Should you worry about flame retardants in your furniture?
The Problem
In order to meet safety standards, flame retardants were added to household furniture as part of California Technical Bulletin (TB) 117 in 1975. This bill was passed in part because of pressures from the cigarette industry as cigarettes left on couches were causing fires. (Of course they shifted the blame to the furniture). Recent studies have shown that these flame retardants are harmful to human health. This is important because if we sleep for 8 hours per night (hopefully!), we will spend 1/3 of our lives on a mattress with pillows and even more time on couches and chairs. While flame retardants can be found in a variety of household products, this post will focus on furniture.
Some good news!
Recently, concerns over the health effects of these chemicals and the effectiveness of the chemical to suppress a fire have led to the update of TB 117 in 2014 and now manufactures are no longer required to use flame retardant chemicals in upholstery. Yay! Products still must meet fire suppression standards, but added chemicals are not required.
Why Flame Retardants should be avoided
1) Because flame retardants are added to furniture and not chemically bounded to the foam, they can escape foam the and go into the air (Cowell, 2017). Once they enter the air, they can attach to dust particles inside your home. According to the EPA, we spend over 90% of our time indoors.
2) Flame retardants can disrupt your bodies endocrine system. They are “Similar in structure to thyroid hormones and are endocrine disruptors” (Dishaw, 2014).
3) They can cause weight gain (yikes!). Rats exposed to PBDEs gained weight and puberty was advanced in female rats (Patisaul, 2013).
4) Inhalation of dust can cause allergic type reaction but also toxic inhalation. “Flame Retardant emissions from mattresses containing polyurethane foam and viscoelastic memory foam (VMF) contain asthmatic agents” (Garrido, 2017).
5) Flame retardants can impact development. “Lower intelligence was associated with prenatal exposure to a highly chlorinated PCB” (Tatsuka, 2014) and “polybrominated diphenyl ether exposures were associated with 873000 lost IQ points” (Bellanger et al. 2015). Children may not be able to reach their full potential.
But….
Some manufacturers still use flame retardants. Polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) are a type of flame retardant used in furniture and other products since the 1970s (Cowell, 2017). These types of fire suppressers have been phased out and sometimes replaced with Firemaster 550®. Ideally the replacement chemical would be better for human health but sometimes the replacement chemical is just as harmful. The best thing is to avoid the flame retardants altogether because Firemaster 550® has similar health risks as PBDEs.
How to avoid Flame Retardants
There are many options for flame retardant free furniture in the United States and abroad. It is important to educate yourself as a consumer. While there are high end expensive furniture retailers that sell flame retardant free furniture, brands like Ikea also carry flame retardant free furniture. Buying used furniture is risky because you may not be able to identify if there are harmful chemicals in the foam, so be careful and read labels. Flame retardants were added to furniture in hopes of protecting humans from fires, but they are not effective in stopping fires and because of their risks to human health, they do more harm than good.
See my other post for a guide on flame retardant free furniture: https://medium.com/@graceesslinger/flame-retardant-free-furniture-guide-1aa4e91bec6d
Sources:
Bellanger, M., Demeneix, B., Grandjean, P., Zoeller, R. T., & Trasande, L. (2015). Neurobehavioral Deficits, Diseases, and Associated Costs of Exposure to Endocrine-Disrupting Chemicals in the European Union. The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, 100(4), 1256–1266. https://doi.org/10.1210/jc.2014-4323
Cowell, W. J., Stapleton, H. M., Holmes, D., Calero, L., Tobon, C., Perzanowski, M., & Herbstman, J. B. (2017). Prevalence of historical and replacement brominated flame retardant chemicals in New York City homes. Emerging Contaminants, 3(1), 32–39. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.emcon.2017.01.001
Dishaw, L. V., J Macaulay, L., Roberts, S. C., & Stapleton, H. M. (2014). Exposures, mechanisms, and impacts of endocrine-active flame retardants. Gastrointestinal • Endocrine and Metabolic Diseases, 19, 125–133. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.coph.2014.09.018
Garrido, M. A., Gerecke, A. C., Heeb, N., Font, R., & Conesa, J. A. (2017). Isocyanate emissions from pyrolysis of mattresses containing polyurethane foam. Chemosphere, 168, 667–675. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chemosphere.2016.11.009
Patisaul, H. B., Roberts, S. C., Mabrey, N., McCaffrey, K. A., Gear, R. B., Braun, J., … Stapleton, H. M. (2012). Accumulation and Endocrine Disrupting Effects of the Flame Retardant Mixture Firemaster® 550 in Rats: An Exploratory Assessment. Journal of Biochemical and Molecular Toxicology, 27(2), 124–136. https://doi.org/10.1002/jbt.21439
Tatsuta, N., Nakai, K., Murata, K., Suzuki, K., Iwai-Shimada, M., Kurokawa, N., … Satoh, H. (2014). Impacts of prenatal exposures to polychlorinated biphenyls, methylmercury, and lead on intellectual ability of 42-month-old children in Japan. Environmental Research, 133, 321–326. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envres.2014.05.024
Zota, A. R., Adamkiewicz, G., & Morello-Frosch, R. A. (2010). Are PBDEs an environmental equity concern? Exposure disparities by socioeconomic status. Environmental Science & Technology, 44(15), 5691–5692. https://doi.org/10.1021/es101723d
