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Collection: Hot Seat: The Fight Against Big Chem’s Toxics in Our Homes

Yes, Your Couch Is Probably Toxic

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For the first time in four decades, non-toxic, fire-safe couches are widely available throughout North America. In response to tireless advocacy and in spite of a campaign of chicanery orchestrated by the chemical industry, recent code changes transformed how upholstered furniture is made and sold in California, in Cascadia, and beyond. How Big Chem bullied us into … Read more

New Study: Toxic Flame Retardant Bans Have Made Our Bodies Cleaner

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Here’s some news to brighten your day: a new study suggests that recent bans of toxic flame retardants have made our bodies cleaner. Researchers in California were interested in the trends in “body burdens” for two classes of flame retardants known as PCBs and PBDEs. Both are “persistent, bioaccumulative toxics”—that is, they collect in animal tissues, break down slowly, … Read more

To the Victors Go the Sofas

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Film still of activist rally from Toxic Hot Seat documentary film, used with permission.
Film still of activist rally from Toxic Hot Seat documentary film, used with permission.

Beginning in January 2014, non-toxic couches will be widely available for the first time in decades. A tireless campaign waged by firefighters and parents, researchers and scientists, public health and public consumer advocates came to fruition last month when California reversed its outdated, scientifically discredited flammability standard—a standard that places pounds of toxic chemicals in most North American homes.

For 38 years, California has exported to the rest of the continent a flammability standard so feckless, dangerous, and pervasive that it boggles the mind to consider how it was enacted in the first place. Technical Bulletin 117 mandates that all foam furniture sold in the Golden State must withstand an open flame for 12 seconds, a standard furniture manufacturers satisfy by blending flame retardant chemicals into furniture foam. These chemicals are associated with adverse health effects in all living things, particularly in the wee ones.

Bafflingly, TB-117 is 0 percent effective. Fire safety experts know that blending flame retardants into foam doesn’t work. In fact, TB-117 creates deadlier fires, accelerating the progression of flames in real-world fires and making a fire’s smoke more poisonous.

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Non-Toxic Couches? Looks Like We’re Sitting Pretty!

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Abandoned couch. Credit autowitch.

A new couch could start to seem like a pretty good investment, provided that California moves forward with a proposed new fire safety rule for household furniture.

For years, firefighters, scientists, businesses, consumers, and public health advocates have gone toe-to-toe with big chemical companies over California’s outdated, scientifically discredited furniture flammability standard. Until recently, Big Chem had the upper hand: the current standard is good for their business (though harmful to consumers and firefighters). But the leadership of Governor Jerry Brown may have turned the tide. Earlier this month, California’s Bureau of Home Furnishings proposed a revised, non-toxic alternative standard based on sound fire science.

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Replacing an Unsafe Fire-safety Test for Couches

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Man sitting on burning couch

Editor’s note: This post is a compilation of a series of posts on toxic couches, taken from Sightline’s latest report on Making Sustainability Legal. This week, California’s Governor announced an end to the 12-second rule—a move which should pave the way to homes that are better protected from both fires and hazardous toxics. Sightline will be keeping a close eye as the state considers alternative flammability standards.

The test is simple: 12 seconds exposed to a small flame like a cigarette lighter. If the furniture foam doesn’t burn, it passes the test and can be sold. If it burns, it fails and cannot. That’s been California’s trial by fire for furnishings—its “flammability standard”—since 1975.

Unfortunately, this obscure rule turns out to cause an inordinate amount of toxic harm. Worse, it does this harm without providing any benefits. The rule may have made sense in 1975, when fire-safety science was young, but it’s long past its sell-by date. Simply deleting it from the law books in Sacramento would send benefits up the coast to the Northwest and beyond. Replacing the rule with a new flammability standard developed by the US Consumer Products Safety Commission and called a “smolder test” would do even more good.

The 12-second rule applies to the foam in couch cushions—not the fabric, just the foam. It also governs the foam in other furnishings such as chairs. And it covers foam-padded child-rearing equipment such as crib mattresses, nursing pillows, and strollers.

Because California is the biggest US market, manufacturers tend to treat the 12-second rule as a North American standard. They don’t want different foam formulas for different states and provinces, so most of them make everything to pass the 12-second rule. Consequently, wherever you sit in Cascadia, you’re probably on foam manufactured to pass the 12-second rule.

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Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire

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Fire

The Chicago Tribune is “Playing with Fire.” In a weeklong series on flame retardants, a team of journalists eviscerates Big Chem, its star witness, and the astroturf groups that are “part of a decades-long campaign of deception that has loaded the furniture and electronics in American homes with pounds of toxic chemicals linked to cancer, neurological deficits, developmental problems and impaired fertility.”

Earlier this year, we examined the testimony of Dr. David Heimbach, star witness for Big Chem, suggesting Heimbach’s testimony was either deceptive or uninformed. Our fisking gave him the benefit of the doubt. The Tribune dug deeper. Its reporters studied Heimbach’s testimony from the past three years and found he wasn’t simply uninformed. He lied.

