 years has in fact helped
to significantly reduce the toll from mattress and bedding fires.
According to the NFPA, 61,100 such fires with 937 deaths and almost 3,000
injuries were reported in 1980, a toll that had fallen to 21,400 fires with 398
deaths and 2,309 injuries in 1998. Fires directly caused by cigarettes declined
dramatically.
Another factor in the decline, the mattress industry maintains, has been the
safety-awareness campaign sponsored by the Sleep Products Safety Council,
founded in 1986 by the International Sleep Products Association. The council
urges families to draft escape plans and install smoke detectors, among other
measures.
Like its upholstered furniture counterpart, the council sponsors a Web site,
www.safesleep.org. The site offers fire-safety tips for adults, teachers and
children, who can play an online game called Safe Passage. "High atop Hazard Peak
sits your bedroom!" one step of the game declares. "Find the eight
fire hazards by clicking on them." Among the hazards are a sock draped
over a lamp, an iron, a book of matches and a candle.
The council also provides safety tags to manufacturers; similar to those
available to makers of upholstered furniture, they warn in English and in
Spanish of the dangers of candles, space heaters and smoking in bed.
"Check under beds and in closets for burnt matches, evidence your child
may be playing with fire," the tag advises. The tag also warns of the
danger of storing old mattresses in the home or garage: "They are a fire
hazard." And it warns consumers to keep lit candles away from bedding,
curtains and sleepwear.
But like furniture tags, these mattress warnings are not always seen by
consumers. In a spot survey of a handful of Rhode Island stores, most mattresses did not
have warning tags. The tags say, "when ignited, some mattress filling
materials can burn rapidly and emit hazardous gases." But fire experts say
many people can't appreciate the ferocity of a mattress fire until they
actually see one burn.
ROBERT M. DeRENSIS, 38, kept an electric lamp on a plastic milk crate next to
his bed in the house he shared with his elderly great-aunt at 8 Peirce St., East Greenwich. He liked to read, and magazines
and books filled his bedroom.
As best as investigators could later determine, DeRensis fell asleep with the
lamp on, and he knocked it over in his slumber. "The lamp, which was in
the 'on' position, [became] wedged between the mattress, box spring, and
blankets, and heated these combustibles to the point of ignition," the
state Fire Marshal's Office report states. Investigators believe the mattress
contained polyurethane foam.
It was nearing dawn on Sept. 27, 2001.
The house lacked smoke detectors. Apparently the fire woke DeRensis, who made
it safely downstairs and outside. His great-aunt, Cecilia DeRensis, 85, also
escaped unharmed.
But her sister, Adeline DeRensis, 90, did not. As a neighbor placed an
emergency call, DeRensis ran back into the house to try to save his other
great-aunt.
The first two firefighters to arrive reached the second floor, but they were
driven back by the fire's intensity.
"They were confronted by heavy smoke; there was zero visibility and high
heat," East Greenwich Fire Chief Thomas Rowan said. Staffing shortages
delayed the arrival of more firefighters.
DeRensis died face-down on the floor of his great-aunt's bedroom, holding her
hands.
Firefighters brought Adeline DeRensis alive from the building, but she had to
wait several minutes for an ambulance to arrive. She died two days later at Our
Lady of Fatima Hospital, where she had been placed in a hyperbaric chamber for
treatment of smoke inhalation and carbon monoxide poisoning.
AS MATTRESS FIRES ignited directly by cigarettes declined, those caused by
open-flame sources began to rise slightly in the early '90s.
The CPSC detected this trend and brought it to the attention of the mattress
industry at the 1993 "Combustibility Conference," sponsored by the
Sleep Products Safety Council. The council and the CPSC agreed to study the trend
- and consider adopting the kind of tougher standard that had not been adopted
two decades before.
Another round of studies had begun.
One study, begun by the CPSC in 1996, sent investigators to the scenes of
fires, where knowledge that could not be divined from statistics alone could be
learned.
A second study, by the Sleep Council in collaboration with the National
Association of State Fire Marshals, investigated in depth some 220 bedroom
fires in New York, Chicago,
Seattle and Houston.
Those two studies confirmed what many firefighters already knew: children
playing with fire started many mattress fires; poor people were more likely to
be victims; and in almost two-thirds of the cases, comforters, pillows,
mattress pads and the like (bedding, or "bedclothing" in industry
parlance) were the first to ignite, often by careless use of matches, lighters
or candles.
A third, unrelated study by the U.S. Fire Administration, showed a strong
correlation between drinking and bedding/mattress and upholstered furniture
fires.
A fourth study, by the NFPA, showed that home fires caused by candles rose from
8,240 in 1980 to 15,040 in 1999. Almost 2,000 mattress and bedding fires were
started by candles in 1999, killing 30, injuring 363, and causing almost $50 million
in direct property damage. (Another 850 fires in 1999 started by candles
igniting upholstered furniture killed 12, injured 151, and caused $27.6 million
in direct property damage.)
With new information, the Sleep Products Safety Council and its parent group
decided to underwrite another study.
This one, conducted by the National Institute of Standards and Technology and
endorsed by the CPSC, examined the relationship of bedding fires to mattress
fires and suggested test methods that manufacturers might use in an open-flame
standard. The first phase of the study was concluded in June of 2000 (and the
second in August 2002 and the third in February).
In October 2001, eight years after the "Combustibility Conference,"
the CPSC finally published an advance notice of proposed rule-making, signaling
its intention to begin considering a tougher, nationwide standard.
Two years later, the CPSC continues to study.
DAVIS HAPPENED
onto the dangers of burning mattresses and bedding as a young lawyer assigned
the case of a 7-year-old boy badly burned when a malfunctioning vaporizer
ignited a mattress. "I first saw the boy's picture taken a month before
the fire," Davis
said. "Then I met him. . . . No face, no hand. He was 8 by then. He looked
80 after his 25 surgeries." Davis
had found a cause.
