Furniture Flammability Standards: A Challenge to Public Health and Safety Policy

Current legislative initiatives in several states to adopt California's Technical Bulletin 117, the only flammability standard for foam in upholstered furniture in the United States, have brought to a head a long-simmering public health and safety conflict. Environmental, public health and, surprisingly, firefighter groups, are concerned that these flammability standards have in the past led to large quantities of potentially toxic chemical fire retardants being added to the foam in upholstered furniture. A US Senate subcommittee is poised to consider proposed CPSC regulations to create an even more rigorous furniture component flammability standard. At the same time, AB706, a California Act to modernize TB117, and ban two classes of potentially toxic chemicals currently used to meet it, has passed California Assembly and Senate committees and awaits action in the full Senate. Legislators in WA, IL, NJ, NY and PA introduced bills early in 2007 to raise flammability standards in response to lobbying by chemical industry representatives and their allies among the membership of the National Association of State Fire Marshals. Such efforts are currently increasing in spite of decreased smoking rates and the passage of fire-safe cigarette legislation in at least 16 states. These trends are likely to diminish the future benefit of strengthened furniture flammability standards. Opposition to this legislation has also come from burn injury specialists, mothers groups, and scientists, based on animal studies linking these chemicals to reproductive and neurological problems and their accumulation in human breast milk. This presentation will discuss the current risk of death and injury resulting from the ignition of upholstered furniture and also the human health and environmental risks posed by the increased toxic chemical load that would result from higher furniture flammability standards.