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The 1.8 Million-Tonne Truth: Why the New Furniture Fire Regs are Only Half a Victory

4/6/2026

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After decades of campaigning, the government has launched a consultation (31 March 2026) to replace the outdated Furniture and Furnishings (Fire) (Safety) Regulations 1988.

While many are celebrating this as a U-turn, my twenty years in the trenches—e.g. briefing the Environmental Audit Committee and exposing the flaws in these tests—tell a more complicated story. Exposing the truth isn't about being negative; it’s about ensuring we don’t replace one 40-year mistake with another.

The Validation of a Decade

First, let’s acknowledge the win. The government is finally admitting what I and many scientists have argued since 2014: our uniquely strict "match test" is ineffective. It didn't make us safer; it just made our homes the most chemical-heavy in Europe. By moving toward the international smoulder test the UK is finally catching up with the rest of the world.

But we cannot afford to celebrate just yet. Here is the reality the official press releases are glossing over:

1. The First Fuel Fallacy: Why the Tests Fail in Reality. 

The most glaring flaw in our current regulations is that they ignore how fires actually behave. We drench mattresses in chemicals to pass the match and cigarette tests, yet we sleep under duvets, sheets, and pillows that are often highly flammable and completely unregulated for fire resistance.

In a real-world fire, the bedding catches fire first. This "first fuel" creates an intense inferno that immediately overwhelms any chemical resistance built into the mattress underneath. The same applies to sofas covered since the government itself showed in 2014 that the vast majority of covers fail the match test in practice, i.e. they catch fire and then completely overwhelm the fillings resistance. We are poisoning our domestic environment for a level of "protection" that vanishes the moment a real fire starts. 

2. The Toxic Legacy in Our Homes

The new rules only apply to the furniture of tomorrow. Today, there are roughly 135 million furniture units in UK homes. At an average of 10kgs of flame retardants per unit, we are currently living on a 1.8 million-tonne mountain of legacy chemicals. Without a "Toxic Scrappage Scheme" or government-led redress, these chemicals—linked to cancer and neurotoxicity—will remain in our homes, breaking down into household dust for up to the next 25 years.

3. The Mattress Recycling Scandal

This is perhaps the most nonsensical part of the current furniture regs shambles. Under Environment Agency rules, an old sofa is now correctly classified as hazardous waste. It must be burned at high temperatures to destroy the toxins. Which is why council recycling centres won't take your old sofa any more. You have to pay the Council around £40-50 to store and dispose of it safely. And even this is not a given since the majority of UK incinerators do not burn hot enough to eliminate highly toxic dioxins from flame retardants and instead blow them as toxic dust over the country.

However, mattresses are exempt. Right now, mattresses containing the exact same toxic foam and chemicals are being thrown into landfill or shredded and recycled into carpet underlay. We are literally taking the poison out of the bedroom and moving it under the carpets of our living rooms and nurseries.

4. The Two-Tier Safety Gap

If you have the money you can buy quality natural materials that can pass the fire tests without the need for FRs. But safety shouldn't be a luxury. Under the proposed new "pragmatic" (read: cheap) testing, there is a real risk that budget furniture will simply become "FR-Lite"—using just enough chemicals to pass a lower bar, while the wealthy buy their way out of the chemical soup entirely.

5. Learning from the Whirlpool Mistake

We’ve seen this before. With the Whirlpool tumble dryer scandal, the government prioritized industry stability over consumer safety. By labelling our current chemical-soaked sofas as "serviceable," they are shielding manufacturers from the cost of a recall, leaving families to shoulder the health risks.

Why the Truth Matters

I’ve been told that pointing these things out is "negative." I disagree. True advocacy means holding the government to account until the job is fully done. The fact is that the government knew these regs are not effective first in 2014 by way of its own published Technical Annex; then again in 2019 when the Environmental Audit Committee told it to get in line with the rest of the world and employ a cigarette test-only regime. If it had acted in 2014 by now all UK furniture would be flame retardant-free. Instead we are still sitting and sleeping on 1.8m tonnes of these chemicals

We need a clean break from the 1988 regs, but we also need to:
  • Close the Mattress Loophole: stop recycling toxic foam into our homes.
  • Incentivise Detox: help families replace legacy furniture now, not in 2050.
  • Demand Transparency: insist that furniture is labelled with the chemicals it contains, just as cosmetics and food are.
The consultation is open until June 23, 2026. It is our chance to demand a home that is truly safe—not just on a lab certificate, but for the families living in them.
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PRESS RELEASE FROM TERRY EDGE

4/6/2026

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Subject: 1.8 Million Tonnes of Toxic Chemicals in UK Homes After 12-Year Gov Cover-Up [Evidence Attached]

Dear           ,

On 31 March, the Office for Product Safety and Standards (OPSS) launched a consultation to finally scrap the 1988 furniture "match test." While this sounds like a dry policy update, it is actually a massive admission of guilt. As the government lead on this subject in 2014, I provided a working solution to this flawed test. My evidence was suppressed, and I resigned in protest in 2015. For the last 12 years, the UK government has ignored the global "cigarette-test-only" safety standard to protect a multi-billion-pound flame retardant industry.

The cost of this delay? An estimated 1.8 million tonnes of unnecessary, toxic forever chemicals have been pumped into British living rooms since I first raised the alarm. And from there into us and the environment via landfill and incinerators which do not burn hot enough to take out these chemicals.

The government’s own Technical Annex (linked below) revealed that the current test is ineffective, and is finally being acknowledged by them—essentially vindicating my 12-year campaign.

I have outlined the full "David and Goliath" story in the press brief below and am available for an interview to discuss the industry lobbying that allowed this to happen.

Best regards,
Terry Edge
Former Lead Official, Furniture Fire Safety (Department for Business/OPSS) 
07786130812
[email protected]
 
THE EVIDENCE
  • The Admission: Technical Annex [Note: the Department removed my name and Steve Owen's (the country's leading test expert and the Department's main advisor) from this document to distance themselves, inadvertently making it an official Departmental confession.]
  • Data: Since 2014, around 150,000 tonnes of FR chemicals have entered UK homes annually.
  • The Global Context: The UK and Ireland are the only countries still clinging to this chemical-heavy "match test" standard and Ireland has just given notice that it intends to ditch it and join the rest of Europe in supporting chemical-free furniture, leaving the UK as a toxic outlier.
  • New Consulation: https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/product-regulation-fire-safety-of-domestic-upholstered-furniture/the-fire-safety-of-domestic-upholstered-furniture
 
PRESS RELEASE

"THE LOST TOXIC DECADE": WHISTLEBLOWER VINDICATED AS GOV ADMITS FURNITURE FIRE TESTS ARE FLAWED

LONDON – Terry Edge, the whistleblower who sacrificed his career to expose the "scientific nonsense" of UK furniture fire laws, has been vindicated by the Office for Product Safety and Standards (OPSS). In a landmark consultation, the government has finally moved to scrap the 1988 "match test"—a requirement Edge has spent 12 years exposing as a "scientific fraud."
The move marks the end of a decade-long battle between a lone expert and a "Goliath" chemical lobby. The OPSS now admits that the current testing regime is not effective, echoing the 2014 warnings that cost Edge his career.

Terry Edge says:

"This is a bittersweet victory. While I am relieved the government has finally admitted the match test is a redundant 'chemical-delivery system,' we cannot ignore the cost of this 12-year delay. Since I first raised the alarm in 2014, roughly 1.8 million tonnes of toxic flame retardants have been added to British furniture. We have been breathing in toxic dust for a decade simply to protect industry profits."

The Scale of the Scandal:
  • The Content: The average UK home contains around 45kg of flame retardant chemicals in sofas, mattresses and cushions.
  • The Volume: 150,000 tonnes of these chemicals enter UK homes every year.
  • The Science: The OPSS’s own Technical Annex now confirms that the match test—testing fabric over non-existent foam—was a flawed metric for fire safety.
 
 
 

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The Irish Question

3/2/2026

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This is a necessarily detailed post (and there is more to come on this issue!) but I've arranged it so that the first part contains the overall main points, the rest is additional detail.
 
In short, the Irish government is currently at a critical junction regarding its 
Furniture Fire Regulations (S.I. No. 316/1995), which mirror the UK's 1988 regs (the only two countries in the world to have such stringent regs). Evidence from its June 2025 public consultation confirms that Ireland is now under significant pressure to align with the rest of the EU, primarily through the General Product Safety Regulation (GPSR). 
 
The European Commission is now pursuing a forceful approach to full harmonisation across the single market to eliminate "gold-plating"—extra requirements like Ireland's specific fire tests that act as trade barriers. 
 
Single Market Alignment:
The Irish Department of Enterprise has explicitly stated that maintaining these regulations "puts Ireland out of step with other EU Member States" and requires a rigorous, "clearly justified" defence to the Commission regarding necessity and proportionality.

Chemical Safety:
In December 2024, the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) published evidence linking common flame retardants to toxicity and carcinogenicity. The Commission is now considering EU-wide restrictions on these chemicals, which would make the current Irish regime practically and probably legally untenable.