When he brought three children who were horribly scarred in mattress and
bedding fires to a CPSC hearing on Feb. 7, 2000, he hoped that their stories of
suffering would move the commission to quick action. Every passing month meant
more dead and injured children and adults.
Davis was
wrong.
Frustrated by federal inertia, Davis turned to
his home state of California,
the largest consumer market in the land. At least California's
nearly 35 million residents could start sleeping more safely, Davis
reasoned - and given the size of the market, perhaps California could influence the rest of the
nation.
Prodded by Davis,
the California General Assembly in July 2001 passed Assembly Bill 603. The law
required all mattresses sold in California
to meet a small open-flame mattress standard, incorporated in Technical
Bulletin 603, by Jan. 1, 2004. Two and a half years, lawmakers reasoned, would
be enough time for mattress manufacturers and suppliers of flame-resistance
technology to gear up production.
Recognizing that burning bedding is often the source of ignition for a mattress
fire, the lawmakers also authorized the California Bureau of Home Furnishings
and Thermal Insulation to require a separate standard for comforters, pillows and
other such "filled" bedding - some of which contains polyurethane
foam - if the bureau determined them to be a significant hazard.
The bureau did.
"Our tests showed that filled bedding products alone can get a room close
to flashover," said bureau spokesman Miles Bristow. "There can be a
lot of heat energy in just your comforter, pillows and mattress pads."
So the bureau decided to write Technical Bulletin 604, which will require
manufacturers of comforters, mattress pads and pillows to meet an open-flame
standard. No date of implementation has been set.
THE CALIFORNIA Bureau held public hearings on TB 603, the proposed mattress
standard, on April 22 in San Francisco and on April 24 in Diamond Bar, Calif.
(Hearings have yet to be held on TB 604.)
Makers of fire-barrier materials testified they were ready to supply the
mattress industry with what it needed to meet TB 603. ElkCorp of Ennis, Texas, noted that it
already supplied a mattress maker with the lifesaving technology - and the
maker, Carolina Mattress Guild, already marketed "Safe Dreams," a
line of mattresses that passes TB 603. Another company, McKinnon-Land-Moran, of
Charlotte, N.C., sells Basofil, a heat- and
flame-resistant fiber than allows a mattress to resist open-flame ignition.
But armed with economic-impact studies and lawyers' briefs, representatives of
the mattress industry, organized labor and the retail sector challenged the new
California
standard and its proposed Jan. 1 implementation.
Representatives maintained that mattress makers would not have enough time to
retool production. They maintained the 60-minute open-flame resistance test
specified in TB-603 was too long. They maintained that increased costs would
dampen consumer demand, which would lead to job losses - and "exacerbate California's budget
deficit" by reducing tax revenues.
As proposed, the International Sleep Products Association and the Sleep
Products Safety Council maintained in a joint 36-page commentary, TB-603
"will also likely discourage non-California producers from shipping
mattresses into the state, thereby harming California consumers by limiting competition
and product choice."
Fire officials at the hearing pushed the safety issue.
"Is an effective date of Jan. 1, 2004, too soon?" asked the president
of the California Fire Chiefs Association, which supported TB-603. "This
is a matter for the bureau and mattress producers to decide. But keep in mind
that fires don't consult calendars."
The special interests won: in July, the bureau announced that it would delay
implementation of TB-603 until Jan. 1, 2005, and it reduced the open-flame test
from 60 to 30 minutes.
But, one of the nation's mattress manufacturing giants, Serta Inc., has just
announced that it will break ranks with the industry and immediately begin to
produce mattresses that meet the California
standard. Up to now, only one small company, Carolina Mattress Guild, has been
making such mattresses.
Meanwhile, the mattress industry's trade association hailed California's decision.
"Throughout the development of these regulations, we never lost sight of
our mutual goal - to reduce or prevent residential bedding fire deaths. California should be
commended for its leadership in this area," said Patricia Martin,
executive director of the Sleep Council, in a press release.
Davis saw it
differently. "The governor, the bureau, labor and those few industry
members without conscience, seek to sacrifice the lives of our children,"
he wrote in a letter to California
officials.
And he told The Providence Journal: "I am tired of picking up the pieces
of a disfigured child or the incinerated elderly. Their images live with me
every night."
A NATIONAL open-flame standard would supersede any state's standard, and bring
the entire country to a new era of fire safety. The International Sleep
Products Association and its Sleep Council are on record as favoring such a
national standard - both for competitive and safety reasons.
"A federal standard will create a level playing field for all mattress
producers and is likely to achieve the highest compliance and the greatest
impact on consumer safety," said executive director Martin in a press
release posted on safesleep.org.
But the CPSC has not adopted a national standard, nor would chairman Hal
Stratton predict when it might. "It's very process-intensive,"
Stratton said in an interview. Complicating the issue, Stratton said, is that
the CPSC - like California
with its proposed TB 604 - is considering including bedding in an open-flame
standard. Like California,
the CPSC recognizes the role that comforters, pillows and pads can play in
igniting mattresses.
Regardless of what happens on the national level, the CPSC may further delay
implementation of California's
standard.
That's because federal law states that a federal standard protecting against
the same risk preempts any state rule. Since the CPSC already has a national
mattress flammability standard - albeit for resistance to cigarettes, not small
open flame - California
will have to apply to the CPSC for a so-called "exemption from
preemption" before it can implement TB 603.
"It's in the statute," Stratton said. "It's not something we
have any control over."
Once California
applies, the CPSC would study its request. A hearing would be held. And at some
point, the three CPSC commissioners would have to vote.
Asked about reports in the trade press that the process could take up to two
years after application, Stratton said:
''I probably shouldn't say because when we get timelines, they just don't
work.''
