Fire hazards of clothing related to accidents and consumer habits

This project has been carried out on commission for the EU Directorate General for Health and Consumer Protection. The Partners on the project were SIFO in Norway (project leader), CITEVE in Portugal, DTI in Denmark, EMPA in Switzerland, OCU Ediciones in Spain and VTT in Finland.

The main objective was to establish realistic hazard data for garments based on their fire behaviour, as well as a detailed assessment of the scale and nature of accidents caused by flammable clothing. Most European countries do not have specific legislations for fire safety of clothing; and the ones that exist have different focuses varying from applying to all clothing, to only apply for children’s clothing or for nightwear. However, prohibited garments were available on the market, indicating that the regulations are not followed strictly. EU has prepared a draft standard for fire safety of nightwear with high requirements; when following the limits untreated cotton could no longer be used for children’s nightdresses. Most people are favourable to governments taking responsibility for fire safety when it comes to clothing, but their knowledge about the flammability characteristics of textiles is slight. Results from surveys and from medical sources correlate well to show that clothing catching fire is seldom the cause of serious fire injury. We can see that accident patterns vary greatly from country to country; this applies to both the sources of fires and what kinds of clothes have caught on fire.