THE BOSTON CITY COUNCIL recently heard testimony from firefighters, mothers, nurses, and others on a proposed change to the city’s fire code that would allow public buildings with sprinkler systems to use furniture that is free of flame retardant chemicals.
Boston adheres to a flammability standard, known by the shorthand “TB 133,” that requires manufacturers to apply certain chemicals to furniture destined for public spaces in the Hub. This regulation applies to upholstered chairs and sofas in schools, hospitals, universities, theaters, libraries, and other public areas.
According to a recent Business and Institutional Furniture Manufacturers Association member survey, more than 40 percent of all the TB 133 pre-treated furniture manufactured in the United States goes to Boston. Only about 2 percent of commercial seating in North America is treated with harmful flame retardant chemicals to meet this standard.
The city’s fire code requires smoke detectors and automatic sprinkler systems in most public buildings. Combined with bans on smoking, these measures have dramatic impacts on reducing fire risk and preclude the need for chemically treated furniture. A move by Boston to adopt this new standard would bring the city in line with the rest of Massachusetts, where pre-treated furniture is required only in public buildings where there are no sprinkler systems. The new state regulations were adopted earlier this year.
Boston is one of the few municipalities in the country that enforces the flame resistant chemical standard. The Boston Fire Department is open to discussing the changes as long as they do not compromise fire safety. Boston Firefighters Local 718 wants to see the fire code updated to reduce firefighters’ exposure to these chemicals.
Anyone who lives in, works in, or visits the city stands to benefit from the proposed change. A well-established body of research shows that flame retardant chemicals are harmful to human health. Because flame retardants can migrate out of furniture, people come into contact with the chemicals through the air and dust particles. Studies have linked exposure to these chemicals with cancer, thyroid disruption, low birth weight, lowered IQ, fertility problems, and many other health issues.
Firefighters are especially vulnerable to flame retardant chemicals. During a fire, massive quantities of flame retardants are released into the air and the combustible chemicals produce highly toxic gases. These first responders have elevated rates of more than a dozen different types of cancer, including leukemia, multiple myeloma, esophageal, intestinal, testicular, and lung cancer, in comparison to the general population.
The International Association of Firefighters and Professional Firefighters of Massachusetts have all expressed their concerns about exposure to carcinogenic flame retardant chemicals.
In a study conducted by University of California Berkeley’s School of Public Health, researchers measured the amount of flame retardants in the blood of pregnant women and then followed the health outcomes of their children after birth.
They found that the children between the ages of five and seven whose mothers had the highest blood levels of a group of flame retardant chemicals called PBDEs had worse outcomes in attention, cognitive function, and fine motor skills than children whose mothers had the lowest PBDE blood levels. PBDE flame retardants are known to alter thyroid hormones, which are important for brain development.
Scientists at the Newton-based Silent Spring Institute, an independent research organization that studies the environment and women’s health, also concluded that flammability standards contribute to the problem. In 2008, the institute’s scientists published a study that found that California residents had twice the national average of toxic flame retardants in their blood. Flame-retardant levels in the dust of California homes were four to 10 times the levels found in homes elsewhere in the country. Young children are disproportionately exposed to the chemicals because they spend more time on the floor and ingest more dust.
Silent Spring studied California because in 1975 the state became the first in the country to implement regulations mandating the use of flame retardant chemicals. But growing public concern over toxic chemicals prompted California officials to develop a new standard for furniture in 2013.
This standard applies to all residential furniture and public furniture in places with automatic sprinkler systems, and requires furniture fabric to withstand ignition from a cigarette (manufacturers can meet this standard without flame retardant chemicals by tightening the weave of the fabric). Thanks to California’s pioneering regulations, today consumers can buy furniture that does not contain flame-retardant chemicals.
However, the city of Boston continues to adhere to an outdated standard. Until recently, few people knew about the health risks associated with high exposure to flame retardants. Armed with this knowledge and awareness of chemical-free, fire-safety practices, Boston has an important opportunity to safeguard public health by ending the use of toxic, pre-treated furniture, where possible, in places where people work, play, and learn.
Kathryn Rodgers is a staff scientist at Silent Spring Institute who is working on flame retardant exposure studies that are scheduled for publication next year.
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As a person who has been involved in Fire Science for a large number of years, this opinion piece has a large number of errors. TB 133 does not “require manufacturers to apply certain chemicals to furniture.” The TB 133 is a performance test which exposes an item of furniture to a large square burner flame for 80 seconds. The furniture must have a maximum rate of heat release, total heat release, and weight loss under specific values in 10 minutes. How the test is met is up to the manufacturer, there is no mandate to use specific chemicals. In fact it can be met with barrier fabrics which do not involve a flame retardant filling at all.
The author says that “a well established body of research shows that flame retardant chemicals are harmful to human health.” If one wants a flame retardant material there are a wide variety of approaches to flame retardancy including changing the material used. Even if one selects to use flame retardant chemicals their properties are hardly the same. There are a wide variety of chemistries both organic and inorganic. And polymeric flame retardants and reactive or bound in flame retardants do not migrate. Being bound in they hardly provide toxic exposures.
Fire is a highly toxic environment. The purposes of flame retardants if used are to prevent fire, make fires smaller, and take fires longer to spread. They do that, they work. That makes fires less toxic. A pan full of burning charcoal in a home sized room can be lethal. So preventing fire, having smaller and slower fires is to be desired.
PBDEs are no longer available for use in the US. US manufactured upholstered furniture have not had PBDEs added to foam in years.
A discussion is made of residential furniture. TB 133 does not apply to residential occupancies. Hospitals, theaters, schools, and other public occupancies are of special risk, with persons of limited mobility. Additional protection is essential.