* Look back at previous installments of the series, read additional safety
tips, and more:
http://www.projo.com/extra/2003/foam/
* RELATED STORY: ONE SMALL COMPANY PUT SAFETY FIRST PG A-13 - PETER B. LORD
* * *
MATTRESS AND BEDDING FIRES IN U.S. HOMES
CHART
Year Deaths Injuries
1980 937 2,988
1981 824 2,919
1982 697 2,992
1983 696 3,124
1984 665 2,830
1985 855 2,877
1986 725 2,775
1987 718 3,147
1988 922 3,266
1989 650 3,195
1990 622 2,926
1991 623 3,216
1992 620 3,406
1993 620 3,420
1994 465 3,013
1995 525 2,644
1996 662 2,502
1997 488 2,307
1998 398 2,309
Totals 12,712 55,856
SOURCE: National Fire Protection Assoc.
* * *
* POLYURETHANE FOAM AND POLY-FIBER FABRICS ARE EVERYWHERE IN THE HOME
SOURCE: KIRK'S FIRE INVESTIGATION
JOURNAL GRAPHIC / TOM MURPHY
SEE MICROFILM FOR THIS GRAPHIC
* * *
* IN FLAMES: The fire at the LaSalette Shrine castle took off from the bed
where it started and spread fast, causing $20 million in damage.
AP PHOTO
* GUTTED: The LaSalette Shrine fire in 1999 was started when a priest dropped a
lit cigarette onto his bed.
>>>>>>>>>>><<<<<<<<<<<<
FATAL FOAM: PART THREE - It's
where we sleep : One small company puts safety first
PETER B. LORD
Publication Date: September 30, 2003
Page: A-13 Section: News Edition: All
It's a mattress advertisement like no other.
Instead of promoting comfort, sound sleep or an end to back problems, the ad
shows a big pack of matches and a headline that reads: "This is how a
firefighter sees your mattress."
Neal and Kathy Grigg and their Carolina Mattress Guild got the jump on the rest
of the country last spring by producing a line of mattresses that are designed
to resist fire.
A few months later, the North
Carolina company launched what may be an
unprecedented advertising campaign that is designed to grab the attention of
retailers and make them care about mattress safety.
Anticipating government mandates for fire-safe mattresses sometime in the next
few years, the Griggs explain in their ad, "We chose to embrace safety
today rather than wait for a mandate because it is the right thing to do."
And now one of the giants in the industry has announced plans to join Carolina
Mattress Guild in getting ahead of the mandate. Serta Inc., the second-largest
manufacturer of mattresses in the country, has announced that it will begin
this fall to produce flame-resistant mattresses.
Neal Grigg readily concedes that his interest in the dangers of mattresses was
triggered in a spectacular and very expensive demonstration: his factory burned
down two years ago.
"When you have an insurance claim of $2.8 million, it gets your
attention," Grigg said in a recent interview. "Our company barely
survived that fire. Regardless of insurance, it never covers everything."
Grigg said the fire shocked him with its speed and ferocity. And it more than
convinced him of the dangers of polyurethane foam.
Carolina Mattress had just moved into its new manufacturing plant a few miles
outside of High Point, N.C., the so-called furniture capital of the
country.
It had just purchased a new quilting machine and built a new device to feed it
rolls of quilting. A maintenance man came in on a Saturday morning to attach
the device and chose to weld it rather than bolt it to the machine.
Minutes later, when about 30 workers arrived to start the day's production, hot
metal from the welding apparently ignited a pile of foam.
"When the girl who operated the machine picked the foam up, the air got to
it and it flashed," recalled Grigg. "It immediately just really
caught, real hot. From that roll it jumped to another roll. Inside of less than
a minute, this whole thing was a total blaze. It is amazing how quick it can
happen.
Grigg said he was in the back of the building when the fire broke out and he
ran to the front, yelling for people to get out. It was a huge, open room with
lots of exits, so everyone did get out safely. But the fire was incredibly
destructive.
"It went through the roof," Grigg said. "The roof was 28 feet
high. It was a new building. And there were sprinklers. But all they did was
slow the fire a bit.
"When you start listening to what firefighters tell you, the mattresses
literally explode. As a fire starts, the polyurethane actually starts to melt.
It drips down into the springs. Then all of a sudden, there's enough for a
major fire."
The fire attracted interest from companies that make flame-resistant materials.
Grigg said he tested eight products and settled on material produced by
ElkCorp, a Texas-based company that makes roofing products.
"It's a woven Fiberglas material, like fabric. On top of that fabric, they
have a coating. It was kind of brittle and hard. So the real key was to figure
out how to get this into the mattress so it does not affect the comfort. We put
it in as part of our quilting process. We've got it down far enough in there so
that you can't feel it.
"We have foam on top of it. When flame gets to the barrier, the coating
melts, emitting a nontoxic gas that removes oxygen. No oxygen, no fire. The
whole object was to give the occupant of the bed some escape time."
Their fire-safe mattresses have gotten rave reviews from fire safety experts.
North Carolina Insurance Commissioner Jim Long, who also serves as the state
fire marshal, praised the Carolina Mattress Guild as being a good corporate
citizen by adding to the "overall safety structure of the home in which we
live."
Don Bliss, president of the National Association of State Fire Marshals,
praised the company for being at "the forefront of commitment to the safety
of citizens."
But Grigg said he said he's not being overwhelmed with orders because few
retailers are aware of the fire dangers caused by most mattresses.
"It's not catching on as quickly across the board as we'd like. The reason
is we have not been able to tell the story well enough to the retailer,"
Griggs said. "The biggest problem is your retail salespeople don't know
what they're talking about."
Right now, only stores in the mid-Atlantic states are carrying the Safe Dreams
mattresses. There is no way for individuals to special order the mattresses
because the company is geared for selling truckloads of mattresses to
retailers, not individual products.
Grigg has hired a new advertising firm and plans to spend more to expand his
market share.
