Hidden killer

When the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission learned Hanover House electric mouse traps posed the risk of electric shock, it arranged a voluntary recall even though no injuries had been reported.

When these safety watchdogs learned lead contaminated the decorative paint on Groovy Grabber children's bracelets, it arranged a voluntarily recall even though no injuries had been reported.

When regulators learned that several Munchkin baby bottle warmers overheated and caught fire, damaging countertops, it arranged a voluntary recall even though no injuries had been reported.

The safety agency has recalled some 4,000 products that endangered consumers since its creation in 1972.

Yet during that entire time, it has failed to regulate the fire safety of a product that kills an average of 600 people a year, some 30,000 since the safety commission was created.

Today, that product sits in virtually every American living room, den and bedroom — upholstered furniture.

Couches, love seats and lounge chairs are potentially deadly because the stuffing that makes most of them comfortable is polyurethane foam.

Firefighters call the foam "solid gasoline." Once ignited by a smoldering cigarette, lighted match or candle, it burns so fast and so hot that people can become trapped before they have a chance to escape. That's what happened in 2003 when pyrotechnics ignited foam sound-proofing on the inside walls of a West Warwick, R.I., nightclub, fueling an inferno that killed 100 people.

Charleston firefighters encountered this same hidden killer two years ago when they charged into the burning Sofa Super Store in West Ashley.

The fate of the nine firefighters who died in that fire was sealed almost from the moment flame met fabric. Once the sofas ignited, they burned furiously at temperatures exceeding 1,400 degrees and spewed a toxic stew of chemicals, including lethal hydrogen cyanide gas.

Yet, this same product is still for sale, with no minimum safety requirements or warning label, in nearly every furniture store in America.

Deadly results

Federal officials say they are well-aware of the dangers posed by upholstered furniture fires and are mulling regulatory action. But they have been saying much the same thing for decades while thousands of these fires have raged through homes across the nation, producing deadly results:

-- A fast-moving blaze in May 2006 killed two cousins, ages 15 and 16, after a cigarette or ash dropped on a couch in a Hanahan home. Both boys died from smoke inhalation.

-- A March 2006 fire killed five people, including two young children, after an overloaded extension cord ignited an upholstered chair in their Pennsylvania home.

-- A February 2004 fire killed a 60-year-old Seneca man and his son after an electrical cord set fire to a chair, love seat and sofa in their Oconee County home. Both victims died from carbon monoxide poisoning and smoke inhalation.

-- A September 2003 blaze in Greene County, Tenn., seriously injured a woman and killed her two children, ages 8 and 14. The children were overcome by poisonous smoke after an electrical spark caused a sofa in their home to catch fire.

-- A July 2003 fire killed six children and injured four others in a Jacksonville, N.C., mobile home after a couch caught fire from an air-freshening candle, trapping them in a thick haze of smoke and flames.

Each year, fires in couches, stuffed chairs and other upholstered furniture account for nearly a quarter of home fire deaths, more than 900 injuries and some $300 million in property damage. And that represents an improvement from the early 1980s, when more than 1,000 people died annually from furniture fires, according to the National Fire Protection Association.

Years ago, federal prisons, hospitals, nursing homes and airlines banned furniture that wasn't fire retardant. Colleges and other institutions followed suit. But California remains the only state in the nation with fire safety standards for upholstered furniture destined for the American home.

"This upholstered furniture is responsible for more residential home fire deaths than any other product under the Consumer Product Safety Commission's jurisdiction, and there are about 15,000 products," said Robin Foster, a Greenville lawyer who has represented several furniture fire victims. "It's something that is happening at an alarming rate, and something needs to be done."

The safety commission is reviewing a proposal to establish a national flammability standard for upholstered furniture. But similar regulatory and legislative attempts to address the problem have stalled for more than three decades, leaving the furniture industry free to set its own voluntary standards.

During those same three decades, the mattress industry, which uses the same polyurethane foam, worked with the safety commission to make its products less of a fire risk. Since 1980, deaths from mattress fires dropped from around 900 a year to about 380.

The upholstered furniture industry has long resisted attempts at regulation, aided by a powerful lobby and influential congressmen from furniture-producing states such as Mississippi and North Carolina.

The safety commission points out that the majority of furniture manufacturers abide by voluntary standards designed to prevent fires caused by smoldering cigarettes. They and industry officials also insist the measures, plus a drop in smoking and increased use of smoke detectors, have contributed to a 40 percent drop in furniture fire deaths since the 1980s.

