The Wall Street Journal-20080204-Fire Rule for Furniture Is Proposed
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Fire Rule for Furniture Is Proposed
Full Text (414 words)After 14 years of wrangling, the Consumer Product Safety Commission took a major step Friday toward toughening its rules to make upholstered furniture less likely to catch fire.
When further action will be taken is uncertain. The agency has lost its temporary authority to make decisions because it has only two members and thus lacks a quorum.
The proposed rule, if adopted, would require upholstered-furniture makers to use resistant fabrics or a fire-resistant barrier between the fabric and the furniture stuffing to prevent fires from cigarettes and other sources. Manufacturers wouldn't be required to use chemical fire-retardants to meet the standard.
The mandatory rule would be expected to save about 100 lives a year. About 540 people die annually in fires that started in upholstered furniture, the majority sparked by cigarettes. Despite manufacturers' voluntary flammability standards and some state laws, the CPSC counts more than 7,800 upholstery fires annually in the U.S., with costs totaling $1.6 billion.
The effort to adopt federal rules on upholstered-furniture flammability began in 1994 with a petition from the National Association of State Fire Marshals. Some chemicals used to make fabrics less combustible posed public-health perils, and action has been delayed as environmental, health and safety groups argue the costs and risks.
The CPSC's acting chairman, Nancy Nord, asked the staff to look for alternatives that didn't require the use of chemicals, said CPSC spokeswoman Julie Vallese. She said she was concerned that an earlier plan would have led to widespread use of chemicals, some with uncertain health risks.
The rules can't become final unless Congress extends the agency's authority to operate without a quorum or another commissioner is appointed by the president and approved by the Senate. Friday's action was one of the biggest the CPSC took since it obtained the authority six months ago to act for a limited time without its regular three- person quorum.
The two commissioners didn't agree on advancing mandatory standards for cigarette lighters and lead in children's jewelry, a problem that has led to recalls of hundreds of millions of pieces of trinkets in recent years.
A spokesman for Sen. Mark Pryor (D., Ark.), who has introduced legislation to overhaul the CPSC, criticized the agency for not doing more. "It is obvious the commission should have done a lot more and they know it and more importantly the American people know that," said spokesman Michael Teague. The Pryor bill, which is in committee, would return the commission to its original five members.
