I'm told by The Sunday Times that this UK government is going to end the use of toxic flame retardants in British furniture which is welcome news not only for children but also companion animals. I've always said - and I've said it for many years - that the kind of damage that these flame retardant do to companion animals (who might spend a long time snoozing on a sofa) is hidden. You end up with pets with idiopathic diseases. These are diseases that veterinarians fail to diagnose properly by which I mean they fail to diagnose the cause and it might well be that the cause is flame retardants in furniture.
Check this out: flame retardants – Michael Broad - a range of articles on this important topic.
And the reason why, in Britain, there are flame retardant in British furniture and have been for nearly 40 years is because in Britain the rules have been far stricter than in Europe and the world generally which means that it is been almost impossible for manufacturers to pass fire safety tests without using large amounts of chemical flame retardant.
In short, the origin of toxic flame retardants in sofas and armchairs is British legislation. A typical UK sofa contains about 2 kg of toxic flame retardant apparently which is shocking.
We've known about this for a long time but successive British governments have done nothing about it.
Other countries don't use flame retardants in furniture. For example, IKEA use flame retardants in sofas sold in Britain and Ireland but they do not use them for the rest of the world. Can you imagine how idiotic this is and that's thanks to successive British governments.
However, there some good news. On Tuesday the government announced that it would change the rules. It's going to drop an open flame test and bringing new regulations underpinned by a smoulder test. This mimics a lit cigarette on fabric in line with Europe and American policies.
It's obviously a balance between protecting inhabitants of homes by helping to prevent fire and protecting those inhabitants from toxic chemicals. Perhaps what might be behind some of this is an attempt to help protect the NHS in the UK. This government has been trying hard to take proactive measures to prevent people going to hospital. Clearly, fire retardants have silently been sending people to hospital. We don't have statistics but knowing that fire retardants are carcinogenic it is highly likely that some people have developed cancer and some pets have developed cancer because of these chemicals.
Apparently the change of heart is "credited to a campaign by Delyth Fetherstone-Dilke, 56, a former Warner Bros lawyer from Richmond, south-west London. She switched careers to become an upholsterer and 2014." The rules which enhance the use of fire retardants in sofas and other furniture were introduced in 1988 after a fire at a Woolworths shop in Manchester in 1979. The fire started in a sofa and killed 10 people.
There are hundreds of peer-reviewed studies which tell us that these toxic chemicals migrate out of the furniture into house dust and then into people with the highest levels in young children. That's this newspaper report but I would like to add the simple fact that it is highly likely that these chemicals also find their way into companion animals. This is logical.
The fire test rules have been under review since 2009 and a House Of Commons enquiry suggested changing the rules in 2019 but nothing happened for 17 years. Can you imagine how slow British governments work? It is absolutely shocking in my view.
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