GPSR Implementation:
The new General Product Safety Regulation (GPSR), which came into force at the end of 2024, provides a modern framework that most EU countries use instead of specific fire laws. Ireland is being pushed to also adopt this holistic safety model. 
Evidence of counter-pressure to retain the Irish regs:
 
While official documents highlight the push for EU alignment, they also acknowledge the "strong interdependence" between the Irish and UK furniture markets. 
 
Proponents of keeping the regs (usually industry bodies linked to UK manufacturing) argue that diverging from the UK would disrupt established logistics and trade, as Ireland's standards would then differ from both the EU and its largest neighbouring supplier.

Safety narrative: 
The Irish government still cites research suggesting the current regulations have historically contributed to a reduction in fire fatalities, a point often used by industry groups to argue against repeal. However, this "research" comprises just the two reports commissioned by the UK government into the effectiveness of its regs which were always based on guess work anyway and besides were rendered redundant in 2014 when the UK government announced that its regs were not effective.
 
CURRENT STATUS OF THE CONSULTATION:
 
The current consultation was launched on 10 June 2025 and closed on 11 July 2025. It specifically asked whether Ireland should repeal the regulations and rely on the GPSR instead. As of early 2026, the Irish government has yet to publish the final decision, though environmental groups like VOICE Ireland have publicly campaigned for a total repeal. 
 
THE COMPLICATION WITH THE UK's RECENT CHANGE TO ITS REGS:
 
As we've seen, the UK government officially removed a range of baby and nursery products from the scope of its Furniture and Furnishings (Fire) (Safety) Regulations 1988, effective from 30 October 2025. 
 
This amendment prioritises reducing infants' exposure to chemical flame retardants (FRs), as the government now deems the risk of chemical toxicity at a critical developmental stage to be greater than the risk of fire for these specific items. 
 
Evidence suggests Ireland is highly likely to align with this "risk-based" approach, possibly by repealing its regulations entirely rather than just exempting specific items. 
 
But because Ireland's regulations were a near-exact copy of the UK's, the UK's 2025 move to exempt baby products effectively removes the primary "trading partner" justification for keeping those specific items in scope in Ireland. (Which was severely weakened anyway when the UK left the EU.)
Given that the UK has already enacted these exemptions, Ireland's upcoming response to its own consultation is expected to at least match these removals to ensure cross-border product availability.
 
Groups like Fidra and the Alliance for Flame Retardant Free Furniture (AFRF) are actively pushing for the removal of open-flame tests, which they argue force the use of harmful chemicals.
 
And where industry is concerned, while UK industries are generally pro-chemicals (i.e. profits), IKEA’s global policy is a significant driver of pressure for change, as its business model relies on harmonised standards.IKEA explicitly states its approach is to use flame retardants in as few cases as possible, and only where strictly required by local law (although it hypocritically uses BFRs in the UK because it claims they are mandatory, even though it knows this is not the case). So IKEA essentially supports the move toward the EU GPSR model, which would allow them to sell the same FR-free products in Ireland as they do in the rest of Europe. 
 
Conversely, groups often associated with the chemical and foam industries (sometimes referred to under banners like the "Alliance for Fire Safety") argue that the regulations have historically reduced fire fatalities (but without providing any evidence at all). 
 
Proponents of the status quo point to a European Fire Officer Associations (FEU) report, which suggests that at least 25% of fire deaths could be reduced by fire-safe furniture, and they continue to recommend both cigarette and open-flame (Crib 5) testing. But then they would, wouldn't they? 
The missing lobbying: why the "Open Goals" are missed by groups apparently intent on reducing chemicals in furniture:
 
Evidence suggests this is due to a fragmentation of interests:
 
Lack of direct prosecution data: while I've briefed various groups and inquires on the lack of prosecutions in Ireland, green groups rarely lead with this CCPC (Irish equivalent of Trading Standards) failure. Instead, they focus on Chemical Toxicity (e.g., ECHA’s 2024 report on the carcinogenicity of brominated flame retardants).
Such lobbying groups are often wary of being seen as "anti-safety." Which allows the chemical industry (lobbying through groups like the International Bromine Council) to dominate the narrative by framing the debate as a choice between "chemical safety" and "lives saved from fire". 

For example EFIC (European Furniture Industries Confederation) could never explain to me why they haven't attacked the fact that the UK has proved the UK's match/open flame test doesn't work - surely a direct route towards producing FR-free furniture which is EFIC's stated claim) i.e. if the UK/Irish match test is scientifically proven to be ineffective (as the data shows), why hasn't EFIC used that "smoking gun" to blow the regulations apart?
 
Well, I suspect this is because EFIC represents national federations across Europe. While many members (like those in Scandinavia or Germany) hate the UK/Irish regs, others have supply chains deeply integrated with UK foam and chemical suppliers. EFIC often defaults to the most conservative consensus position to avoid internal fractures.

Speculation: because EFIC's office in Brussels is close to those of at least two major flame retardant associations – EFRA and the BSEF - I suspect this close proximity often leads to a "managed conflict" rather than a total war. The chemical lobby is exceptionally well-funded and uses fire death statistics as a powerful emotional shield that EFIC, as a trade body, is probably terrified to challenge directly for fear of a PR backlash.

The evidence that the match test doesn't work and that the Irish Trading Standards has never successfully prosecuted should be the ultimate "legal kill-shot." The reasons the lobbyists mentioned above haven't used it likely include:
 
Fear of the alternative: the UK government has often hinted that if the current regs are scrapped, they might replace them with something even more complex or burdensome, rather than just adopting the EU's GPSR.

The foam lobby's grip: the UK foam industry is one of the few winners in this regime. They have significant influence over the BSI and EU committees that inform or advise the OPSS. 

Institutional inertia: both EFIC and the Irish government find it easier to wait for a "top-down" EU mandate (like the new GPSR) to force the change, rather than taking the "bottom-up" approach of proving the current science is fraudulent.
The irony of the "Isolation":
 
The Irish government’s biggest fear—leaving the UK isolated—is now moot. Since the UK itself exempted baby products in October 2025, the "uniformity" between the two islands has already shattered. 
 
Ireland is now in the perfect position to play the victim of EU rules. They can tell the chemical and foam lobbies that their hands are tied by Brussels, while finally ditching the regulations they know are indefensible. This view is apparently confirmed by the fact the their consultation document frames the current regime not just as an old law, but as a direct violation of EU principles. Key phrases include: 
 
The "gold-plating" admission: the Department explicitly labels the current regulations as "gold-plating," defined as "extra requirements... beyond those deriving from provisions at EU level". By using this specific EU term, they are framing the repeal as a mandatory "correction" of an illegal trade barrier rather than a choice.

The "Forceful Approach" of the Commission: the text notes that the European Commission will pursue a "forceful approach to full harmonisation" and that if Ireland continues with these regs, they would need to be "clearly justified to the European Commission" as "proportionate and not an unjustified barrier to trade". This essentially tells the industry that the fight is already lost at the Brussels level.

The "Holistic" Shift: under Option 2 (Repeal) in their consultation, they state that furniture will instead be "expected to be designed and manufactured in a way that does not pose foreseeable fire or chemical hazards," shifting responsibility to the manufacturer's own risk assessments under the GPSR. 

The OPSS amendment to the UK regs: the consultation uses the UK's own recent October 2025 amendments to further undermine the status quo. It points out that since the UK has removed baby products from its scope in order to reduce chemical exposure, Ireland's "mirroring" of the UK now "puts Ireland out of step with the other EU Member States" without even the benefit of UK-wide consistency. 
 
In short, they have written the consultation to suggest that keeping the regs is a legal and diplomatic liability, while repealing them is a "modernisation" required by their EU membership. 
 
What if the Irish go for repeal?
 
It could create a "domino effect" that fundamentally destabilises the UK’s Office for Product Safety and Standards (OPSS). The impact would likely manifest in three specific ways:
 
1. The "safety" myth" Collapses
 
The UK government’s primary defence for these regs has always been that they are a "world-leading safety standard." If Ireland—the only other country to ever use them—officially declares them an "unjustified barrier to trade" that fails to meet modern GPSR safety standards, the UK’s narrative of being "safer" than the rest of the world becomes politically and scientifically isolated. It turns the UK from a leader into a global outlier clinging to 1980s chemistry.
 
2. Supply chain "reverse pressure"
 
Currently, manufacturers often produce a "UK/Ireland" spec of furniture. If Ireland adopts the EU model, large retailers (like IKEA or JYSK) will likely stop producing the toxic UK spec for the Irish market immediately, switching to their standard EU-wide stock.
 
This could become a nightmare. If Ireland is on EU standards, and Northern Ireland (under the Windsor Framework) is effectively part of the EU single market for goods, the UK will face a "hard border" for sofas. It would be legally messy for the UK to prevent EU-spec (FR-free) furniture from flowing from Dublin to Belfast, and then potentially into the mainland UK.
3. Accelerated UK deregulation – or not!
 
