New Resource! Safety and Well-Being in Residential Upholstered Furniture

PROTECT YOUR SAFETY AND WELL-BEING IN FURNISHINGS

At Möbius Home, we believe in creating healthy interiors that express our client’s unique style and life experiences. This means that when buying new furniture, we focus on sourcing safe and sustainably manufactured products, free of VOCs and other hazardous materials. One class of chemicals that we’re concerned about are flame retardants. Specific flame retardants used in residential upholstered furniture have been identified as known health hazards. We are exposed to them during daily use, and our bodies metabolize them, increasing human health risk. At the same time, we take the issue of fire safety seriously, especially since both the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) and the American Red Cross report that, today, people have just one to two minutes to escape a home once a fire alarm sounds.

 

Last year, to address the need for science-based facts about safe and healthy furniture, Chemical Insights convened a national Furniture Flammability and Human Health Taskforce. Since then, the group has been busy compiling scientific resources and summarizing key facts and action steps that were ultimately compiled in UL Guidance Document 118F: Managing Fire and Chemical Exposure Risks of Residential Upholstered Furniture.

 

To help put this knowledge into practice, Chemical Insights created an educational tool for interior designers: Specifying Residential Upholstered Furniture to Safeguard Human Health and Well-Being: A Toolkit for Reducing Fire and Chemical Risks.

Credit: Chemical Insights

TOOLKIT HIGHLIGHTS

The toolkit:

  • Presents a case for why both chemical safety and fire safety must be considered when selecting furniture
  • Offers guidance on how to specify solutions that address this safety convergence
  • Summarizes meaningful research on flame retardant exposure and furniture flammability.

LEARN MORE

To view the complete toolkit, alongside additional tools and resources, visit chemicalinsights.org/FFHH.