He's producing about 1,000 mattresses a day but only a small percentage are
flame resistant.
"I believe in the next three or four years, it will be national.
"I'm excited. I think we've got a golden opportunity to really make a
major difference," Grigg said. "We got a doggone good product. We
think it looks good.
"I'm optimistic because we believe if we can get the story out a little
bit, and certain retailers will start using it as a first in the area that does
everything that it needs to do, why not take advantage of it? We can be
competitive. It looks good, smells good and it's safe."
>>>>>>>>>>><<<<<<<<<<<<
FATAL FOAM: PART FOUR - The Providence Journal burn
test.
G. WAYNE MILLER and PETER B. LORD
Publication Date: October 1, 2003
Page: A-01 Section: News Edition: All
This is the last in a four-part series on the dangers of polyurethane foam
in our homes.
THE
BURNER shoots a small flame at the foot of the bed, something akin
to a wastebasket catching fire, or a candle being knocked over.
The response is immediate, and dramatic.
The purple floral comforter erupts into foot-high flames.
The bed skirt goes up.
Within 30 seconds, a wall of flame rises from the queen-size mattress.
More flames drip from the burning mattress and the polyester-cotton comforter
and spread in a pool across the floor.
Within a minute, the end of the bed is engulfed. The flames crackle like a
bonfire.
The fire spreads with breathtaking speed.
In another minute, the bed burns with the same energy as a half-gallon of
gasoline.
The fire spews carbon monoxide and other deadly gases.
And it generates incredible heat, soaring past 1,400 degrees Fahrenheit.
Seconds later, the bed becomes a potential killer - the point at which
flashover ignites every other combustible object in the room. It's the
flashover that destroyed the LaSalette Shrine and the house in Westerly.
The intensity of the fire clearly demonstrates why time after time firefighters
report that they can't fight their way into rooms where beds or upholstered
furniture burn.
It shows why people who fight or study fires say bedding, mattresses and
upholstered furniture are causing houses to flash over and become engulfed in
flames in roughly three minutes - more than twice as fast as fires of a
generation ago.
Bedding, mattresses and upholstered furniture - much of it containing
polyurethane foam similar to that which helped make The Station nightclub fire
so deadly - killed almost 30,000 Americans from 1980 to 1998, the latest year
for which National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) data are available.
Another 95,655 people were injured, many for life.
TO LEARN firsthand why these fires are so dangerous, and to better appreciate
firefighters' dread of the superheated air and poison gases produced by such infernos,
The Providence Journal commissioned a fire laboratory in Washington state to burn a bed and record
the results.
The staff at Pacific Fire Laboratory, based in a warehouse near Interstate 5
between Portland, Ore.,
and Seattle, Wash., purchased the mattress and box spring
for about $1,000 at a nearby store. The salesman said it was the most popular
brand in that price range.
The mattress label said it contained 54 percent polyurethane foam and 46
percent polyester.
The Journal bought the bedding from a home-furnishings store in Providence. The pillow
was filled with polyester and covered with cotton fabric. The sheets and
pillowcases were 50 percent cotton and 50 percent polyester. The comforter and
bed skirt were mostly polyester.
On the day of the burn, the Pacific Fire staff carefully sets the bed on
sensitive scales that weigh every component of the bedding, from the 85-pound
mattress to the 3.5-ounce pillowcase.
The bed is set in a cavernous room under a hood big enough to cover a two-car garage.
Fans will suck the heat and flames up into the hood and instruments will
measure temperatures and deadly gases.
The staff carefully makes up the bed with two sheets, a sham, bed skirt, pillow
and comforter. The cover mixes flowers and a checked pattern.
It looks like a beautiful, safe place to sleep.
The lab follows a protocol established by the State of California to test the flame resistance of
beds used in hospitals and college dormitories. The protocol calls for applying
a small propane flame to the foot of the bed for 180 seconds - simulating a
"common accidental fire," such as burning newspaper in a wastebasket.
Like most mattresses now sold in the United States, this test mattress
is designed only to resist ignition by a burning cigarette. Safety experts want
mattress manufacturers to meet tougher safety standards to resist small open
flames. That would give the consumer more time to escape a potentially lethal
fire.
"The protocol is for a mattress that won't burn. This will burn,"
says Joseph Urbas, co-owner of Pacific Fire.
Two staff members test two fire hoses to ensure water will flow when needed.
They nod to Urbas.
Urbas counts down. When he gets to zero, the crew ignites the propane.
The comforter instantly melts and bursts into flames.
Just 20 seconds into the burn, with the comforter fueling bigger flames than
the propane, Urbas quietly announces, "I think the burner is probably not
needed anymore."
The staff shuts off the gas and pulls the equipment away.
The fire grows.
THE JOURNAL test would hardly surprise industry insiders or government
officials charged with protecting lives: the fire hazards of mattresses,
bedding and upholstered furniture have raised alarms as far back as the late
1960s and early 1970s.
Polyurethane and other plastics that were coming into widespread use during
that era in homes and business were creating new fire dangers. Congress
established the National Commission on Fire Prevention and Control, a panel of
firefighters, professors, insurers, the president of Underwriters'
Laboratories, and a burn specialist at Massachusetts General Hospital.
"Appallingly, the richest and most technologically advanced nation in the
world leads all the major industrialized countries in per-capita deaths and
property loss from fire," the commission stated in 1973 in "America
Burning," a 177-page report that followed two years of study.
The report was illustrated with photographs of a dead child and a horribly
scarred woman. Another haunting image showed the shadow left by a person who
was overcome on a mattress. "Many of fire's victims never awaken,"
the caption read. "Smoke, toxic gases, or lack of oxygen kills them while
they sleep."