It could be said that the UK has started retreating by exempting baby products in October 2025. An Irish repeal would give the UK government the political cover it needs to ditch the open-flame test entirely. They could frame it as a post-Brexit "alignment for growth" or a "toxic chemical reduction" initiative, essentially following Ireland’s lead to avoid being the only country in the world forcing brominated flame retardants into living rooms.
 
However, it's equally possible that the OPSS is currently performing a controlled stall rather than an active reform. While dropping baby products was a politically savvy "quick win" to quiet the environmental lobby, it was an outlier, not a trendsetter.
 
Overall, this is how I see the current landscape:
 
The impasse is the goal
 
The continuing gridlock at the British Standards Institution (BSI) over coming up with a new standards regime is likely a deliberate strategy by the OPSS, allowing them to avoid the massive legal liability of admitting the 1988 match test is scientifically flawed.
 
It can also keep the foam industry—a significant UK manufacturing base—stable and protected from cheaper, non-FR EU imports.
All the same, if Ireland does drop its regs, the OPSS's "world-leading" claim will be tested. Ireland will effectively become a large-scale controlled experiment. If, after two years, Ireland's fire death rate doesn't spike, the NFCC and OPSS will lose their only remaining argument: fear.
 
In other words, the OPSS isn't waiting for better science; they are waiting for political permission to stop being afraid of the National Fire Chiefs Council (whose unevidenced claims that the UK regs must not be changed because "fire safety" must be maintained the OPSS has been hiding behind).
 
Summary: the great Irish U-turn:
 
For years, Irish authorities had informally accepted compliance with UK furniture safety standards as "equivalent" to Irish standards. However, the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment and the CCPC issued a major update in 2021:
 
They announced that they would no longer recognise the UK’s Furniture and Furnishings (Fire) (Safety) Regulations 1988 (as amended) as complying with Irish law.

Importers were informed that furniture must strictly comply with the Irish Regulations S.I. No. 316/1995 and that test reports must specifically reference the Irish standard, not just the UK one. 

This sudden change in April 2021 was described by industry experts as an "unexpected U-turn" by Irish authorities.
 
Industry bodies like FIRA International were explicitly advised by the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment that following conversations with the CCPC, it was "no longer possible" for UK regulations to be recognised as complying with Irish law.

The primary justification given was that the UK was no longer an EU Member State, meaning the legal "equivalence" clause in the 1995 Order (which applied to other EU Member States) could no longer be applied to the UK.
​
The new requirement for specific Irish-standard test reports and amended labelling had to be implemented with immediate effect, catching many importers off guard who had been operating under the old "UK is fine" guidance for decades. 
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BRIEF RECAP AND UPDATE ON THE BIGGEST SCANDAL IN PUBLIC HEALTH MAINTAINED BY THE GOVERNMENT IN SUPPORT OF INDUSTRY PROFITS

2/5/2026

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The bottom line of the entire UK furniture fire safety scandal is this: that the OPSS isn't protecting babies; they are protecting a domestic chemical-industrial complex that is now uniquely British. For example, the reason the UK refuses to follow the EAC's recommendation to retain a smoulder test only, like the rest of the world, is that it would effectively de-industrialise the UK’s textile-finishing sector, and seriously eat into the profits of the foam industry, not to mention the furniture industry itself.
 
1. The Protectionist Shield
 
The UK is one of the few places in the world that still uses the match or open flame ignition test. This has created a captive market for UK chemical treatment companies. If the government followed the Environmental Audit Committee's (EAC) advice:
​
  • Back-coating treatment companies would have no product to sell.
  • Chemical manufacturers would lose a massive, legally mandated, revenue stream.
  • The OPSS could no longer hide behind the "saving lives" rhetoric to avoid admitting they are subsidising a toxic industry that would be illegal in much of the rest of the world.
 
2. More on the OPSS "Lives Saved" Lie
 
The OPSS's immediate rebuttal to the EAC—that the 3-test system (Cigarette, Match, and Foam) is effective—is based on the same argument used by the National Fire Chiefs Council and the Fire Brigades Union. By claiming "effectiveness," they create a political no-go zone. No Minister wants to be the one who "scrapped the safety tests that save 50 lives a year," even if those 50 lives are a statistical fantasy.
 
3. The "Busy Doing Nothing" Barrier
 
There is a self-styled breakaway group from British Standards Institute's FW/6 (that claims to be coming up with a new furniture fire standards regime but are permanently stalled by the ridiculous situation of the OPSS both claiming the current standards work and also saying it needs new ones) who reckons it has the 'answer'. They are supposed to be developing a new fire safety barrier which will allow the current tests to remain but get furniture through them without the need for FR chemicals. But they should and probably do know that this is a) unnecessary since the tests don't work anyway, b) will add considerably to the cost of furniture, c) is not possible across the full range of materials, d) already exists in the form of interliners (for "natural" materials) which companies do not use because back-coating is cheaper anyway and c) will take around 10 years to get on to the market. In other words this research is the perfect decoy. It suggests that the solution is more technology and more BS standards, rather than the simple repeal of a bad law. It keeps the regulators, the BSI committees, the "greens" and the industry consultants in work for another decade while the back-coating boys keep raking in the profits. Oh and babies and firefighters continue to die.
 
The Conclusion
 
The UK’s furniture regulations are no longer a safety standard (if they ever were); they are a regulatory trade barrier that forces the use of toxic chemicals to protect a handful of domestic and international businesses. Infants dying in cots are just the "acceptable collateral" in this economic protectionism, which is why the OPSS's October 2025 change is so narrow—it’s the absolute minimum they could do to stop the opposition narrative from gaining more mainstream traction.
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The Government insists on poisoning your babies in their own beds and two Departments are clashing over the best way to do it

1/17/2026

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Below is the text of an article that appeared on Ikconic on 16 January 2026. 

To summarise the main issue:

The Office for Product Safety and Standards has just made an amendment to the furniture fire safety regulations, taking out of scope cot mattresses (for babies up to 2/3 years of age) on the grounds that for such products, chemical risk trumps fire risk. Which means the huge amounts of flame retardants in baby mattresses can go. Hold on though - 

Because at the same time, the Dept. of Health is insisting that the fire risk to babies in the very same products trumps chemical risk and therefore flame retardants should stay in cot mattresses.

Can they both be right?

Can they both be wrong?

How are you as a parent going to be able to tell, especially when your child is at risk from chemical damage to health, that and SIDS (Sudden Death Infant Syndrome).

Well, the government isn't going to answer your questions but this article will.

* * *

Article:

I am a government whistle-blower about the huge volume of toxic flame retardants in our mattresses, sofas and cushions which don't provide any fire safety but do give us cancers and fertility problems, with children especially vulnerable. 

But the government's new change to the furniture fire safety laws – which is why the chemicals are there in the first place – has me really baffled. Everyone now agrees that flame retardants in furniture are very bad for health and massively damaging to the environment. And the Department for Business (perhaps the appropriate department to be in charge of these regulations since they are very profitable) has finally announced a change, which will get flame retardants out of baby/cot mattresses. But guess what: the Department of Health continues to claim that flame retardants in the very same mattresses are not a health problem and therefore can stay!

You can probably see the irony here – that the business department is making a change that will cost industry money while the health department is advocating a continuation of toxic chemicals which are readily inhaled and absorbed via babies' skin. This article attempts to explain why this contradiction exists and what parents can best do to ensure their children aren't poisoned.

We'll start with the tragedy of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS, which used to be known as "cot death"). 

Cot deaths were first so named in the 1950s and reached a peak in 1988 (the year in which the UK's furniture fire safety laws were introduced, along with huge volumes of flame retardants) with around 1600 deaths a year. This was seen as an epidemic and in October 1991, the "Back to Sleep Campaign" was launched, heavily supported by Anne Diamond, who had lost a baby to SIDS. No one knew what caused these deaths so parents often faced a double tragedy: the death of their baby and them being blamed for it. The campaign focused on correct sleeping positions, cutting down on parental smoking, and reducing overheating in babies. Following the campaign, there was a claimed reduction in UK SIDS of around 67%. This was seen as a great success and but while public awareness of the syndrome itself remains high it's clear that these days the public's specific knowledge of the back to sleep campaign is very low at around 4%.

There is a persistent public perception that the problem was dealt with back in the 1990s. But what is generally not known is that SIDS has remained at around 200 deaths per year in the UK ever since. This is higher than most western Europe nations and higher than Scandinavia. What do these countries have in common? Well, they don't have flame retardants in their baby mattresses for a start. But according to the UK government that fact is irrelevant; the reason for the high number is . . . er, they don't really know but reckon that other countries maybe invest more in social protection programmes than the UK does, and UK pregnant mothers smoke more. The fact that UK mothers' breast milk contains the highest volume of flame retardants is also, apparently, not relevant.

What has also largely been forgotten today is that in the 1990s Barry Richardson and Jim Sprott – a British biochemist and New Zealand forensic chemist respectively - studied the link between flame retardant chemicals and SIDs. They found that in certain circumstances involving damp, a naturally occurring fungus and antimony or phosphorous based flame retardants, a gas called stibine is produced which is more deadly than arsenic, and can cause SIDS. 

