Targeting upholstered furniture fires

Changes in upholstered furniture have lowered the fire risk, but the numbers indicate that the risk is still a concern JOHN R. HALL, JR., PH.D.

The first step in advancing fire safety is to target the greatest problem. That's why so many fire safety programs concentrate on homes, including houses, duplexes, manufactured homes, and apartments, rather than commercial buildings. That's why so many fire safety programs target the poor, the less educated, and the very young and old. And that's why fire safety advocates keep coming back to upholstered furniture. It's the leading burnable product first involved in fatal fires in the United States.

Between 1993 and 1997, the period for which the most recent statistics are available, fires originating in upholstered furniture accounted for 658 civilian fire deaths per year in home fires, where 95 percent of building fires occur. These 658 deaths represent 18.2 percent of total home fire deaths annually for that period. Mattresses and bedding, if treated together as parts of a system, accounted for 552 civilian fire deaths a year, or 15.3 percent. Further behind were structural members and framing, which represent 8.7 percent, multiple items, which represent 6.2 percent; and interior wall coverings, which represent 5.6 percent.1

Upholstered furniture doesn't rank as high on other types of fire losses. For example, upholstered furniture fires accounted for 8.8 percent of civilian fire injuries, 5.2 percent of the dollars lost in home fires, and 3.1 percent of reported home fires. However, death is the most important effect of fire, and the role of upholstered furniture in fatal fires isn't limited to the role of first item ignited.

There are three fire safety strategies that work before a fire starts, and five approaches that work after a fire starts. The three prevention approaches are changing the heat source, changing the fuel source, or changing behavior. Examples include making upholstered furniture more resistant to cigarette ignition, making cigarettes less likely to ignite upholstered furniture, and teaching smokers to keep cigarettes and upholstered furniture apart. Any of these can strategies achieve the same effect.

The five protection elements that reduce loss if a fire occurs include preventing rapid growth or spread of fire, detecting the fire early, confining the fire within barriers, suppressing the fire early, and quickly evacuating people. Upholstered furniture is important in the first of these because it's often the largest fuel package in a room, even if another, smaller fuel source is the first item ignited.

Program options

The two principal heat sources in fatal upholstered furniture fires are smoking materials, which account for two-thirds of the upholstered furniture fire deaths that occurred between 1993 and 1997, and small, open-- flame sources, such as matches and lighters, which account for one-sixth to one-fifth of such deaths. Since the late 1970s, the Upholstered Furniture Action Council (UFAC) has overseen a voluntary industry standard designed to increase the cigarette-ignition resistance of upholstered furniture.

In 1993, the National Association of State Fire Marshals (NASFM) petitioned the US. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) to adopt new mandatory standards, based on three test methods from California, that would address cigarette ignitions and both small and large open-flame ignitions. As discussions at CPSC proceeded, they tended to focus on the cigarette and small, open-- flame ignitions, largely because resistance to large open-flame sources isn't an issue in most fires that begin in upholstered furniture. It would, however, provide a means of reducing ignition of upholstered furniture as the second item ignited during the pre-flashover phase.

Citing cancer risk to consumers in an early fire retardant treatment of children's clothing, a Congressional Appropriations Subcommittee proposed language in 1998 to block any requirement for expanded use of fire-- retardant chemicals in upholstered furniture, pending a risk study of skin contact with those chemicals. Later, comments by industry spokespeople broadened the concern to workers exposed during manufacture. However, the recently completed study indicated there was no significant risk.

In 1999, NASFM submitted a second petition for labeling upholstered furniture filled with untreated polyurethane foam. The labeling would have been identical to that now used for blocks of uncovered foam, despite the barrier effect of the upholstered furniture's fabric coverings.

Fire retardant treatment of the filling material of upholstered furniture can help prevent small, open-flame ignitions, but its biggest value is its ability to reduce the intensity of fire and stretch the time required to reach peak intensity This mitigation effect, more than any prevention effect, provides the greatest principal life-saving impact.

Estimating the impact

It's appropriate to place the current problem in context (see Table 1). Reported home fires starting with upholstered furniture declined by 68 percent from 1980 to 1997, compared to a decline of 46 percent in total reported home fires. And civilian deaths in fires that started with upholstered furniture declined by 52 percent from 1980 to 1997, compared to a decline of 36 percent in total reported home fire deaths. Clearly, the industry and the users of upholstered furniture have been doing something right. Just as clearly, the loss that remains justifies further attention.

Upholstered furniture is a complex product. There are many choices of covering fabrics, which fall into at least four groups-cellulosics other than prints; thermoplastic velvet, corduroy, or jacquard; cellulosic or thermoplastic flock or dobby; and vinyl-that show marked differences from each other in their resistance to cigarette ignition. There are also two main types of filling material, cotton batting and polyurethane foam, either of which can be treated for fire resistance or not. Untreated polyurethane foam supports a more severe fire if prevention fails, but it's more effective than untreated cotton batting at preventing ignition. The likelihood of cigarette ignition also differs if the cigarette lands in a crevice formed by two cushions or between a cushion and the frame. The cords used to reinforce corners in some designs also behave differently when exposed to cigarettes.2

By reducing the peak rate of heat release and extending the time until the peak is reached, manufacturers can improve the performance of upholstered furniture in preventing rapid early growth or fire spread. Fewer fires will grow to flashover, and this greatly reduces fire damage to people and property.

Strategies aimed at upholstered furniture ignition resistance target a readily identifiable group of fires and associated deaths: those in which upholstered furniture is the first item ignited. Strategies that would reduce the role of upholstered furniture as the primary path to rapid fire growth are harder to assess because the deaths potentially affected are harder to isolate in the available data. As a starting point, however, consider some different circumstances in which people are killed in fires.