"We think we are making an impact," said Joe Ziolkowski, executive director of the North Carolina-based Upholstered Furniture Action Council.

A family destroyed

Jeannie South was oblivious to the dangers posed by polyurethane foam until an electrical spark set fire to a love seat in her North Augusta mobile home in February 1998. The cloud of toxic smoke killed South's 17-year-old daughter, Karen Wright, and knocked unconscious her younger child, Dee Ann Wright, 11. While Dee Ann lay near the front door, the scorching heat burned more than 90 percent of her small body.

Dee Ann lost her hands and feet. Her lungs and heart were damaged. She remained hospitalized for two years and underwent several skin graft operations. South quit her job to be by her daughter's side and later took nursing classes so she could care for Dee Ann when she finally returned home.

"I didn't want her to die in that hospital," South said. "The last year I was able to bring her home. But she was never able to talk again. She was bedridden. The most she could ever do was move her eyes to communicate."

Dee Ann was 14 when she died in June 2001. South channeled her grief into a letter-writing campaign, hoping to persuade officials to do something to reduce the fire risks of upholstered furniture.

"I don't have a lot of hope, honestly, for anything getting done," South said. "Nobody is trying to do the right thing, and it could be done so cheaply."

A safer way?

Making furniture more fire-resistant can cost as little as a meal at McDonald's. Manufacturers can use sprays to treat fabrics, mix fire-retardant chemicals with foam or install fire-blocking barriers between the foam and fabric. Depending on the method used, such measures can add between $5 and $50 to the production cost of an average sofa, according to one industry representative.

At the moment, however, manufacturers are under no obligation to do any of these things outside of California, which requires that upholstered furniture resist both smoldering ignition and small, open flames.

Gordon Damant, a California consultant who helped draft his state's fire-safety standards in the 1970s, said it is "unconscionable" that many manufacturers don't employ additional safeguards when "there's not much difference in cost." He said it is also appalling that the Consumer Product Safety Commission has long failed to act on standards when so many lives are at stake.

Motley Rice attorney Kevin Dean, who represents some of the families of firefighters who died in the Sofa Super Store blaze, agreed. "Until some regulatory agency steps in and requires the industry to follow the same standards they have in California, furniture is going to remain a significant hazard to the public," he said.

Furniture industry representatives, however, have questioned the need and effectiveness of some of the measures Dean and Damant favor. They speak of an industry, populated by many mom-and-pop businesses, already struggling against a tide of foreign imports and historically narrow profit margins. They raise the specter of big government and point to cartoons of cavemen on stone seats to demonstrate what American furniture might look like if regulators get their way. And so far, they have kept the government at bay.

A call for action

In the 1970s, the industry avoided federal regulation by voluntarily agreeing to make upholstered fabrics more resistant to smoldering cigarettes, the leading cause of furniture fires. That contributed to a significant drop in cigarette-related furniture fires and appeased regulators until the 1990s. That's when state fire marshals, outraged that the annual death toll from furniture fires continued to run into the hundreds, called on the safety commission to set mandatory standards.

The commission responded by proposing rules that would require not only safeguards against smoldering cigarettes but protections against small flames from candles, matches and lighters as well — the items children often play with. Nearly a quarter of all upholstered furniture fires start with small flames, according to the National Fire Protection Association.

California's standard, which addresses the open-flame hazard, is credited with substantially reducing the number and severity of upholstered furniture fires. In 1974, the year before regulation went into effect, 55 people died in 3,358 furniture fires in the Golden State. By 1994, the number of furniture fires had dropped to 469; the number of deaths to 10.

A study by the National Association of State Fire Marshals concluded that people living outside California are at least seven times more likely to die in upholstered furniture fires than Californians.

Resistance to change

Still, the furniture industry fought the safety commission's proposal. To their aid came U.S. Rep. Roger Wicker, a Mississippi Republican whose district is home to upholstered furniture factories that employ thousands. Wicker, now a senator, pushed through a measure that blocked regulators from setting a furniture flammability standard until studies determined whether fire-retardant chemicals posed a health hazard to people.

The National Academy of Sciences later concluded that half of the 16 chemicals that can be used to make furniture fire-resistant pose little or no health risk. But by the time that study was released in 2000, the push for regulation once again had stalled.