So the government put together the Turner Committee (1991) to look into Richardson and Sprott's and they reported that there was no evidence to support claims of toxic gas from antimony/flame retardants.
​
But in November 1994, ITV's The Cook Report supported the findings of Richardson and Sprott, that chemicals, especially antimony, in baby mattresses formed a deadly gas called stibine whilst the baby slept. Those chemicals being arsenic, antimony or phosphorus, ostensibly included to make them non-flammable. The programme did the kinds of testing on antimony that the government never did, including discovering multiple cases of cancer at a antimony-producing factory.

But in 1998 the government produced its own report that dismissed the findings of the Cook Report; stating:

“Our main conclusion is that there is no evidence to suggest that antimony or phosphorus-containing compounds used as fire retardants in PVC and other cot mattress materials are a cause of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome."

However, in the ITV programme you can see Anne Diamond very angry that the real reason for her child's SIDS death was being covered up by the government. She calls for an inquiry into flame retardants in child mattresses but this of course has yet to take place.

The government then put together another committee to investigate: the Limerick Committee, after its Chair, Lady Limerick. Critics argued that several committee members had close links to the baby mattress manufacturers and the flame retardant industry, and so if the "toxic gas" theory was proven these industries could face massive liabilities and losses to their profits. But in those days, little to no account of vested interests was taken (which hasn't really changed but now the government is more adept at concealing such interests).

The committee's report concluded that the toxic gas theory was indeed "unfounded".  This result was heavily challenged; for example, because the committee admitted that its own commissioned lab work successfully generated stibine gas yet it claimed that this was not possible in real-life situations.

The Limerick Committee and the Department of Health were well aware of the negative effect the toxic gas claim would have on the furniture regulations if it was proved. So in short, antimony and phosphorous FRs have been used in children's mattresses ever since. All the main SIDs associations heavily endorsed the committee's findings and largely still do.

But in October 2025, the Office for Product Safety and Standards (part of the Department for Business) made a change to the furniture fire safety regulations to remove cot mattresses from their scope and thereby remove flame retardants from baby products – and they did so because they argued that for very young children the chemical risk to health is greater than the fire risk.

Briefly (for more details check out the forthcoming Ickonic documentary and this website) the UK has the toughest furniture fire safety laws in the world. This was long claimed to lead to the UK having the fire-safest mattresses, sofas and cushions in the world but in 2014 the Dept. for Business announced, incredibly, that in fact they have never been effective! This was confirmed by a parliamentary group of cross-party MPs – the Environmental Audit Committee – which in 2019 told the government to change the furniture fire safety regs immediately to do what the rest of the world does, i.e. not use flame retardants. 6 years on, it mostly hasn't. Why? Well, let's just say that flame retardants are massively profitable:

The UK's insistence on maintaining the failed match ignition test in these regulations has made it a major global market for flame retardants, consuming a staggering estimated 820,000 tonnes a year, roughly 25% of the global total – the value of which is around £1.63 to £2.12 BILLION per year in the UK!

The Dept. for Business has been under pressure for years because of the large volumes of flame retardants in UK furniture, and from multiple stakeholders. Firefighters, for example, who we now know get cancers at 6 times the normal rate because of fire toxicity which is largely caused by flame retardants in furniture; and by environmental groups and consumers; and also the EAC. Also, specifically, for years the Baby Products Association has pushed for flame retardants to be removed from small baby products like prams, buggies and car seats on the grounds, basically, that babies don't smoke!  

So, eventually, the OPSS has announced a change to the UK furniture regulations. But, leaving aside the fact they have no evidence to support this exemption, that and the fact millions of children over the age of 2/3 years are still being poisoned and babies of 2/3 years are still being poisoned by all the other mattresses, sofas, chairs and cushions in their homes anyway, this decision totally contradicts the DHSC's (Dept. of Health) position on the same size baby mattresses.

Here are a few relevant stats:
  • There are 11.9m UK children between 0 and 14 years
  • 2.8m between 0 and 3 years
  • 9-12m between 4 and 14 years
  • SIDS is less common after 8 months; 90% of deaths occur before 6 months
  • In other words, just about every SIDS death in the UK occurs in a cot mattress which is the size that the OPSS has just excluded from the furniture regs

The Limerick committee, and SIDs groups, have over the years come to agree that flame retardants are a considerable health risk. But they deny any link with SIDs on the grounds that there is a fundamental difference between acute toxicity (sudden poisoning) and chronic toxicity (long-term health impacts). And they're saying that if there's not acute toxicity, there can't be chronic toxicity. Really?
So now things get even more cat's cradleish. Because if the DHCS believes that FRs do not cause acute poisoning, why wouldn't they support the OPSS changes that will have them removed? Not having FRs in baby mattresses does not change their argument, after all.

Well, one reason they give is that, if parents believed chemicals could cause SIDs, they might prioritise this over proven life-saving measures like good sleeping positions. They believe these were responsible for the massive drop in SIDs after they were introduced. But a) this doesn't explain why parents can't be responsible enough to consider more than one cause of SIDS, and b) doesn't account for why SIDS has remained at around 200 a year since this drop (government has no explanation for it either). Four baby deaths a week is hardly insignificant, especially compared to the number of babies that die from home fires in the UK, which is about 0.096 per week.

SIDS awareness groups also, confusingly, still believe there is a fire risk in children's mattresses, even though the OPSS has now said in effect that there isn't (and as mentioned, it is much less than for SIDS in general). The DHCS and SIDS groups have a complicated set of justifications for this contradiction. But reading between the lines, they are in fact very worried about a public backlash that they are still supporting toxic chemicals in baby mattresses at the same time that critics argue that what the OPSS is doing is "too little, too late", e.g. while everyone agrees that the new changes to the furniture regs removes the chemical poisoning risk for babies, that is only true for a tiny bit of the mattress market –most children will continue to be poisoned by their own mattresses and all children will continue to be poisoned by the family sofas, cushions, adult beds and house dust, and have been for the past 35 years or so.

Summary for Parents:

In 2026, if you are a parent who wants to avoid chemicals—even if you accept they aren't a SIDS risk—the regulatory system provides you with less information about what's in baby mattresses than it does for a bottle of shampoo. In short, you cannot verify the presence of specific FRs by looking at the mattress label. 
In short, there is currently no legal mechanism that grants a parent the right to know the chemicals present in a mattress.
Here's what parents can do:
  1. Assume chemicals are present in any mattress that uses polyurethane foam or synthetic "fire-resistant" covers, regardless of the lack of a label.
  2. Challenge Retailers Directly: ask them for a written declaration from the manufacturer that "No chemical flame retardants have been added to any component of this mattress." If they cannot or will not provide this, assume the "profit over transparency" model will in fact be the main driver. Please note: there is no legal requirement for retailers or manufacturers to supply this information but at least if they do not, you both know where you stand regarding your child's health and safety.
  3. Demand Legislative Change. For example, support campaigns for the new Product Regulation and Metrology Act to be amended to include mandatory chemical ingredient labelling, bringing furniture in line with the transparency seen in the food and cosmetic industries.
In summary, the solution is not found in the current "tick-box" standards or the contradictory government advice, but in a fundamental change to the law that removes the "subjectivity" of the OPSS's current hierarchy and mandates full disclosure.
​
But the only real conclusion is that the UK regulatory system in 2026 is designed to manage the risk of industry disruption more than it is designed to manage the risk to infant health. Until the law treats furniture chemicals with the same transparency as a chocolate bar or a bottle of lotion, the "US model" of consumer-led change will remain legally blocked in the UK.

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CONGRATULATIONS TO THE OPSS ON OVER 10 YEARS OF MAKING SURE THE ENTIRE NATION IS BEING POISONED IN THEIR OWN HOMES AND REMAINS AT RISK OF FIRE WHILE INDUSTRY PROFITS STAY HIGH

4/23/2025

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​It really has been a first class effort by the civil service, with multiple officials bravely maintaining the line that their regulations work against all the evidence to the contrary, misleading ministers on an industrial scale and heroically lying in their responses to Freedom of Information requests.
 
In short, eleven years ago the Department for Business said that it wanted to introduce a new match/flame test to the furniture fire safety regulations that would reduce flame retardant chemicals in cover fabrics by up to 50%, with the intention to reduce them to nothing soon after. Astonishingly, it also provided the evidence for why the current match test is not effective in around 90% of cases. The new test would be effective.
 
The overall review of the rest of the regulations was also continuing also. Under "Next Steps" in the Department's official response to the 2014 consultation, it said:

  • The aim of this would be to enable BIS to launch a new consultation early in the next Parliament, covering all the proposed changes to the Regulations which stem from the stakeholder discussions outlined above, complete with draft regulations, guidance and further technical explanations. 
  • This would in principle enable the full review to be completed by April 2016. 

Officials had decided – against the advice of their lawyers – that they would delay implementation of the new match test; instead roll it in with the rest of the regulations under review. All the same, this meant that the new test would be implemented in April 2016, along with other necessary changes to the regulations. 
 
