Lab puts burning issues to the test
By David Perry -- Furniture Today, February 23, 2004
NORTHBROOK, Ill. — NORTHBROOK, Ill. — A conventional sleep set erupted into a blazing inferno minutes after it was exposed to open flames in a burn test here.
The test was conducted at Underwriters Laboratories, one of several facilities around the country that does bedding burn tests.
It took the mattress and box spring less than two minutes to exceed the standards in California's new open-flame mattress flammability law.
Attendees at an International Sleep Products Assn. seminar here backed away from the blazing bed, which was set afire under carefully controlled and monitored conditions at the special burn room at UL.
A technician doused the roaring fire, leaving a smoldering skeleton of coils.
Lynn Morris, chief of the California Bureau of Home Furnishings, which developed that state's mattress flammability law, was a concerned spectator.
"When you see how fast that mattress goes up in flames, how can you not want to save lives?" she said. The fast-developing fire was a "sobering and shocking" sight, she said.
That spectacle underscores the need for fire-resistant sleep sets, Morris said.
The "burning bed" provided the incendiary highlight of the UL burn tests. Minutes earlier, a sleep set incorporating new FR treatments was exposed to the same two-flame ignition source used in the California test.
That bed never erupted into flames. Small fires burned along the side and top of the bed for several minutes, but the bed never produced more than 10 kilowatts of heat, a fraction of the 200 kilowatt maximum allowed in the California test.
Flammability expert Gordon Damant, who watched the two burn tests, said a small mattress fire would be "very survivable," giving residents plenty of time to escape.
That is a key goal of California's new FR standard, one that has won the support of the bedding industry. The California standard says the bedding cannot exceed the 200 kilowatt level during a 30-minute observation period.
UL and a half-dozen other testing labs are burning beds at a furious pace as the bedding industry gears up to meet California's new standard. Bedding producers and suppliers of FR materials are testing the beds.
Given its location in metro Chicago, home to several national bedding producers, the UL lab in Northbrook has become a familiar stop for bedding executives and FR suppliers.
One Sleep Products Safety Council official said the test labs are "lined up" with mattress tests for the next three months.
