Fire-hazard Furniture

[PsychoSerenity]

Just watched a programme on the BBC investigating sofas and mattresses being sold by major retailers in the UK that fail the fire regulations. Here's an article about it:

In yesterday's BBC consumer affairs programme, Fake Britain, several leading furniture and bed retailers were involved in an investigation into product compliance with the UK's stringent fire safety regulations for furniture. Products bought from furniture chains including Harveys, SCS, Argos and Homebase, as well as online from Amazon and Tesco Direct, failed to meet these standards, and were therefore shown as illegal.

The inquest started after a West Yorkshire resident's complaint about sofas she had bought from furniture supplier iSleep, which is no longer in trading. In buying and testing products from the retailer, Trading Standards found them to be in breach of the UK’s fire safety regulations for flammability. Fake Britain then went on to investigate the issue further among well known national firms, partnering up with Trading Standards.

Leicestershire Trading Standards bought 10 sofas from a variety of national high street chains and independents, and eight of the ten products failed part of the fire regulations. The programme showed the tests of products from ScS and Harveys but did not mention where the other six non-compliant products had been bought.

Mattresses were also investigated, with products from Ventura Corporation – owner of the Sleep Secrets brand – tested after being bought from the websites of Argos, Homebase, Tesco Direct and Amazon. All products bought failed the fire regulations when tested at FIRA's Stevenage-based testing facility. Ventura remarked that it has issued a product recall and its own investigation.
continues...

Quite shocking the difference between compliant and non-compliant furniture that they tested. A wooden flaming object was placed on the furniture. - For the compliant furniture it had burned itself out in about two minutes leaving nothing but a singed/melted hole. The illegal ones caught fire and within six minutes had turned the room into an inferno, billowing choking black smoke. That's the difference between life and death. There's good reason for such regulations.

Sadly I'm less surprised to see businesses flouting the regulations regardless of the consequences, even selling products with faked 'fire resistant' labels that clearly hadn't been checked. It's kind of inevitable in a system that puts profits above all else.

[Trinity]

Blimey

[MiM]

I'm a bit ambiguous on this. Many if not most of the furniture, that makes the test are treated with brominated fire retardants, which have both environmental and health impacts. I might even prefer a bed that is not that fire-safe, and then refrain from smoking in it or using live candles bedside. An extremely high percent of deadly bed fires are started from cigarettes.

[mistermack]

Forget the furniture.

It's obvious to me that what we need are fire-retardant cigarettes and candles.

There's a big gap in the market right there !

Edit : oops, I forgot the electronic cigarettes. Another good reason for trying them out.