Ten years on and not single change has yet occurred to these regulations. Despite:
 
  • Three public consultations (2014, 2016 and 2023) that drew hundreds of responses from stakeholders, many very detailed. Actually, make that 4 consultations since the Department had also conducted an informal consultation in 2004; which resulted in stakeholders providing a list of 21 needed amendments, none of which has ever been implemented either.
 
  • A cost of around £4m to public funds – including the wages of officials, cost of consultations, cost of legal advice, meetings, etc.
 
  • The Environmental Audit Committee undertaking a very intensive inquiry into these regulations and concluding in 2019 that the regulations are indeed ineffective and strongly recommended that the OPSS change them to get in line with the rest of the world by scrapping the open flame/match and fillings tests and keeping just the cigarette test. This would lead to UK sofas that were free of flame retardants entirely and which were actually fire safer than they are at present. In particular, the EAC wanted the OPSS to immediately  take children's mattresses out of scope, having been horrified to learn that these products contain large volumes of the kinds of flame retardants that were banned from sheep dip for being so toxic!
 
But it wasn't until January this year that the OPSS published its plans for change to the regulations, and it was rather coy about it, calling it a "Progress Update" rather than a government Response to their consultation, which is what was actually required. But given the above and that a) they have not yet followed up on the first consultation response in 2014 and b) decided to abandon the second consultation in 2016, I suspect they were a little embarrassed to actually call this a Response, especially since all that they are proposing to change (and note "proposing" carries a lot of weight here) is the following:
 
  • [To] Remove certain baby and children’s products from scope of the FFRs, where evidence supports their removal from scope. This will reduce babies’ and children’s exposure to CFRs where the risk of exposure to potentially harmful chemicals is greater than the fire risk posed by those products. (A list of the products being removed from scope has been included at Annex A).
  • Remove the requirement for manufacturers to affix a display label to new products, reflecting the limited value of the display label.
  • Extend the time frame for instituting legal proceedings from 6 – 12 months, providing the right tools for effective enforcement.

The last two are very minor and were intended to happen well over 10 years ago anyway. The third is also pretty redundant – giving Trading Standards 12 months to bring a case against an offender rather than 6 months – when TS has not been able to make any prosecutions (other than a few technical ones) since the 2014 revelations that the regs do not work, anyway.
 
Which leaves the first proposed amendment. I put it in bold because this is in effect the result of over 21 years of work, since the Department of Business first announced they were going to review the regulations properly. Since then there have been dozens of workshops, hundreds of written submissions and papers, over twenty years' worth of British Standards meetings, 4 consultations, several ministerial meetings and hundreds of ministerial letters, a parliamentary committee inquiry – and this is the result. 
 
Most of the baby products they list for removal are small items such as prams and buggies. The Baby Products Association has been lobbying for years to have these smaller items removed from scope, only to meet reluctance and lack of action from the government on the whole. Following the Environmental Audit Committee's recommendation in 2019, however, the OPSS knew it was on borrowed time. So it has clearly decided that it has to be seen to be doing something after yet another consultation, so it might as well give the BPA what it wants, given that you know poisoning children is not a great image.
 
However . . . the EAC made a strong point about removing children's mattresses  from scope. And mattresses are not of course small items. So the OPSS faced a dilemma: how do they remove baby mattresses from scope and not have to face the awkward question of why not then remove all mattresses from scope?
 
So now we come to the specifics of their proposed change:
 
"[P]roducts to be removed from scope of the FFRs

a. Mattresses intended for use by babies and children, if the length is less than 170 cm and the width is less than 75 cm."
 
After reading the background material the OPSS has provided in support of this decision (some in response to my Freedom of Information Request), let me translate this statement for you:
 
  • We believe that where furniture and furnishings are concerned, there exist two risks: 1) of fire, which is an actual risk applying across all the objects within scope of the regulations; however, we now also believe 2) there is another possible risk, from chemical poisoning from the flame retardants used to mitigate the first risk. In the case of baby mattresses of the size prescribed, the possible risk from chemical poisoning is now greater than the actual risk of fire.
 
They have provided absolutely no evidence in support of this statement. In my FOI request I asked them for evidence supporting the cut-off measurement of less than 170 cm x 75 cm. They pointed me to a report they commissioned by UCLAN which contains no such measurements nor recommends any cut-off points such as this. It simply discusses the different risks that apply to furniture.
 
No testing or other research whatsoever has been undertaken to arrive at these measurements. Indeed even if possible it would take many years to do so and require the testing of hundreds of different mattress composites and flame retardant combinations at a massive cost.
 
Which means this measurement has been simply plucked out of the air. It just happens to be the common size for a cot mattress, thereby supporting the notion of a "baby" mattress. 
 
What the OPSS is claiming here is that if a mattress is just one centimetre more in length and width, the risk ratio completely reverses, i.e. the mattress is now more an actual fire risk than a possible chemical risk!
 
It's difficult to believe that the OPSS seriously thinks that anyone will be taken in by this nonsense. The Baby Products Association certainly isn't. They recognise that this a cynical exercise to get them onside and note that it is not in any case certain that the OPSS will actually implement this change as this qualifying statement indicates:
 
  • "46) In the coming months, we will work with stakeholders to refine a number of key proposals to ensure that new legislation delivers the intended outcomes for both consumers and businesses. Government will provide an update later this year, setting out the final position on the remaining issues highlighted in this document and a roadmap for implementing changes."
 
Note the very careful phrasing which on the surface sounds like they mean business, and quickly, but in fact keeps open the option to continue procrastinating for as long as it suits them. And, as the BPA told me, the OPSS reserves the right to at any time decide that in fact (as they will claim, other stakeholders say) this is not after all a safe option. But it should at least keep the BPA quiet in the meantime.
 
That and, of course, as quoted above [my italics]: Remove certain baby and children’s products from scope of the FFRs, where evidence supports their removal from scope. In other words, and quite incredibly, they allow themselves to make use of the fact, as I've said, that they have no evidence in support of this change in the first place!
 
Summary and what's not happening right now
 
Recently, OPSS officials have been telling people, e.g. British Standards, that the furniture regulations are a "low priority" for new ministers at the Department for Business. Which is another statement that requires unpacking. What they are implying here is that the new minister at their Department is fully aware of all the issues around these regulations and has made his own decision that they are not a priority for his attention. In truth, however -
 
When a new government comes into power every minister at each Whitehall department is given a briefing pack. This is put together by the civil servants looking after each of the many areas within his/her remit. There is of course no way any minister, even one familiar with the subjects to hand, could make an informed decision based on the briefing given to him/her. So what the OPSS really mean is that their briefing paper to the new minister assured him that this was an issue well in hand, papers have been written, British Standards are looking into it, industry is going along with their New Approach, they have just responded to a major consultation with their plans for updating the regs, etc; therefore it's a low priority issue for him.
 
The fact that two major parliamentary groups are right now trying to meet with the new minister to dispute much of what the OPSS are doing, only to be blocked by civil servants is unfortunate perhaps for the OPSS. But hey, they've been here before, back in 2018 when tired of being given the brush-off, the Chair of the APPG Fire Safety and Rescue had to write to the minister to complain. The minister then told his civil servants to start meeting people right away. Which they did, just the three times mind, lied their pants off and got away with it.
 
In short then, OPSS civil servants are deliberately blocking safety changes to these regulations, lying about them constantly, e.g. insisting that these are the best furniture fire safety measures in the world and are saving lives from fire. To help the continuation of the lie, they have self-brainwashed themselves into believing it's true.
 
 
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A Brief History of the Scandalous Furniture and Furnishings (Fire) (Safety) Regulations 1988 (FFRs)

12/29/2024

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We are now more than ten years on from when the Department for Business announced in a formal consultation that the current FFRs are not effective and proposed a new ignition test that everyone not working for or getting bribed by the chemical industry agreed would work, along with reducing flame retardants in UK furniture cover fabrics by around 50%. The same consultation also declared that the government's intention was to remove all flame retardants from UK furniture, following the implementation of the new test. The official government Response to this consultation stated that the Department intended to implement changes to all of the Regulations, including putting in place the proposed new ignition test, by April 2016.
 
Since then absolutely no changes at all have been made to the FFRs. 
 
In 2019 an all-party parliamentary committee – the Environmental Audit Committee – concluded its inquiry into these regulations by agreeing that they are ineffective and recommending the government change them immediately. Instead, the government went out to consultation yet again, although what they were actually proposing was unclear to everyone. And they were now claiming that in fact the current regulations areeffective but without offering any evidence, facts or logic to justify taking a U-turn on their previous findings.
 
On the face of it, this is unbelievable. Therefore I thought it might be useful to set out a timeline in support of the above statement. Apart from where I am obviously speculating, all the events listed below are taken from official documents; from the horse's mouth so to speak. The fact that the Department doesn't any longer have any copies of most of these documents is, well, another story. It's certainly convenient for them.
 