This ran contrary to popular belief, which held that flame usually killed. In
fact, the commission observed, flame ranked last of five causes of death:
behind asphyxiation (fire depletes the air of oxygen); attack by superheated
air or gases; smoke; and the toxic products that smoke can carry, including
carbon monoxide and hydrogen cyanide.
The fire commission urged safer products, and better research and education -
and it hoped the new Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) would play a
significant role. The commission hoped the agency would provide the United States a
"refined understanding of the destructive effects of smoke and toxic
gases, development of standards to minimize those effects, development of
labeling requirements for materials, and outright ban of materials in uses that
present unreasonable risks."
But the panel raised a caution.
"We feel that we should be candid in expressing our concern that, because
the CPSC is still in its formative stages, and because other hazards (many of
them better publicized than combustion hazards) will be competing for
attention, the problem of fire safety may become a delayed priority."
AMERICA
WAS in the mood to protect when the CPSC was born, in 1972. President Richard
M. Nixon had just created the Environmental Protection Agency, Congress was
moving to pass the Endangered Species Act, and the National Highway Traffic
Safety Administration was requiring seat belts and shoulder straps in cars.
"Today is truly a momentous day for the American consumer," said Sen.
Warren G. Magnuson, the longtime champion of consumer safety, when Congress in
the fall of 1972 passed the act establishing the CPSC. The act directed the
agency "to protect the public against unreasonable risks of injuries
associated with consumer products . . . (and) to develop uniform safety
standards for consumer products.. . ." Among the products were upholstered
furniture and mattresses.
One of the fledgling agency's first actions - and the subject of its very first
press release - was a unanimous vote by commissioners, on May 24, 1973, to deny
requests by some mattress makers to delay implementation of the Commerce
Department's regulation that mattresses resist ignition by lit cigarettes.
"Our principal responsibility is to reduce the risk of injury to consumers
from consumer products," CPSC chairman Richard O. Simpson said.
The CPSC accomplished much in the 1970s, including initiatives that made toys,
cribs, children's clothing, power mowers - even aluminum baseball bats - safer.
It exercised its recall authority frequently. But with a budget in 1980 of less
than $42 million and only 978 employees, it was small (by contrast, the EPA
that year had a budget of $5.6 billion and 14,715 employees).
With the inauguration in 1981 of President Ronald Reagan, who campaigned on a
platform of government deregulation, it was about to get smaller.
Reagan wanted to abolish the CPSC, but lingering congressional support for the
agency stopped him. So Office of Management and Budget director David Stockman
in 1981 vowed to strip the agency "down to the bone." Testifying on
Capitol Hill, Stockman said that the agency has "embarked on activities
inconsistent with sound economic principles and with plain common sense."
Stockman did strip the CPSC, in Reagan's first budget.
Funding was cut to $32 million, and staffing shrank to 649 employees. As
Reagan's presidency unfolded, Stockman continued with his ax. Staffing fell
below 590 employees in 1985, prompting CPSC commissioner Stuart M. Statler to
tell a Washington Post reporter: "In 1981, OMB sent us up the creek
without a paddle - this year, they're drilling holes in our canoe."
Statler resigned the next year after another round of budget cuts. "We are
at a point right now where we can't effectively target new trouble spots or
correct many of those already threatening," the resigning commissioner,
appointed by Jimmy Carter in 1979, wrote to Reagan. "As a result, more
Americans will be maimed and charred and killed before we can even begin to
seek solutions."
In England,
meanwhile, the government was moving to improve the safety of mattresses and
upholstered furniture containing foam.
THROUGH THE 1990s in the United States,
studies were conducted, hearings held, and commissioners came and went, but the
CPSC still failed to enact a standard like England's that would require
mattresses and upholstered furniture to be resistant to ignition by small open
flames.
Home fires involving foam kept killing hundreds of Americans every year.
Thousands continued to be hurt. And millions of new products containing foam
came into homes, where many of them would remain for generations. Unlike some
consumer goods, furniture and beds last.
This was the status quo when Hal Stratton, the agency's current chairman, took
office in June of last year.
A former New Mexico attorney general, lawyer
Stratton chaired the Rio Grande Foundation, a self-described "free market
think tank" that envisions its role as promoting "prosperity for New Mexico based on
principles of limited government, economic freedom and individual
responsibility."
That philosophy concerned some consumer advocates. Ed Mierzwinski, of the U.S.
Public Interest Research Group, told the Associated Press that Stratton had
"a worrisome anti-regulatory zeal."
But in confirmation testimony before the Senate Commerce Committee, Stratton,
nominated by President George H. W. Bush, painted his agency's mission as
noble.
"I can assure you that with two young daughters, I think of consumer
product safety every single day," the new chairman said.
But his agency has no great champion in Washington like the late Senator
Magnuson, and it remains tiny by federal standards: from 978 employees in 1980,
staffing has shrunk to 471 today, and its budget to oversee more than 15,000
consumer products is just $56.6 million (adjusted for inflation, that is less
than half of the CPSC's budget in its founding year). The Pentagon spends
almost five times as much for a single F/A-22 fighter jet.
"[The CPSC] has always had an enormous jurisdiction and a very small
staff," says Ross E. Cheit, Brown
University political
science professor and author of a book on safety regulations. "We have
more professors at Brown than they have total staff at the CPSC, and their
jurisdiction is the entire country and close to 20,000 products.
"Unfortunately, things have only gotten worse under the current
administration. The CPSC is outmatched by industry and barely supported by
Congress. They are often a scapegoat, but rarely an effective regulator."
THE POLYURETHANE Foam Association (PFA), with executive offices in Wayne, N.J.,
represents manufacturers of the plastic material. It also sponsors fire-safety
education programs for the public, including pages on its Web site,
www.pfa.org/firesafe.html, and shares its expertise with government regulators.
"The PFA has worked closely with both state and federal regulatory
agencies and the affected industries toward the development of regulations,
either voluntary or mandated, that will provide improved fire-safe
home-furnishings products in the marketplace," PFA executive director Lou
Peters said in a written statement.