The recent California TB 117 standard applies a cigarette smoldering ignition test for residential furniture. However, recent NFPA statistics indicate that 73% of residential upholstered furniture fires and 51% of such fires leading to death are not associated with ignitions from smoking materials. A cigarette smoldering test alone is not adequate. An open flame test is also required. An NFPA committee is working on such a test.
We each have a 1/3 probability of having a fire of sufficient size to have the fire department at our door in our lifetime. Fires happen. TB 133 can be met with barrier fabrics, or foam with non-migrating polymeric or bound-in flame retardants. Multiple choices for complying technology are there. Abandoning TB-133 does compromise fire safety, Boston firefighters have a right to be concerned.
I’d like to thank Gordon for taking an interest in this piece. I’d also like to address some of the important points
he’s raised. While the TB 133 test does not specify flame retardant chemicals, virtually no manufacturers can meet the standard with barriers free of flame retardants because it is cost prohibitive. The reality is that TB 133-compliant furniture meets the standards with flame retardant chemicals. The underlying issue is that consumer chemicals are not regulated for human safety before entering the market.
Regarding Dr. Nelson’s comment on the ability of flame retardants to migrate from substrates, while flame retardants that are chemically bound to a substrate do not migrate into the environment to the degree that non-chemically bound flame retardants do, the reality is that flame retardants are not chemically bound to foam and other components used in furniture, leading to human exposures.
To address Dr. Nelson’s comment about the toxicity of fires, surely not having a fire is less toxic than having a
fire. However, studies have shown that halogenated flame retardants actually increase levels of carbon monoxide, hydrogen cyanide, and dioxin containing gases when burned, creating more toxic fires. Studies with firefighters have shown that they have higher blood levels of flame retardant chemicals after a fire event. Firefighters are concerned about their exposures to these chemicals and high rates of cancer in their profession.
The health effects from many types of flame retardant chemicals have been demonstrated, starting in the 1970s with the mutagenic response to cells exposed to brominated “tris” – which was used in children’s pajamas at the time. Even though brominated and a chlorinated tris were banned from use in children’s pajamas in the 1970s, research has shown that the same chlorinated tris was recently used as a PBDE replacement in furniture after PBDEs were phased out in 2006. The point about PBDEs is that it took years to determine these chemicals were causing harm to humans before they were taken off the market. Why should we continue to conduct the same experiment on our population? Additional protection for the infirm and vulnerable people can come in other forms than toxic chemicals. To Dr. Nelson’s point, while fires do occur, the point of this opinion piece is that we should address preventing them in ways that don’t put our health at risk.
A key issue is what the future can look like.
TB 133 (Cal 133) compliant furniture with barriers, woven and non-woven, have been successful in meeting the standard, even without any added flame retardants for over 20 years. From a commercial perspective, furniture manufacturers have indeed been meeting this and other standards with barriers alone. That is a clear option.
A variety of polymeric and reactive flame retardants are available commercially. Reactives have been shown to not migrate at the ppb detection limit. It is not that they “do not migrate into the environment to the degree that non-chemically bound flame retardants do,” they do not migrate, period.
Both options are available. TB 133 compliant furniture does not need to be abandoned to meet the concerns expressed. However, removal of TB 133 products in public occupancies increases fire risk, firefighters should be concerned.
Laboratory scale tests comparing product combustion off gasses alluded to need to be taken in perspective. Real scale exposure is related to how much material gets involved how quickly, i.e., flame spread/fire growth. Most materials are within the same order of magnitude in laboratory toxicity tests. Thus flame spread/fire growth is the driver in toxic gas formation. The best strategy for toxic gases is to have no fire, have a smaller fire, have a slower fire, i.e., material fire performance. Levels of carbon monoxide are determined by the kind of fire and the ventilation level, less by the specific materials present. In room tests we did, flashover fires yielded 10,000 to 50,000 ppm of CO in the exiting gases, that is near instant lethality. Fires are very toxic and contain many hundreds of different compounds.
“It is said that massive quantities of flame retardants are released into the air.” Flame retardants need to break down either in the solid to generate char or consume heat, or emit flame active agents to disrupt the flame. A chemical which is simply released without decomposition into the air is a poor flame retardant.
Fire is complex. The message is that technology exists to address concerns yet still maintain high material performance.
On behalf of the Business and Institutional Furniture Manufacturers Association (BIFMA), we concur with Kathryn Rodgers regarding manufacturers meeting TB-133 in a manner suitable to the market. Surveys of manufacturers reveal the large majority of commercial TB-133 products require barriers and fire retardant chemicals to meet this stringent test. With the extremely low fire risk in the commercial office space, especially when sprinkled, specifiers should consider alternatives to TB-133 products, such as the new California TB-177-2013 standard which is widely accepted in the commercial environment.
As another person who has been involved with combustion research
for a large number of years, I agree with Dr. Nelson on some points. He is
correct that TB133 is a performance test that does not require certain
chemicals, but it also does not limit what toxic or potentially toxic chemicals
can be used to comply with the test requirements. While PBDEs have not been
used in new furniture for years, there are many millions of pieces of furniture
containing this toxic chemical in homes where hundreds of millions of people,
including infants and children, remain exposed. Sofas and chairs can be used
for decades, usually by several different owners for up to about 15 years each.
While the chemical industry says the new flame retardant
chemicals are safer than PBDEs, they will remain in our homes and environment
for generations, and current methods of disposal cannot ensure that humans and
the environment will not eventually be exposed to these chemicals or their
breakdown products. The long-term toxicity of these compounds and their
degradation products are not known.
Instead of using potentially toxic chemicals, we can reduce
fires by eliminating accidental ignition sources, prohibiting smoking indoors,
installing sprinkler systems which are proven to be highly effective, and using
new smoke and fire detectors that last a decade without the need for new
batteries.