Some victims are very close to a fire from the moment of ignition. These "intimate with ignition victims are difficult or impossible to save if prevention fails because the fatal injury can occur quickly. Of those who died in home fires that started with upholstered furniture-- between 1993 and 1997, 18.6 percent were intimate with ignition.

At the other extreme are victims who are in a room other than the fire's room of origin and are killed when the fire spreads, due to flashover. Nearly half, or 44.6 percent, of the victims of upholstered furniture home fires between 1993 and 1997 died under these circumstances.

Flashover produces a roughly ten-fold increase in the release rate of toxic smoke, as well as a heat-pump effect that moves the deadly atmosphere rapidly throughout a small space such as a housing unit. If a fire can be prevented from reaching flashover, nearly all the potential victims outside the room of origin can be saved. In fire incident databases, flame spread beyond the room of origin is our best indication that flashover occurred.

It's harder to estimate the effect of smaller fires on victims closer to the point of fire origin than to the farthest point of fire spread and on victims much farther from the point of fire origin than the farthest point of fire spread. The former group might not have been saved even if the fire had been smaller, because it still might have been large enough to reach them where they were struck down. And the latter group had to have been unusually vulnerable to fire effects to be killed by so small a fire.

The question for both groups is how much extra time is needed for effective escape. We can't estimate the answer, but if the fires are smaller and slower, then some of these victims should be able to escape safely.

Finally, changes to upholstered furniture may save victims of fires that don't begin with upholstered furniture by slowing or reducing the growth of fires in which upholstered furniture is the second item ignited and the largest fuel package. Living rooms, family rooms, and dens are dominated by upholstered furniture, and there are more home fire deaths-32 percent of the total-in these rooms than in any other area of origin. The other principal areas of origin for fatal fires are bedrooms, where mattresses and bedding tend to be the largest fuel package, and kitchens, where upholstered furniture isn't as common.

How much of a difference might we make?

Table 2 indicates that increasing the resistance of upholstered furniture to ignition by cigarettes has more potential to lower fire death rates than increasing its resistance to small open flames. Note that the former could be achieved through changes in the design of the cigarette, rather than the furniture, while the latter is bound up with the problems of fire play among young children and incendiarism by older children.

To determine what it would take to build more cigarette resistance into upholstered furniture, we need more information. What fraction of upholstered furniture in use complies with the UFAC standard? How much of the noncomplying furniture is non-complying because it was manufactured before the standard was created? How much is non-complying because its manufacturers violated the standard when they made it? How much is non-complying because age or unusual use has degraded its performance? How much does the UFAC standard reduce the likelihood of cigarette ignition? What options exist for furniture redesign to achieve better performance, and what tests exist to verify better performance? Many of these questions would also apply to the question of small open-flame ignitions.

Table 2 is also encouraging in regards to the potential impact of mitigation strategies. But to translate deaths targeted into estimated lives saved, we need an estimate of how much the risk of death is reduced when a fire is kept smaller.

A fire whose flame damage extends beyond the room of origin is, on average, 2 1/2 times as likely to kill someone as a fire confined to the room of origin but not to the area of origin. That suggests a 60 percent reduction in fire fatalities if those larger fires were kept smaller. A fire whose flames spread beyond the area of origin but not beyond the room of origin is, on average, 1 2/3 times as likely to kill someone as a fire confined to the area of origin but not to the object of origin. That suggests a possible 40 percent reduction in fire fatalities.

Changes to upholstered furniture might not produce these kinds of reductions, which are averages based on broad ranges of fire sizes. But if they did, the life savings would be huge, particularly if they were based on all living room fires, not just those starting with upholstered furniture.

Good news, bad news

The good news is that fire risk from upholstered furniture is lower today than ever before, judging from the available statistics. Hundreds fewer people die each year. The bad news is that the death toll still runs into the hundreds every year.

Among prevention strategies, further emphasis on increasing resistance to cigarette ignitions offers more promise than increasing resistance to small open flames. And any future mitigation strategy must not encourage a switch from polyurethane foam to untreated cotton batting, as more will be lost through reduced prevention effectiveness than will be gained through improved mitigation. This can be avoided by insisting that all upholstered furniture filling material be fireresistant or, in a more performance-based way, by requiring acceptable performance on both ignition resistance and rate-of-fire-- growth tests.

I think the recent history of upholstered furniture design for fire safety reflects well on all the interested parties. Certainly, there's ample evidence that the industry's hard work through the UFAC program has made a major difference. By attacking one of the largest remaining parts of the fatal fire problem through promising or proven technologies, the NASFM petitions are in the finest tradition of fire service activism. And CPSC's scrupulous care in evaluating candidate safety proposals, combined with its boldness in acting when the case has been made, embodies the spirit of the agency's mission and charter. NFPA has largely deferred to those whose expertise within our shared mission more closely fits the needs of this issue, though we've helped by analyzing data, interpreting research, and contributing to the process of forging consensus on the best way forward.

The upholstered furniture fire problem needs further work, but I see signs that the fire safety community is coming together to pool knowledge, act decisively, and create a safer, better world for us all. Let's all be part of the emerging solutions.

References

1. Rohr, Kimberly D., The US. Home Product Report (Forms and Types of Materials First Ignited in Fires), NFPA Fire Analysis & Research Division, Quincy, Mass., August 2000.

2. Hall, Jr., John R., Expected Changes in Fire Damages From Reducing Cigarette Ignition Propensity, Technical Study Group, Cigarette Safety Act of 1984, October 1987, p. 51.

John R. Hall, Jr., Ph.D., is assistant vice president of NFPA's Fire Analysis and Research Division.

Copyright National Fire Protection Association Mar/Apr 2001
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