PRESS BRIEFING
15% or more of a UK sofa is made up of flame retardant chemicals and the huge body of scientific research linking these chemicals to toxic health effects and environmental harm is too compelling to ignore.
The chemicals are used to ensure compliance with the open flame test in the 1988 Furniture and Furnishings (Fire Safety) Regulations.
This April, to protect exposure of small children to the chemical flame retardants (as these leach out of furniture into the home), the Government laid before Parliament an amendment excluding baby mattresses and cots from the Regulations. So baby products will no longer contain flame retardant chemicals.
The UK Environmental Audit Committee determined that the UK should follow the EU and US approach where the safety standard requires a smouldering cigarette test of soft furniture. This is met without the use of chemical flame retardants.
The Department for Business and Trade is grappling this year with further reform of the Furniture Fire Safety legislation with the aim of reducing the use of chemical flame retardants in soft furniture altogether whilst respecting fire safety. It is anticipated that a policy decision will be forthcoming from the Government before the end of the year. We need a bold decision from the Government and we need it without delay. The April policy statement goes nowhere near far enough.
Flame retardant chemicals are linked to neurological and reproductive problems, to asthma, hormone disruption and cancer. The hormone disruptors linked to neurological harms include learning disorders, reduced IQ scores and behavioural problems. The chemicals release from furniture in the home, collect in dust are ingested as well as permeating the skin.
DEFRA is well aware of the environmental and health cost as these chemicals can take tens of years to break down and have been found in wildlife all over the world. DEFRA in 2022 determined that all waste soft furniture containing POPs (flame retardants that have been banned by the Stockholm Convention) be incinerated alongside hospital waste as hazardous waste. The practical implication of this is that almost all our waste soft furniture is being separated at source and sent for incineration. A truly un-circular economy. Whilst in France, foam can in theory be chemically broken down and recycled, in the UK foam treated with flame retardant chemicals becomes chemically un-recyclable. So we have created toxic pollution and this problem is being addressed by resource destruction and release of CO2 via incineration.
Smoker numbers are down, smokers choose to smoke outdoors and smoke alarms and sprinkler systems offer meaningful fire safety. Public health advocates and some fire fighting organisations including the Fire Brigade Union say flame retardants are largely ineffective and do more harm than good because of their toxicity both to people exposed to them in products and firefighters who encounter them in smoke. As flame retardants burn they exacerbate the carbon monoxide and hydrogen cyanide released. Fire fighter cancer rates are dangerously high.
Meanwhile the general public is unaware of the decision silently taken back in the 1980s to fill our sofas with chemicals intended to protect the smoker’s right to fall asleep whilst smoking.
This month’s decision to take flame retardant chemicals out of baby products is a first step. But babies sit on sofas, children sit on sofas, we sit on sofas and the Government needs now to be bold in its legislative change to allow the design of fire safe furniture without chemical flame retardants. The Government will be far more likely to prioritise acting boldly and decisively in updating the law if the general public are made aware of the problem.
Delyth Fetherston-Dilke April 2025
REFERENCES
(1) April 2025 - policy statement of OPSS, Department of Business and Trade
(2) Environmental Audit Committee - Toxic Chemicals in Everyday Life 2019
(3) Smarter Regulations consultation
(6) FIDRA environmental charity - sustainable fire safety
(7) US fire fighters
(8) Fire Brigade Union record of decisions 2023 clause 33