Consumer News For Families Newspaper Columns

A Burning Issue: Mattress Flammability

[Column 363, November 14, 2005] | Archived Columns

By Ken Suggs*

We try to teach our children to be safe—especially when it comes to fire. But little children's fingers find their way to matches and lighters all too often, and the results are too often deadly:

"Children playing with a cigarette lighter resulted in the death of a three-year-old girl...." (KHOG, Fayetteville, AR).

"A five-year-old was taken to the hospital with burns to his legs and feet, suffered when he set his mattress on fire while playing with a lighter." (Albany Times-Union, NY).

"A fire blamed on a child playing with a lighter caused $25,000 damage, just three days after a fire started in a similar way took the life of a 6-month-old girl in Dubuque." (Associated Press).

Approximately 470 people die each year in mattress and bedding fires, according to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC). About 75 percent of those victims are children.

The CPSC now has in progress a draft rule that would help make mattresses safer. The new rule would mandate mattresses that are more resistant to open-flame fires. The new mattress products that come into contact with open flame sources (lighters, matches, or candles, for example) would have to burn slow enough (30 minutes) so that people would have enough time to escape.

The only test that mattress makers currently have is one that involves smoldering cigarettes. That cigarette law has been in place for about 30 years. Lawyers, like Robin Foster, who represent victims who have been burned in mattress fires welcome the new law.

"It's important to protect the American public," said the Greenville, South Carolina lawyer. "It has been known for 30 years that these kinds of fires have caused a tremendous loss of life."

Once the new rule is in effect, mattresses will have improved flammability performance through the use of fire-retardant coverings, mattress inserts, and other methods outlined by the CPSC. Many of the major mattress companies in the U.S. have already made the necessary product changes because of a similar mattress flammability law that went into effect in California earlier this year.

A mattress that is not treated with flame-retardant physical and/or chemical barriers will typically rage out of control in about three minutes. While the proposed standard would help control mattress fires for about 30 minutes, some fire protection groups have asked the CPSC to consider an even more stringent open-flame test.

In a letter to the CPSC, the Chair of the National Association of State Fire Marshalls (NASFM) Consumer Product Safety Task Force wrote:

"[An] open-flame regulation based on a 30-minute duration...is a clear improvement over the cigarette requirement only.... We still contend a 60-minute open-flame test would save far more lives."

The NASFM task force chair states that elderly people and small children need the extra time to get out of a burning house or to be reached. According to a study by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, children under 5 years and adults over 54 are at the highest risk of dying in a fire.

The CPSC is not only tackling the issue of mattress fires. The agency also has a proposed rule that would affect upholstery fires.

Upholstery fires are even more deadly than mattress fires. Upholstered furniture fires kill approximately 580 people each year.

When CPSC Chairman Hal Stratton announced the proposed flammability standards, he said, "More deaths result from residential fires than from any other hazard under CPSC's jurisdiction."

According to the National Fire Protection Agency, home fires in 2003 caused nearly $6 billion in property damage. The human toll is more devastating: a home-fire death every three hours. The proposed regulations would help keep our families safer than ever before.

*Ken Suggs, president of the American Association for Justice, is a partner in the Columbia, SC, law firm of Janet, Jenner & Suggs.