Flammability Updates & News

The US Consumer Product Safety Commission Concentrates on New National Standard for Mattresses; the California Bureau Gathers Data for a Bedding Standard

Establishing a New National Mattress Standard is a US CPSC Priority

US Consumer Safety Commission Information Officer Patty Davis recently told me that the CPSC has been concentrating on processing the more than 543 comments they received in response to their Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on a new national mattress flammability standard. The NPR was published in January of this year.
The task facing the staff of the CPSC is formulating responses to the commentary received and preparing a finalized rule for the perusal of the CPSC’s three commissioners. At that point, the commissioners will either approve the rule or pass it back to the staff for further study. Hence, there is no timetable as such. But when asked about the incipient flammability legislation on top-of-bed items, Davis said that the CPSC is focusing on producing a finalized version of the proposed national mattress standard.

As was stated in this column in the previous issue of Futon Life & Living Spaces, the presentation of this material to CPSC Commissioners Hal Stratton, Thomas Moore and Nancy Nord could be as early as October, although the CPSC is not enthusiastic about presenting timetables for its activity on this issue.

Bedding Standards Continue in Development

In the same conversation with the CPSC’s Patty Davis, I was told that the proposed California standard for bedding flammability is being closely observed by the CPSC. The California standard may well be a harbinger of what to expect from the federal commission.

A clear statement on the California Bureau website is as follows: “The Bureau has conducted research on the flammability of these filled bedding products—such as comforters, pillows and mattress pads—and found them to be highly flammable. Development of proposed flammability regulations for these products is ongoing, and includes the drafting of a Technical Bulletin 604 product-testing standard. Textiles—such as sheets, pillowcases and blankets—are not covered by the proposed standard, nor does the Bureau regulate them.”#8221;

A draft of TB 604, produced in Fall 2004, can be obtained by e-mailing a request to contactbhfti@dca.ca.gov or calling the Bureau at (916) 574-2041. A draft of the TB 604 test procedure is also available on the Bureau web site, which also has a link to a Bureau lab test of a non-flame retardant comforter in tandem with a flame-retardant comforter, showing graphically why top-of-bed items are being made subject to flammability law. Go to www.bhfti.ca.gov/burn_comparison.pdf to view this test.

John MacCormack, California BHFTI Manager of Research and Development, told me in a recent conversation that the Bureau is currently doing additional research on the level of practical repeatability of the current draft test. This involves testing commonly used industry filling material that is treated with the minimum amount of fire retardant that will pass the draft standard’s test. Such tests are repeated numerous times, and the data from the tests is then sent to the BHFTI statistician for analysis. This segment of the precision and bias testing is being done by BHFTI alone—while there are plans to include several other labs in the research at a later date. There will be a meeting of the TB 604 Task Force in or near October 2005, and the details on the research will be made available then.

FL