Wicker, who has received more than $40,000 in campaign contributions from furnituremakers since 1994, did not respond to requests from The Post and Courier to be interviewed for this story.

While federal officials debated, the death toll mounted. In 1999, a fire ignited by a discarded cigarette on a couch killed six people in a Michigan home. The same year, five people died after a kerosene heater ignited an upholstered chair in their North Carolina home. The following year, two children died after their 6-year-old brother set fire to a couch while playing with burning paper in their New York apartment.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission insists it has been working methodically to find a solution. The latest draft rule before the panel returns the focus to mandating protections against smoldering cigarettes. Gone is the provision for ensuring smolder-resistant fabrics also resist small flames from lighters and candles.

Patty Davis, a spokeswoman for the safety commission, said the proposed standard "has substantial projected safety benefits."

Russ Batson, vice president of governmental affairs for the American Home Furnishing Alliance, said the industry supports the current proposal.

Critics, however, said the measure will accomplish little because it's essentially that same thing the industry is doing through its voluntary regulations. If adopted, the bulk of upholstered furniture likely would comply with no additional safeguards, experts said. What's more, critics contend the federal proposal might also pre-empt California's fire-safety regulations for upholstered furniture, removing the need for manufacturers to meet the state's open-flame test.

John C. Dean, Maine's fire marshal and former president of the National Association of State Fire Marshals, said the proposal is inadequate. The safety commission, he said, has "done a poor job of addressing this issue."

A costly fight

Fighting regulation has proven costly for the furniture industry.

Between 1991 and 1999, furniture makers shoveled more than $3 million into the political campaigns of allies on Capitol Hill. Spending by the industry's political action committee, FurnPAC, has dropped off in recent years, but furnituremakers continue to enjoy support in Washington.

A bipartisan group of lawmakers came together in 2004 to form the Congressional Furnishings Caucus, a 35-member body that looks out for the competitive interests of domestic furnituremakers. The group's lone South Carolina member, Republican representative and gubernatorial candidate Gresham Barrett, declined a request for comment on the topic of furniture flammability.

Former U.S. Sen. Fritz Hollings, a South Carolina Democrat who retired in 2004, said no one should underestimate the clout of the furniture lobby. Hollings pushed for stricter fire safety standards for furniture in the 1980s and again in 2003. Both times he got nowhere.

"The lobby was too strong," he said. "This is going to stay stalled. Money is the name of the game up there."

While lobbyists ply the halls of Congress, individual furnituremakers have shelled out millions of dollars to settle lawsuits filed by victims of furniture fires. The exact amount of damages is unknown, as many settlements remain sealed by the courts. Dozens of these lawsuits have been filed over the past two decades. Experts, lawyers and furniture industry representatives could not recall a single case that made it to a jury.

Philadelphia lawyer Mark LeWinter represented the surviving members of a family who lost a mother and her three daughters in an October 1998 fire in their Levittown, Pa., home. A baseboard heater ignited a couch, sparking an intense fire that engulfed the home within minutes, killing 41-year-old Karen Hughes and her daughters — ages 10, 11 and 21. The family sued the sofa's manufacturer for failing to fireproof the couch, and the company settled the case for $3.75 million in 2004.

LeWinter said it's easier for furnituremakers to pay a settlement than explain to a jury why they failed to spend the extra money to make their products safer. "How do you go into a courtroom and articulate that and not expect to get your clock cleaned?" he asked. "These cases don't go to trial because they are hard to defend."

Batson of the American Home Furnishing Alliance acknowledged as much. He said furnituremakers often settle such cases because they involve "sympathetic plaintiffs, with bad burns" and carry the stain of bad publicity. "No one wants to roll the dice."

Response to a tragedy

Late last year, the families of eight of the Charleston firefighters killed in the Sofa Super Store fire reached a $6 million settlement with several companies they accused of negligence, including some of the manufacturers of furniture in the massive store.

The suits accused the furnituremakers of failing to warn people selling and using the furniture that the products contained highly flammable polyurethane foam.

Batson said, "We were all profoundly affected by that fire in this industry." In an effort to "extract some germ of positive from the tragedy" the association teamed up with experts to find some possible solution, he said.

Their answer: fire sprinklers.

Former Post and Courier reporter Ron Menchaca contributed to this story. Reach Glenn Smith at 937-5556 or gsmith@postandcourier.com and Doug Pardue at 937-5558 or dpardue@postandcourier.com.