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Abstract
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Over the past decade, there has been an ongoing debate about the role and validity of flame retardant (FR) chemical use in products requiring fire safety performance. The debate appears to have been mostly won in the political realm, based on perception, despite the facts contrary to this point, that FR chemicals do not work and are all toxic. Some FR chemicals have been shown beyond a doubt to be problematic due to persistence, bioaccumulation, and toxicity (PBT) performance, and have been pulled from the market in the United States.1-7 However, this momentum to get rid of chemicals as they are found to be problematic (which is the right course of action) has morphed into a series of legislative pushes to ban any and all FR chemical use, and where necessary, to lower fire safety requirements to achieve this end. Removing chemicals and materials that no longer meet our needs, or are hazardous to use, is an important goal. We stopped using Asbestos for fire protection, and we have stopped using lead pipes in new home construction. However, what is being done now to lump all FR chemicals together as if they are the same from a toxicity perspective (they are not) and lower fire safety requirements to enable their removal is dangerous. It is a major step backwards on fire safety and it ignores decades upon decades of fire safety data, fire science, and facts. The point of this letter is to speak out about this backwards march into the gaping maw of fire and to discuss what really needs to change with FR chemical use to prevent an increase in fire losses in the United States.
I should first describe the current political situation in the United States in regards to fire safety regulation for international readers (so that, they can avoid our mistake, hopefully) and for US readers who may not be aware of these regulatory changes. In December 2020, the US Congress put into its "Omnibus" bill a change that all commercially sold furniture in the United States must now meet a cigarette-only fire safety test, based on the California Technical Bulletin TB-117 2013 test.8 This law became 16 CFR 1640 under enforcement as of June 2021.9 The TB 117 2013 test used to be an open flame test, but due to the early push to get rid of FR chemicals in California, it was changed to a cigarette-only test. Effectively, the high heat release materials in furniture, namely, polyurethane foam, polyester fiberfill, and polyester fabrics easily pass this cigarette test without needing any FRs, as they melt away from the heat source.10,11 Natural fibers, such as cotton and animal fibers do not pass this test, and require FRs (I suppose you could call them smolder retardants) to pass. TB 117 2013 is a very easy test to pass, and all the data to date, including information from the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), Underwriters Laboratories (UL), and even from the US Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC),11-15 made it very clear that this test was not going to improve fire safety of furniture, which remains the largest fuel load in the US home.16 Despite recommendations against using this test, it went forward anyway. The fire hazards of furniture have been known for decades,11,17,18 and despite this knowledge, more strict fire performance of furniture has not been enabled in the United States. All of this begs the question: Should we care if no one else does? We know that if a couch catches fire it is going to lead to catastrophic losses (loss of home and potentially life),11-13,16,17 and yet, nothing has changed. So what does this have to do with FR chemicals? TB 117 2013 was created solely to remove the need for FR chemicals in furniture due to the concern about the negative PBT performance of FR chemicals used in furniture (namely, polyurethane foam and fabric backcoatings). Given the problems with some of those chemicals (e.g. pentabromodiphenyl ether), I agree that some FR chemicals had long since outlived their usefulness and needed to go. So why not focus the laws on removal of those chemicals while also demanding better fire safety of furniture? I have heard the argument that increasing fire safety adds costs to products. I will agree with this statement, and use the famous phrase "There ain't no such thing as a free lunch" to support it. Everything has a cost. If society finds fire safety is not valuable, okay then--do not buy it. But who decides this? Why do we have fire safety scientists saying repeatedly that something (furniture fires) is hazardous with data to back it up and no one cares? Science does have a public perception and credibility problem, and may be that is why we are being ignored, but that is an article for another time. Still, the decision made by legislators, despite the public comment periods and data shared with them, was to go to a weaker fire safety standard to forever eliminate the need even to think about FR chemicals. Protecting the public from hazardous chemical exposure is an important goal, but assuming all FR chemicals are bad, or never could be improved to become safe to use, is a wrong assumption. Effectively, TB 117-2013 was well-meaning, but threw the baby out with the bathwater and made sure the baby was not going to be allowed back in house. It has enabled production and sale of products that are not fire safe, and worse, given perceptions that FRs are not needed and that all FR chemicals are hazardous...
Language: en |