 
1988
 
The regs are implemented after a somewhat rushed creation. A few minor amendments are necessary in 1989. Despite being a recognised barrier to EU trade, the UK government claimed the Commission approved them as national regs because the UK proved it had a furniture fire safety case to answer (there is no evidence of this on file, however, and it makes little sense since furniture is similar across Europe).
 
2004
 
Industry and other stakeholders had been pressing the government to amend the regs. DTI (Department for Trade and Industry) officials were reluctant but Minister Melanie Johnson finally agreed and asked industry to present her with possible amendments. They did so, submitting 21 suggestions, all of which were valid. But Johnson reneged, claiming that only enforcement needed looking at and passing the buck to Trading Standards. Internally, officials believed that amending the FFRs would give the EC the opportunity to challenge them (further suggesting that it did not approve of them originally, either). These suggestions remain outstanding to the present day as the Regulations have not been amended since 1989 (apart from a minor change in 2010 – see below). 
 
2009
 
The Greenstreet Berman Statistical Report (commissioned by BIS (Department for Business, Innovation and Skills – previously DTI)) is published. It concludes that the FFRs are still required and are saving around 54 lives per year. These estimates are based, however, on the assumption that the FFRs worked (even so, it's never been possible to say how many lives are saved, only by how much the number of fire deaths has reduced); in 2014 it's revealed by the Department that the regs are actually ineffective therefore the GB report is invalidated. To the present day, however, it's still cited by industry as proof the regs are working/needed.
 
2010
 
BIS hosts 4 meetings of a FFRs Stakeholder Advisory Group (around 38 people) to advise the Minister of the best way forward with the Regs. Three options are workshopped: Revoke, Do Nothing, Amend. There is unanimous agreement to Amend, and Minister Ed Davey gives approval to that end (and to make an early, minor, amendment as a separate issue – see below) on the basis of estimated savings to industry, fire services, enforcement authorities of around £36m per year – mostly to fire services and Trading Standards; also to industry via better defined regulations. At this time it is believed that the Regulations work.
 
Industry informs BIS that due to a flaw in the original wording of the Regulations, one of the fire tests has never been legally applied. The Department convenes meetings with experts, new wording is drafted, the test is made viable, the European Commission is consulted and an amendment is issued – all within six months. This, compared with the Department finding a similar fault in the main ignition test in 2014 which remains unfixed more than ten years later. The difference being that putting right the 2010 fault did not cost industry money whereas putting right the 2014 would have cost industry many millions.
 
2011
 
BIS publishes an open letter, announcing the ‘Amend’ decision, inviting comments via informal consultation, stating that the Advisory Group will be reformed (now around 50 members) to work on three key areas – Testing, Scope and Traceability - which they then do over the following two years, gathering a large volume of expert data. This data is used to inform the 2014 consultation (see below) but has subsequently been completely ditched by the Department when it announced in 2019 that it was starting again from scratch (no reason given).
 
2012
 
BIS hosts 4 workshops with 5 leading test houses (e.g. Intertek, FIRA) with two aims: 1) to put all the test specifications into the Regulations, i.e. to remove messy crossoever links with British Standards so that the Regs are no longer hybrid and subject to industry control, 2) discuss possibilities for a new match/ignition test. Test houses als agree that the cigarette test can be dropped since any product that passes the match test automatically will pass the cigarette test. However, since then the Department has failed to implement either proposal and as of the present, does not appear to even know about it.
 
The European Parliament meets to discuss EU fire regs and flame retardants. They inform BIS that the European Commission is no longer prepared to continue supporting any upgrade of EU furniture fire standard (to UK levels) unless FRs are excluded.
 
2013
 
Work continues to refine the match test proposal with various experts, e.g. Prof. R Horrocks, Bolton University, Profs Richard Hull and Anna Stec at UCLAN. An informal consultation paper on a new match test, drafted by Steve Owen the Department's fire safety advisor, is circulated to a selection of expert stakeholders, covering 5 possible options. All responses are positive that a new test will reduce FRs, and option 3 (forerunner of the eventual proposal) is preferred.
 
Terry Edge of BIS and Steve Owen visit IKEA's research centre in Almhult, Sweden, to work more closely on the preferred option for a new match test. Their experts are strongly in favour of it; the CEO describes it as "scarily competent".
 
Practical research on the new test is undertaken by Steve Owen at Intertek, repeated by FIRA (Furniture Industry Research Association), demonstrating that the new test will indeed reduce FRs by around 50% in cover fabrics.
 
BIS officials' submission to Minister Jo Swinson offers four options – do nothing, revoke, full review (but not possible before next election), and bring forward match test. The Minister agrees with officials' recommendation for the last of these. The focus therefore fully switches to starting the review with a new match/cig test with the intention to cover the rest of the FFRs shortly after its implementation. Industry says it would prefer a full review to be done at once but concedes the Department's point that implementing the new match test first will bring early savings and urgently needed improvements to ignition safety.
 
2014
 
A second discussion paper based around a refined option 3 is circulated to around 200 stakeholders. Their feedback is used in the development of the formal consultation paper.
 
(Jan – Aug 2014): BIS hosts or attends 27 workshops with a wide range of stakeholders – retailers, trade associations, manufacturers, test houses, universities, Trading Standards, etc - to discuss and debate the proposed new match test. Contrast this with the fact that the OPSS has held just one stakeholder meeting to discuss its proposals for new regs over the past five years and that was only a short virtual meeting at which stakeholders were blocked from joining or even commenting.
 
(Aug 2014): Consultation launched. Essentially, it proposes a new match ignition test that will be effective, while at the same time setting out in detail why the current match test is not (and therefore why the regulations overall are not), and how it will save industry around £50m a year chiefly through reducing flame retardants in cover fabrics by around 50%. It also contains links to numerous studies of the environmental and health damage caused by flame retardants. The plan is to implement the changes in April 2015.
 
(Oct 2014): Consultation closes with 113 responses; many are positive. Negative responses do not present any evidence or facts or logic for why the proposals would not be effective. They are all from industries that will lose out financially, as was expected.
 
The following six months saw a division appear in the BIS team. The BIS expert, Terry Edge and the Department's technical adviser, Steve Owen, informed the Minister that all the work was done, the consultation returns did not present any problems – a view backed by BIS's own Deregulation Unit. However, for unexplained reasons, Terry's senior management – Bridget Micklem, Phil Earl and Chris Knox insisted that more work needed to be done but without ever stipulating what that actually constituted. For the official Government Response to the Consultation, Terry was asked to draft it along with the Ministerial Submission paper – which was normal. However, Phil Earl then actually re-drafted the Submission and in a totally unprecedented and illicit manner, presented the Minister with two draft Responses – Terry and his – and asked her to choose between them. To help her decide he broke all government rules by informing her that Terry was currently conducting a Civil Service Code Case against his managers (meant to be kept confidential), i.e. clearly indicating that if she chose Terry's response, she would be in trouble with all of his senior managers, including the Permanent Secretary. She chose Earl's response. At some future date, I will publish a detailed account of these few months.
 
2015
 
(Mar 2015): BIS publishes its official Response to the consultation. The difference between this (Earl's) Response and Terry's is that while the latter answered every question raised by respondents, the former answered none of them, opting instead for graphs based on opinion only. It also talked about how it had been agreed to do more work with the British Standards Institute, which was untrue since BIS itself rejected the suggestion when it was put to them, but was an important time-wasting tactic favoured by industry and BIS senior managers. It concluded thus (Terry's emphasis):
 
“The aim of this [consulting British Standards further on the new match test] would be to enable BIS to launch a new consultation early in the next Parliament, covering all the proposed changes to the Regulations which stem from the stakeholder discussions outlined above, complete with draft regulations, guidance and further technical explanations. This would in principle enable the full review to be completed by April 2016.”
Hence, this Next Step is still operative and therefore contradicts the fact that BIS launched two further consultations on the same subject, in 2016 and 2023. It is perhaps needless to say that no changes to the full Regulations nor a full review have never been undertaken.
 
2015-2016
 
The disagreement in the BIS team continues but overall no more work at all is undertaken on the Regulations. 
 
(Oct 2015): Bridget Micklem and Phil Earl had consistently taken the line that the new match test would not be going ahead in April 2016 (as BIS had announced), because more work needed to be done on it. However, in a team meeting in late October BM suddenly announces that the aim is in fact to now go for April 2016. She gives no reason for this and PE is clearly surprised by it. However – 
(Nov-Dec 2015): BM and PE meet the new Minister, Anna Soubry (the first time she’d been briefed about the new match test months into her spell). She agrees to go for match test implementation in April 2016. This means the European Commission will need to be notified by early December. Minister's Private Office expects a timely follow up in the form of a written submission (in the next few days). But the Minister is not sent the formal submission until six weeks after the face-to-face meeting and way past the deadline for April 2016 implementation. The submission is also 15 pages long and differs from the verbal agreement with the Minister in several ways. In other words, Terry's managers have taken another U-turn, back to their previous delaying tactics. It recommends including the new match test with some other amendments (implying this will be all the amendments when in fact that isn’t true), which means another consultation will be necessary (around ‘spring’ next year). It also recommends two changes to the match test which have been put together by BM at the last moment and are not based in any way on evidence or expert input. TE protests and is thrown out of his job. However, he’s shown the submission and a later paper written by BM in support of the new changes; he writes a detailed refutation, proving that the new changes will greatly increase the levels of flame retardants in UK furniture as well as raise industry’s costs by up to around £270m per year. BM answers by saying that she will not respond further because TE is no longer in the job!

