Full scale fire tests on 34 sofas purchased in different EU coun-tries show that strict national furniture fire safety regulations mean increased escape time. Firstly, fire tests were carried out on one sofa purchased from each EU Member State. Then furnished room tests were carried out on six further sofas. Only the UK and Ire-land were iden Firstly, tified as having stringent furniture fire safety regula-tions (cigarette and small flame resistance) and the two regulation-conform sofas from these countries showed time to peak heat re-lease two to four times higher than those from other countries, mean-ing significantly longer times for occupants to escape a fire. One of two sofas purchased in Ireland was not conform to regulations, show-ing the importance of market surveillance. In the room tests, the time before the temperature at the room open doorway reached 200°C was over 20 minutes for the UK sofa, compared to 4 – 8 minutes for sofas from Greece, Ireland, Lithuania, Portugal and Sweden. Similar-ly, time before significant smoke production in the room with the UK sofa was over 20 minutes compared to 3 – 8 minutes for the other sofas.
“An overview and experimental analysis of furniture fire safety regulations in Europe”, E. Guillaume et al., Fire and Materials, 2020, 1-16 https://doi.org/10.1002/fam.2826 Work funded by BSEF and ACFSE