Digital Extra: Fatal Foam

9.29.03

By G. WAYNE MILLER and PETER B. LORD
The Providence Journal

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."

Flame to inferno

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 "fire-proofed."

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 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 the woman continued to sleep as it 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 R.I. 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 discusss 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, signalling 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 earlier this year, Counts said that the environmental safety of flame retardants also remains an issue. And he raised concerns about the health safety of retardants, especially the ones known as polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs), which Europe is banning -- and which is 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 promise 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.