2016
 
(Jan 2016): Phil Earl circulates stakeholders thus:
 
"I realise that it has been a while since we contacted you about the ongoing work on the FFRs. I apologise for the delay, and here is an update on progress to date.

"We have now had discussions with the Minister and presented the outcomes from our two stakeholder meetings and the BSI FW6 meeting [this is completely untrue]. The Minister would like us to continue working with you on making changes to the current regulations [untrue] and we will be resuming those discussions soon, based on specific proposals which we believe reflect the feedback we have received to date, with the aim of completing the policy review by April 2016 as originally envisaged [see above: this is also untrue; the Minister agreed to implement the new match test by April 2016]. Our expectation is that we will formally consult on the proposals after Easter [this is also misleading: stakeholders had been pressing for change and BIS lawyers informed the team that another consultation was notnecessary, because essentially stakeholders had already been consulted]. In this context, we would like to clarify that we will not be introducing any changes to the Regulations in April 2016 [again, note that this is a decision that Earl and co made and was in contradiction to the Minister's actual decision].

"I also wanted to take this opportunity to let you know of a change within the project team. Terry Edge has now moved on from the team; we are very grateful for all the hard work and commitment he has put into the review and wish him well in his new post."
​
(Sept 2016): Against their own lawyers' advice the Department goes out to consultation again, not explaining why it has not completed the 2014 consultation Next Steps it set out previously (see above). They propose exactly the same new match test as they did in 2014. Despite more urging from stakeholders, they do not respond to this consultation until 2019 (recommended government response time is 3 months) and only then because they are forced to do so by the cross-party parliamentary Environmental Audit Committee who conclude that the regulations are not effective and should be changed immediately, brought into line with the rest of the world, i.e. drop the match and fillings tests and retain just the cigarette test which would lead to a complete removal of flame retardants from UK furniture. However, the EAC is dismayed when the Department's response says in effect that they are going to consult yet again on the regs. As of January 2025, over a year from yet another consultation, no amendments have been made – eleven years after the Department itself proved they are not effective and therefore that the high level of flame retardants in UK furniture are completely unnecessary (but highly profitable).
 
 
 
 
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Who is chiefly responsible for supporting the Grenfell Inquiry's cover-up over the true cause of the toxicity of the fire?

11/1/2024

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This of course is a very complex subject, made so by the overlapping issues it connects with, each a scandal in themselves. For example, the UK is in constant breach of the Stockholm Convention by ignoring the fact that our incinerators do not burn hot enough to take out the millions of kilogrammes of flame retardants in old sofas and mattresses, with the result, for example, that organic chicken eggs contain high levels of FRs. Also, the fact that recycling plant workers are exposed hugely to FRs when ripping apart old furniture for recycling (which also puts FRs back into new products such as carpet underlay). Also, the fact that UK firefighters are contracting cancers at 6 times the normal rate, due to the high toxicity of UK home fires.
 
All of which underpins the following:
 
a)  The Inquiry's final report on 4 September 2024 stated that all deaths in the fire were caused by two toxic fire gases: carbon monoxide and hydrogen cyanide, but failed to point out that
 
b)  The largest source of these two gases in the fire was the upholstered furniture in the Tower full of flame retardant chemicals, in fact
 
c) The Final Report does not mention even once either furniture or flame retardants; and also does not mention that the furniture flammability regulations were proven to be ineffective 3 years before the fire, also
 
d) That despite 72 people dying from these two toxic gases, government scientists have constantly insisted to the Grenfell survivors that they are not ill from the fire because the fire was not toxic.
 
I want to look at a major factor that is behind these contradictory findings: the University of Central Lancashire (UCLAN). For example, three of its fire toxicity professors (one a visiting professor) have between them pretty much controlled the Grenfell fire toxicity narrative: Prof Anna Stec, Prof David Purser and Prof Richard Hull. The first two were expert witnesses to the Grenfell Inquiry, producing a number of reports on the toxicology of the fire (that you can find in the Grenfell online library). Stec actually recommended Purser to the Inquiry, although she failed to tell them, and he did not declare it to them either, that for 4 years he had sat on an advisory panel funded by Chemtura, one of the world's biggest suppliers of flame retardants, and in 2014 signed up to Chemtura's attempt to sue the State of California for introducing new furniture flammability rules which would remove the need for flame retardants. Richard Hull has been and still is prominent in various moves to change the furniture regulations but not in the way recommended by the Environmental Audit Committee in 2019, i.e. to remove two of the fire tests and retain just the cigarette test (getting the UK in line with the rest of the world) which would remove all FRs from UK furniture overnight. Instead, he claims that the current regulations are effective and we just need to find less toxic ways of complying with them. Even though he knows they aren't.

In 2017, a few months before the Grenfell fire, Hull and Stec (and others) published a paper in Chemosphere, entitled: "Flame retardants in UK furniture increase smoke toxicity more than they reduce fire growth rate."

This is from a UCLAN press release, headed, "Cheap chemical flame retardants increase fire deaths: (14/12/2017):
 
"Breakthrough research has revealed that flame retardants used in domestic furniture increase the amount of toxic chemicals produced when it burns, increasing the likelihood of deaths following the outbreak of a fire.
​
"Inhalation of toxic gases in smoke is the primary cause of death from fire in the UK. Bromine, a chemical element often used in flame retardants by furniture manufacturers, increases the amount of the two key toxicants, carbon monoxide and hydrogen cyanide, when furniture burns [my emphasis].
 
"Researchers also discovered that flame retardants resulted in only a slight delay to the ignition of furniture, with UK standard furniture blazing within just 5-8 minutes. Furniture made specifically to pass UK flammability tests using higher quality materials but without flame retardants took 15-20 minutes before the first flames appeared, a noticeably longer delay than when using the chemical retardant.
 
"Professor Richard Hull, lead Researcher and Professor of Chemistry and Fire Science at UCLan, commented: “The gases produced when furniture containing flame retardants burn are highly toxic, yet there are currently no requirements to assess the toxicity of smoke from burning furniture. This means there is no incentive for manufacturers to limit the toxicity of the smoke from their furniture"."
 
UCLAN is pretty clear here, I'd say. That flame retardants play a major role in making fires toxic, and are right in line with the Inquiry's finding that toxic gases – carbon monoxide and hydrogen cyanide – are the primary cause of deaths in fires in the UK
 
But here's the strange thing, following the Grenfell fire UCLAN professors have barely even mentioned this paper or the role of furniture in the Grenfell fire. They've talked plenty about cladding however. When I asked Professor Stec why the Inquiry was only looking at cladding and not furniture she claimed that they couldn't look at two sources to begin with (although she didn't explain why not) but they would look at furniture's role later. They never did. The Chair of the Inquiry – Judge Moore Bick – informed me via his legal secretary that the Inquiry would consider furniture and flame retardants in Phase 2, having ignored them in Phase 1. But they never did.
 
Professors Stec and Purser provided several reports/statements to the Inquiry about the toxicity of the fire. While acknowledging that upholstered furniture would have been one of the main contributors of toxic gases, Purser very much played down its role and very much played up the role of cladding and windowsills, this despite the fact that cladding foam almost certainly did not contain flame retardant chemicals (unlike all those hundreds of sofas, mattresses and cushions which burned in the Tower) and the majority of cladding smoke/fumes would have stayed outside the tower (simple physics). Almost all the toxic gases from furniture would of course have stayed inside the tower. 
 
When the Inquiry asked Purser about furniture he said that you would normally expect it to contribute hugely to toxic gases in a fire but he didn't believe that was the case at Grenfell. He didn't believe . . . provided no evidence or reasoning to back up this statement. Stec's final paper to the Inquiry, written at its request, is built around a curious choice of words the Inquiry put to her: to look into the extent of the various toxic gas sources in the fire. Stec chose to go with extent to mean how far into the tower did toxic fumes extend, rather than what was the extent – in terms of volume/mass – of the sources of those gases. She duly finds that cladding fumes extended far into the tower but without giving any amounts. She then claims that she couldn't determine the amount which came from furniture because there are too many different materials and designs in furniture. I do not think that is true; and certainly in the past she has had no trouble measuring the amounts of toxic fumes/debris content of burnt furniture. For this reason, she in effect dismisses furniture as a toxic gas source altogether. And even if this was true, she could, surely,  at least have stated that x amount of gas came from cladding while a much larger amount, y, came from other internal sources. Instead, she in effect told the Inquiry, and the world, that cladding produced toxic gases that killed people but furniture didn't. And the Inquiry duly got on board by, as said, omitting even a single mention of either furniture or flame retardants in its final report.
 