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Toxic Couches: The Infographic

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How dangerous can 12 seconds be? In the case of California’s 12-second rule, it can be pretty toxic. California requires that furniture be able to withstand a candle flame for 12 seconds without igniting. Because California’s market is so big, most manufacturers build furniture to pass the 12-second rule. No study has ever proven the … Read more

Have Toxic Couches Finally Met Their Match?

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Eureka! The California legislature will this spring consider a bill to modernize the 12-second rule, the state’s obscure furniture flammability standard that fails to protect us from fires even while it poisons homes across North America. Over the past seven months, we’ve described this scientifically discredited standard; provided nine (adorable) reasons to modernize the standard; refuted Big Chem’s star witness; and uncovered the engine of toxic political influence that shuns fire safety in favor of profits.

This time, we bring hopeful tidings.

Late last month, Rep. Holly Mitchell (D-Los Angeles) introduced AB 2197, a bill that will bring California’s flammability standard into line with 35 years of independent fire safety science and 20 years of research by the US government.

AB 2197, backed by a coalition of firefighters, scientists, businesses, consumers, and public health advocates, is simple, effective, and constructive. It’s worth a read.

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Toxic Money

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Clausewitz said that war is politics by other means. Big Chem knows that politics can be business by other means. You’ve got to hand it to them: they’ve used politics with astounding effectiveness to secure their bottom line. The result is literally toxic for the rest of us.

The chemical industry spent nearly $5 million a year over the past five years on lobbying and campaign contributions in California. That’s a lot of money for one industry and one state. On the other hand, it’s a pittance, considering the payback: by defending an obscure and ineffective fire-safety regulation, the industry extends its North American stronghold in a market worth billions of dollar of sales each year. That’s one of the best returns-on-investment imaginable.

(If you’re familiar with this saga, skip this paragraph. If you’re just tuning in, here’s a quick catch-up: California’s flammability standard is a scientifically discredited rule that requires all foam furniture sold in the state to withstand 12 seconds exposed to a candle flame. Because of the scale of California’s market, the rule effectively governs North America’s furniture industry. The cheap way to pass the 12-second test is to blend flame retardant chemicals into foam. The retardants include all manner of health-harming compounds, which leak out of furniture and into our homes, our bodies, and our natural environments. Ostensibly, these chemicals are put into furniture to protect us from fire, but 35 years of fire safety science shows they don’t do their job. Still, policymakers have defended the rule, most recently by a vote of eight to one in a California senate committee. Last time, we deconstructed the illogical and unscientific testimony of the chemical industry’s star witness. So what’s the real reason policymakers refuse to change the rule? We fear the answer is simple: money.)

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Putting the Chemical Witness on the Hot Seat

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Man sitting on burning couch

Editor’s Note: We’ve said it before: California’s 12-second rule, a state flammability standard for foam-containing furniture, induces manufacturers to load their products with chemical flame retardants. It’s a stupid rule: it contaminates tens of millions of homes across North America with toxic substances — compounds that spread, harming people and animals. Of all the toxic industrial compounds in your body right now, a substantial share are flame retardants that came from foam furnishings — probably a larger share than any other category of industrial compounds. In other words, the 12-second rule is printing out, right now, in the chemistry of your body. But the rule has no compensating benefit for fire safety. The 12-second rule does not save lives in fires. It is useless. That’s what the scientific evidence says. This rule is all pain, no gain.

But in April 2011, a California senate committee voted eight to one to sustain the rule, rejecting the Consumer Choice Fire Protection Act. Eight to one! Liberals and conservatives united to oppose a mild reform that would have allowed manufacturers to satisfy either the unchanged 12-second rule (exposing foam to a candle flame for 12 seconds without it igniting) or a different flammability test, one that relies on the best fire science. What convinced them? We suspect it was the tens of millions of dollars chemical manufacturers spent on lobbying and campaign contributions. But let’s give the legislators the benefit of the doubt. What might they have heard that swayed them?

Sightline Intern Valerie Pacino, a Master of Public Health student, has investigated. She watched every minute of public testimony on the bill (here at 01:18:45 and here) and read all the statements pro and con entered into the official record. She found surprisingly few arguments voiced in support of the 12-second rule and an avalanche of arguments against it.

But she did find one compelling testimonial for the 12-second rule. It was that of a witness from her own university, the University of Washington in Seattle — an argument made by a decorated burn doctor named David Heimbach. Dr. Heimbach has dedicated his life to caring for victims of fire. Lauded by no lesser a humanitarian than the Dalai Lama, Dr. Heimbach was the star witness for flame retardants. His testimony (which you can watch here at 00:05:18) was artful and heartfelt. It was also, as Valerie details below, either deceptive or uninformed. (We asked Dr. Heimbach for a meeting to discuss this issue, but he has not replied.) –Alan Durning

You might think adding slow-to-burn compounds to upholstered furnishings, the largest single fuel load in many homes, would be a worthy precaution, a defense against house fires, and a lifesaver for thousands of people. It’s an understandable assumption, an intuitive one. Though Dr. Heimbach never questions or even explicitly mentions this assumption, it lurks beneath the surface of what he argued in Sacramento. So I checked the science.

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