Time to set record straight: FR solutions deemed safe
David Perry, Executive editor -- Furniture Today, June 16, 2008
A small but vocal group of fearmongers is making some outrageous claims about the alleged dangers of chemicals in mattresses. These misguided marketers are doing a grave disservice to an industry that takes its corporate citizenship seriously.
The fearmongers claim that mattress producers are using dangerous chemicals to add fire-resistant protection to their mattresses and speak darkly about “toxic chemicals.” They casually suggest they will produce cancer and describe FR mattresses as “poison beds.”
It is time to stand up to these fearmongers and set the record straight. First, consumers have every right to be concerned about the health effects of the products they use. Leading bedding producers understand those concerns and realize they always must be mindful of safety issues.
Second, the federal mattress flammability regulation that took effect last summer was developed by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission. That group, charged with safeguarding U.S. consumers, examined FR solutions provided by a variety of FR chemicals, including five it mentioned by name. The CPSC staff conducted “migration/exposure assessment studies” on those FR solutions, and concluded they can be safely used in mattresses.
CPSC's analysis of “health effects issues concerning the use of flame retardants,” part of its filing on the standard published in the Federal Register on March 15, 2006, states: “The staff concluded that, based on available information, FR chemicals and flame resistant materials were available that could be used to meet the proposed mattress standard without posing any unacceptable risk to consumers.”
The CPSC report concludes its section on the health effects of FR materials with this statement: “The results of this exposure and risk assessment of the selected FR treatments suggest that there are a number of commercially available FR-treated barriers that can be used to meet the standard that are not expected to present any appreciable risk of health effects to consumers who sleep on mattresses that comply with the standard.”
That is our federal government's assessment of several FR solutions that were available in the months before the standard became law. Somehow, solutions that are “not expected to present any appreciable risk of health effects to consumers” have suddenly, in the eyes of the fearmongers, transformed into FR barriers filled with “poisonous” and “toxic” chemicals. The facts presented by CPSC are wholly at odds with those wild claims.
Do the fearmongers really think that mattress producers would knowingly manufacture dangerous products? No one stands to lose more by making unsafe mattresses than mattress producers themselves. That fact alone should tell even the industry's harshest critics that their claims of dangerous chemicals in mattresses are grossly misplaced.
Contact David Perry at dperry@reedbusiness.com