So this is the bottom line:  in 2017, UCLAN professors demonstrated that upholstered furniture in the UK is far more deadly when on fire than non-UK furniture that does not contain flame retardants - because those chemicals turn into deadly toxic gases in a fire. The same professors later directed the Grenfell Inquiry to totally ignore the role of UK furniture full of flame retardants in the fire, even though sheer logic suggests it was the greatest source of the toxic gases which the Inquiry finally concluded caused all the deaths (bar those who jumped from the building) in the fire.
 
The question of course is why?
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Grenfell Inquiry Phase 2 Final Report, 4 September 2024 - it's worse than I predicted

9/12/2024

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In the previous post I made predictions about what would be in the report, or rather what wouldn't be, in and around fire toxicity. The fact that they were all correct is a terrible indictment on the Inquiry's many years (of expensive) work. The one thing I got wrong was I said that the report would only mention flame retardants in passing: in fact they did not mention them at all! I predicted they would not mention the failed furniture fire safety regulations either; which they did not. But they also made no reference to furniture at all.
 
To be clear, the combination of upholstered furniture and flame retardant chemicals was probably the greatest contribution to the toxic fire gases that this report says were responsible for all the deaths (other than those who jumped from the tower). Yet this is not even mentioned in the report.
 
In future blogs, I'll detail why I believe they have made this omission, along with how it was fixed by the two fire toxicity experts working to the Inquiry. For now, below are three points/questions the Inquiry needs to answer.

1.    Toxins in the fire either killed people or left them totally unscathed!
 
The Government and Kensington & Chelsea Council have consistently asserted to Grenfell survivors and local residents that a) the fire was not toxic and b) they are not ill from the toxicity of the fire. 
 
But the Grenfell Inquiry final report states, " . . . we can safely find that death was due in each case to the inhalation of [chemical] asphyxiant gases" . . . "including carbon monoxide and hydrogen cyanide". 
 
These fire gases are well known to be highly toxic and can cause significant adverse health impact miles from the fire itself. Professor Alan Penn, Chief Government Scientific Adviser to the Inquiry and Professor Yvonne Doyle, Director for Health Protection, Public Health England, are on public record as claiming the Grenfell fire was not toxic. Doyle told hundreds of Grenfell survivors that they are not ill from the fire, but from underlying health conditions that were exacerbated by the stress of the fire.
 
Will they now admit they were wrong, apologise and finally tell Grenfell people the truth about their illnesses?
 
2.    Why has the Government and the NHS consistently refused to provide proper health screening for Grenfell survivors and nearby residents?

The Inquiry's fire toxicity expert, Professor Anna Stec (along with other experts and Grenfell residents) has continually called for Grenfell survivors to receive health screening of their blood and saliva, "as a matter of urgency" (Stec), to test for the presence of fire effluents. Stec's analysis of soil samples taken close to the Tower, suggested, she said, "significant increased cancer risk from dioxins and furans, as well as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons via dermal intake". Her report for the Fire Brigade Union (2023) - https://www.fbu.org.uk/campaigns/decon-fire-contaminants - revealed that firefighters are contracting cancers at rates high above the norm, almost certainly from fire toxicity. At least 12 firefighters who attended the Grenfell fire have been diagnosed with terminal cancers (and it's expected there will be more to come).

Given the Inquiry has concluded that the deaths were due to fire gas poisoning, will Grenfell survivors/residents not be tested for fire gas poisoning?


3.    Why is there no mention of furniture or the failed furniture fire safety regulations in the Inquiry's report?
 
Upholstered house furniture is the most common (often fatal) source of toxic gases in domestic house fires. A 2017 paper by Professor Stec and others entitled: "Flame retardants in UK furniture increase smoke toxicity more than they reduce fire growth rate" -  https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0045653517319781 - demonstrates that upholstered furniture is a silent and deadly killer when on fire. Grenfell Tower was packed with burning sofas and mattresses, toxic fumes from which clearly remained mostly inside the building while cladding fumes mainly rose upwards and outwards. The Environmental Audit Committee's 2019 report - https://committees.parliament.uk/work/2602/toxic-chemicals-in-everyday-life-inquiry/publications/
- an investigation into the furniture regulations, confirmed that levels of flame retardants in UK furniture are the highest in the world and dangerous to health and life when ignited (and when simply released through wear). The EAC agreed that the current regulations are not effective and recommended the government change them to make them fire safe and free of toxic chemicals but the government has failed to act. This means the toxicity of the fire was greater than it needed to be.
 
Irony: in 2011 the government's Red Tape Challenge tried to cut the furniture regulations, at a time when it was universally believed they saved lives in fires. Since it was proved in 2014 that they are ineffective, the government has fought hard not to cut them! (They are very profitable.)
 
Judge Moore-Bick's solicitor assured Terry Edge that while these regulations had not been looked at in Phase 1 of the Inquiry, they would be examined in Phase 2. They weren't.
 
Is the reason for the Inquiry's failure to address the massive influence of the failed furniture regulations on Grenfell fire toxicity because of their huge profitability as they stand and the fear that there could be huge financial repercussions once the entire population learns they are being poisoned in their own homes and at huge risk of death in a fire for no good reason other than profit?
 

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MY PREDICTIONS ON WHAT THE FINAL GRENFELL INQUIRY REPORT WILL CONCLUDE ABOUT THE TOXICITY OF THE FIRE

8/24/2024

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The Grenfell Inquiry is due to issue its final report on 4 September 2024. Here are my predictions for what it will say about the toxicity of the fire.

It was not a toxic fire.

The report will say that the soil surrounding the fire was tested by AECOM Ltd [appointed to the job without the required government tender exercise] and they found it was no more toxic than any typical London soil. 

[The fact that the Guardian reported Professor Anna Stec in 2018 thus: 

In briefings to senior health agency staff, Stec said she had found “huge concentrations” of potential carcinogens in the dust and soil around the tower in west London, and in burned debris that had fallen from the tower.

High levels of hydrogen cyanide were also present in the soil she analysed.

will not be mentioned.]

The Furniture Regulations' part in the fire will not be mentioned.

The fact that the Furniture Regulations had been proved not to work means the fire was far more toxic than it otherwise would have been. Despite the Inquiry having been informed of this, Professor Alan Penn insisted (to me and several others) that the regulations and flame retardants have been "highly successful". Challenged to prove this, he went silent; therefore the Inquiry report will simply fail to mention the regs.

Internal debris will not be looked at in terms of fire toxicants.

While internal debris has been sifted for human remains, the only report on the make-up of toxicants and their sources in debris was put together by Professor Anna Stec in 2022. I'll look at this in detail later but essentially it fails to provide amounts for toxicants from cladding and Stec states that she did not look for furniture toxicants at all. Clearly the Final Report should be more detailed but my guess is it will gloss over this subject. During the course of the Inquiry it has barely been mentioned, only that we were told (again by Alan Penn specifically) that the coroner will look at it in his report. But the coroner has said he will not look at anything not included in the Inquiry's report.

The fire did not make people ill.
 
Yvonne Doyle of Public Health England, when informed by hundreds of Grenfell survivors at a public event, that most of them were ill, many still coughing up blood, told them that it was not the fire that had made them ill, but pre-existing medical conditions "exacerbated by the stress of the fire". Which somewhat contradicts the government making survivors sign a waiver when receiving (paltry) compensation payments in 2023 to promise that they would not make any claims for health damages. Thus, the final report will hugely play down this factor and might even state as "evidence" that there have been no claims from survivors.
 
All those working for the Inquiry were independent.
 
The Inquiry was informed of Sir Ken Knight's many conflicts of interest over the Grenfell fire, not least that he made strenuous efforts to prevent the Furniture Regulations being made safe, and did not declare so to the Inquiry. The Inquiry was also informed that Professor David Purser, appointed to write the report on the toxicity of the fire, had long-standing associations with the flame retardant industry (and flame retardants would have contributed hugely to the fire) but did not see any reason to act. None of which will be mentioned.
 
Flame retardants will barely be mentioned.
 
David Purser's report places huge weighting on the toxicity of the fire having stemmed from cladding and windowsills (despite the fact that cladding insulation does not appear to have contained flame retardants and most of its fumes would have remained outside the tower), and only mentions furniture in passing. The report will mirror this, i.e. ensuring it is seen to acknowledge that burning furniture played a part in the toxic fire but not the fact that the contribution of hundreds of sofas and mattresses and cushions, stuffed with toxic flame retardants, would clearly massively outweigh the contribution from cladding and windowsills.
 
The fact that all home fires are highly toxic and any future tower block fires will be just as deadly as Grenfell will not be mentioned.
 
UK furniture continues to be highly toxic and flammable, and looks to remain so for many years to come, judging by the current delaying tactics of the OPSS. Hence, future tower block fires will be as toxic as Grenfell and any dwelling fires will remain highly toxic too. The fact that this means every citizen in the country, and firefighters, remain at huge risk of fire poisoning will not be tackled by the report, and no warnings to the public will be given.
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