"However, improved fire safe products do not mean fireproof or nonburning
products. It is important for the consumers to be educated with regard to
common-sense approaches to fire safety in the home and to install and maintain
fire detection, alarm, and suppression systems."
The PFA's general business meeting this past spring in Arlington, Va.,
featured CPSC chairman Stratton as keynote speaker. More than 150
representatives of foam manufacturers, raw materials suppliers, and makers of
furniture and mattresses attended the meeting; Dow Chemical, BASF and Shell
were among the multinational corporations represented.
Before Stratton took the podium, industry speakers acknowledged the tragedy of
The Station nightclub fire, in which polyurethane foam used for soundproofing
caught fire. No one at the meeting blamed foam for the 100 deaths, but one man
noted the absence of sprinklers in the club, the use of pyrotechnics, and the
fact that many materials burned. "The role of each product is being
assessed," PFA legal counsel Jim McIntyre said.
In his keynote speech, Stratton updated the group on the status of proposed
mandatory open-flame regulations for upholstered furniture and mattresses. Any
new standards would apply to new products, not the untold millions of
foam-filled mattresses and upholstered sofas and chairs in houses across America.
In an interview with The Providence Journal, Stratton would not predict when
the CPSC might adopt an open-flame standard for new upholstered furniture: his
employees, he said, "are very particular about following the statute to
make sure we get the right findings so regulations won't be overturned. It's an
extremely complicated process and it takes a lot of time."
Did he have an estimate?
"I mean I could tell you," he said, "but it would be
wrong."
Regarding a tough national mattress standard, Stratton said that progress has
been affected by the agency's realization that bed clothing - not just
mattresses alone - will have to be incorporated in some fashion into new
regulations. As numerous studies have shown, burning comforters, mattress pads
(some containing polyurethane foam), pillows and the like often ignite
mattresses. The Journal test with its purple comforter graphically demonstrated
this.
"That process has been slowed up a little bit because of the inclusion of
the bed-clothing issue," Stratton said.
Asked if bureaucracy frustrates him, Stratton said: "Of course it does. I
get up every day and try to think of ways to make it faster."
CRITICS ACKNOWLEDGE the CPSC's scant resources and the ponderous nature of
rule-making - but they note that despite its limitations, the agency is capable
of moving swiftly and decisively, even against corporate giants.
Two years ago, the agency sued Wal-Mart for failing to report injuries
associated with an exercise machine that the world's largest retailer sold -
and in April, Wal-Mart agreed to pay a $750,000 penalty to settle the case.
After a similar suit involving nine minor injuries to children from ride-on toy
vehicles, Mattel, the world's largest toymaker, agreed to pay a $1.1-million
penalty in 2001.
And every year, the CPSC initiates hundreds of recalls involving millions of
consumer products.
"Isn't it strange," says Whitney A. Davis, director of the Children's
Coalition for Fire Safe Mattresses, "that [with] the CPSC, when one child
chokes on a Pokemon ball from a Burger King prize, they will lock down the
entire burger industry. But when 600 people a year die . . . they do
nothing."
National Association of State Fire Marshals president Donald P. Bliss has spent
years advocating tough national flammability standards for upholstered
furniture, bedding and mattresses. His anger at the slow pace of rule-making
was evident in a taped address he sent to a meeting last October in Aspen, Colo.,
of the International Sleep Products Association.
"We have a legal and moral responsibility to make sure that mattresses and
bed clothing sold and used in this country are safe," Bliss said.
"When it comes to these responsibilities, I make no distinction between
those of you who make and sell sleep products, and those of us who are sworn to
protect the public. We all have the same responsibility.
"We are surrounded by lawyers who will share their interpretations of each
sentence in every statute. But at the end of the day, America has no
patience with clever legal options when it comes to the safety of a single
child. . . . Why is it that we even put up with this nonsense in fire safety?
Is one seriously burned child insignificant?"
AS THE JOURNAL TEST approaches the three-minute mark, lab co-owner Joseph
Urbas's voice rises with urgency above the crackling.
"Let's extinguish it. Let's extinguish it," he says. The fire, he
says later, nearly exceeded the capabilities of his lab.
The crew quickly puts down the blaze with two hoses. But small gobs of foam
continue to smoke and sputter.
When the test is over, the bed looks like many others after fires across Rhode Island and around
the country.
The metal bed springs remain intact, though charred.
The foam mattress, the box spring and the bedding are nearly gone - fire had
converted them into poison gases, superheated air, black smoke and intense
heat.
In less than three minutes, a plush, comfortable bed created the kind of energy
that kills faster than many people can imagine.
A week later, Urbas completed his report on the fire.
Duration: 170 seconds.
Extent: Most of bed fully involved.
Peak heat release: 4,004 kilowatts - enough to ignite an entire room.
Peak temperature: 1,429 degrees Fahrenheit.
People raised on movies and television shows portraying firefighters heroically
battling flames only an arm's-length away don't readily appreciate that a bed
can look like a military flamethrower seconds after ignition.
Within just three minutes, a single queen-size bed produced the temperatures
that melted and burned the aluminum window casings at LaSalette Shrine. It
produced the levels of heat that triggered flashover in the NFPA educational
video, and the Westerly, Woonsocket
and East Greenwich house fires described in
earlier stories. The more it burned, the more deadly carbon monoxide it
produced.
The Journal test mattress, which contained 54 percent polyurethane foam,
ignited almost immediately and was all but gone in less than three minutes of a
nasty, intense burn. The bedding contributed pools of liquid fire.
THE EVENING BEFORE a fire involving upholstered furniture killed four in the
house in Westerly - July 17, 2002 - someone at a beach cottage at 22 Rhode
Island Ave., Narragansett, was smoking. Somehow, smoldering materials came in
contact with a living room couch. Perhaps, investigators theorized, they
dropped into a crevice or fell between a cushion and the couch back, where,
unnoticed, they continued to smolder.
As the two University
of Rhode Island students
who had rented the cottage for the summer slept in their first-floor bedrooms,
the couch ignited. Investigators believe the couch contained polyurethane foam.
Soon, it was ablaze.
The fire woke Sarah L. Aldridge, 22, of Wethersfield,
Conn., shortly before 4:30 a.m.
She tried to escape through the front door, but the smoke and heat in the
living room were impenetrable. She got out through a window.
Aldridge ran next door and roused James A. Siligato, who owned the cottage.
Aldridge told him that her best friend and summer roommate, Jennifer L. Kane,
21, of Brielle, N.J., was still inside. Siligato called 911
and rushed to the cottage with a garden hose.
By now, the heat that had spread to Kane's bedroom was too intense for Siligato
to enter. He sprayed water through the window, but a garden hose against
apparent flashover conditions was futile. Siligato could hear Kane, speaking
incoherently. He yelled at her to escape through the window, but soon she was
still.
The firefighters who arrived moments later had to battle the blaze for almost
five minutes before they could enter Kane's bedroom.
They found the young woman, a textile merchandising and design senior at URI,
on her back between her bed and a dresser. She was not burned: like many
victims of home fires, superheated air, smoke and poison gas had killed her.
"The arrival of the state Medical Examiner's investigator necessitated the
use of the Narragansett Fire personnel to recover the deceased Ms. Kane from
the water-puddled floor and to gently raise her to the top of the bed, where
she was placed into the body bag, for removal by the undertaker's
personnel," state Fire Marshal Office investigator Arthur Solvang wrote in
his report.
"This task is not the most desirable one and was made more onerous by the
conditions, such as trying to lift and straddle the bed, to place Ms. Kane into
the body bag. This was done with full professionalism and tact."
* RELATED STORY: Serta takes lead with production of safer mattresses A-15
* Watch a video of the burn test, get additional safety tips and read previous
stories in the series:
http://www.projo.com/extra/2003/foam/
* * *
BURNING THE BED TEST:
The charts below represent the results of a Providence Journal test burn
conducted by Pacific Fire Laboratory Inc. in Washington state. A queen-size
mattress, box spring and a complete set of bedding were burned under a
16-by-16-foot exhaust hood designed to measure the release rates of heat, smoke
and various gases. The fire was extinguished at 170 seconds when the heat
generation exceeded the capacity of the test calorimeter.
The numbers on the charts correspond to the
numbered pictures below.
* SEE MICROFILM FOR THESE CHARTS: HEAT RELEASE RATE, SMOKE RELEASE RATE,
COMBUSTION GAS FLOW, CARBON MONOXIDE & TEMPERATURE
PHOTO CAPTIONS ARE AS FOLLOWS:
* A technician, left, adjusts the propane torch before the burn test begins.
Less than three minutes after the torch is lit, right, very little of the bedding
remains.
* (1) 0 seconds - a technician ignites the propane burner at the foot of the
bed, just an inch away.
* (2) 20 seconds - the propane is shut off; the comforter and bed skirt are
already burning well without outside assistance.
* (3) 30 seconds - about half of the end of the bed is aflame, with a second
pool of flame burning on the floor.
* (4) 60 seconds - the entire end of the bed is fully involved; it looks like a
bonfire.
* (5) 120 seconds - temperatures near the bed rise to more than 1,400 degrees
Fahrenheit, creating enough energy to ignite everything in a typical room.
* (6) 170 seconds - the bed becomes such an inferno of flames, smoke and toxic
gases that the laboratory director orders the fire extinguished.
JOURNAL GRAPHIC / TOM MURPHY - SEE MICROFILM
Watch the entire three-minute video on projo.com
* * *
CPSC FUNDING HISTORY
Fiscal Inflation adjusted Year to 1995 Employees
1974 $107,502....786
1975 104,680....890
1976 105,968....890
1977 99,988....914
1978 94,574....900
1979 90,139....935
1980 76,477....978
1981 70,651....889
1982 50,796....649
1983 52,082....836
1984 51,705....595
1985 51,697....587
1986 47,906....568
1987 46,418....527
1988 41,352....513
1989 42,402....529
1990 40,982....526
1991 41,523....525
1992 43,667....531
1993 44,402....531
1994 43,484....510
1995 42,431....487
1996 38,801....487
1997 40,355....487
1998 42,074....480
1999 42,994....480
2000 43,158....480
2001 45,038....480
2002 46,762....480
2003 46,575....471
2004 47,899....471
(Request)
reduction
from 1974
to 2004 -55% -40%
SOURCE: President's Budget Appendix
and CPI Index
* * *
* SAFE DISTANCE: The bed in a burn test commissioned by The Providence Journal
was fully engulfed in just three minutes.
JOURNAL PHOTO / MARY MURPHY
* IN SECONDS: Lab technician Jerry MacPherson quickly pulls the gas ignition
flame away from the burning bed.
JOURNAL PHOTO/MARY MURPHY
* SETTING UP: Before the test burn at the Pacific Fire Laboratory, in Kelso,
Wash., July 30, 2003, each item of bedding is carefully weighed.
JOURNAL PHOTO/MARY MURPHY
* FATAL FIRE: Superheated air, smoke and poison gas killed a young woman in
this house in Narragansett on July 17, 2002.
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FATAL FOAM: PART FOUR - Serta takes lead with production of safer
mattresses
PETER B. LORD
Publication Date: October 1, 2003
Page: A-15 Section: News Edition: All
SERTA,
INC., the nation's second-largest mattress manufacturer, is breaking
ranks with most of the industry and unveiling new lines of flame-resistant
mattresses.
Beginning with its most expensive product lines and working down, Serta expects
all of its new mattresses to be flame-resistant by early next year.
While a few small manufacturers, such as Carolina Mattress Guild, in North Carolina, have
been making flame-resistant mattresses, leaders of the country's four largest
mattress companies have repeatedly voiced support for improved mattress safety,
but then raised questions about costs, regulatory details and deadlines, and
the role of bedding in mattress fires.
Just this past summer, Serta President Ed Lilly was quoted as saying he
supported revisions in proposed mattress-flammability regulations in California that were
less stringent than earlier proposals and extended the deadline for compliance
for another year.
A few weeks later, Serta ran advertisements in trade publications stating that
because there are 20,000 bedroom fires every year and a death in a bedroom fire
every day in the United
States, it planned to act sooner rather than
later.
"We can begin saving lives now with safer products," said Lilly in a
story in Furniture Today. "If you consider that someone in the United States
dies in a bedroom fire every day, many of whom are children, we should not wait
to offer safer mattresses until regulations are mandatory.
"We believe we have a responsibility to produce safer mattresses as soon
as possible," added Lilly. "In terms of safety, the issue of
open-flame-resistant mattresses is equally as important to our industry as
airbags were to automobiles 10 years ago."
Kally Reynolds, director of marketing at Serta, said that when Lilly welcomed
the postponement of the California
rules, he was saying the industry as a whole could use the extra time. But
Serta was always working toward developing flame-resistant mattresses.
"We're moving ahead now because we think we've found a solution that works
and can save lives," she said.
Outside of trade publications, Serta's announcement that it will begin to make
safer mattresses has gone unnoticed.
In trade publications, other mattress makers have said they are not planning to
follow Serta's actions now. Simmons Co., Sealy Corp. and Spring Air Co.
officials all were quoted as saying they are planning to comply with the proposed
January 2005 deadline mandating flame-resistant mattresses in California.
Only Sealy responded to the Journal's request for comment. A spokesman said the
company is building a major flammability testing facility at its corporate
headquarters and plans to have flame-resistant products "long before any
deadline."
David Perry, executive editor of Furniture Today, the leading industry trade
newspaper, called Serta's decision "bold, courageous action."
"We applaud Serta's move," Perry wrote. "This is how market
leaders act. Serta has made a powerful - and wise - leadership statement with
its actions."
The decision was also hailed by Whitney A. Davis, the California lawyer who represents burn
victims and who organized an advocacy group called the Children's Coalition for
Fire Safe Mattresses.
"We believe the new system will save the lives of children and that Serta
has made a crucial first step toward implementing a sleep system that will
substantially protect consumers from a grave risk of death or tragic
injury," Davis
said.
"The Children's Coalition has yet to confirm Serta's claims of mattress
fire safety through independent testing of their new models," he added.
"However, we have received basic information on the new techniques used by
Serta. While those techniques fall behind the scientific state of the art, they
reflect a quantum leap in protection beyond the current manufacturing practices
of the mattress industry."
"We've been working on this for three years," said Al Klancnik, a
Serta vice president and an engineer in charge of developing the new product
lines.
"It kind of shook up the rest of the industry," he said.
"They're trying to wait, and we're saying why wait?"
Klancnik is president of the industry's Sleep Products Safety Council, which
promotes mattress safety issues.
Serta will use FireBlocker, a proprietary blend of natural and synthetic fibers
in the outer layers of its mattresses and box springs.
"Everything is burnable," Klancnik said. "This works by blocking
the flames and giving significantly more time for people to get out."
The fire-resistant capabilities will be offered first in Serta's high-end
mattresses in the next few weeks, according to Klancnik.
He said Serta is getting a mixed reaction from furniture stores.
"Retailers are either neutral or they're positive - it's another reason to
buy a product today," he said.
He also minimized the claims of some manufacturers who said mandating flame
resistance would dramatically increase the costs of mattresses.
"Certainly there is a cost addition to putting this in, but if you
skillfully design your beds, you can minimize the cost impact," Klancnik
said. "We're not giving up any important price points on these
mattresses."
Kally Reynolds, head of marketing at Serta, said the company is educating
retailers now about the new mattresses and plans to launch a "consumer
campaign" after the Fall International Home Furnishings Market trade show
in High Point, N.C., later this month.
Serta, best known to the public for its advertising campaign featuring animated
sheep, is owned by eight independent licensees who run separate marketing,
manufacturing and sales operations in 27 factories in the United States
as well as 31 elsewhere in the world. Its Perfect Sleeper line is the country's
best-selling premium mattress.
Based in Illinois,
the company has 4,800 employees and $870 million in sales.
It's the number-one supplier to hotels and motels.
Sealy is the number-one mattress retailer in the country. It employs 6,480
people and sells through more than 7,000 retailers and operates 30 factories
around the world. Its labels also include Barrett and Stearns & Foster.
Simmons is the number-three mattress maker, employing 2,900 people and selling
through nearly 8,000 retail outlets. Its labels include Beautyrest, Deep Sleep,
DreamScapes and Olympic Queen.
Spring Air, the number-four mattress maker, employs 1,600 people and produces
specialty mattresses featuring asthma and allergy sensitive fabrics. Its labels
include Back Supporter, Four Seasons and Comfort Caress Collection.
In a recent column, Perry, of Furniture Today, exhorted the industry to follow
Serta's lead.
"Too many in our industry see flammability as a negative," Perry
wrote. "Talking about fires - even reducing fires - will only alarm
consumers, these folks say. Furthermore, there is a widespread feeling that
consumers will not pay for safer mattresses.
"Well, it's our job as an industry to change that feeling, if it's indeed
held by most consumers. That's called marketing, and we are very good at it in
the mattress industry. There is absolutely no reason not to use our marketing
skills to turn improved fire safety into a positive."
* READ RELATED ARTICLE: FATAL FOAM: PART FOUR A-01
