Eco friendly flame retardant for textile

Current UK regulations require our furniture and furnishings meet what is known as the ‘match test’ under fire safety standards. The match test is designed to replicate a match or small flame igniting the cover fabric on upholstered furniture. The test material is placed tightly against a flammable test foam with a flame held against it for 20 seconds;

after the flame is removed, any remaining fire must go out within two minutes. The test was developed partly in reaction to a devasting fire in a Woolworth store in central Manchester in 1979, which claimed the lives of 10 people. The fire investigation identified flammable polyurethane foam in the store’s furniture stock, and the thick toxic smoke it produced, as key contributors to the incident’s severity. So, in 1988, the Furniture and Furnishings (Fire) (Safety) Regulations came into effect.

To meet this test, most furniture manufacturers apply large volumes of chemical flame retardants to make both the foams and the cover fabrics in furniture fire resistant, exposing us to much greater levels of these harmful chemicals than even our closest European neighbours. Cover fabrics are required to be tested over flammable foam, but flammable foam can no longer be used in furniture construction; we’re unnecessarily duplicating our flame-retardant application and testing unrealistic combinations of materials, rather than the product as a whole. The regulations also fail to consider modern furniture construction, not allowing for the use of protective ‘barrier’ materials underneath the cover, and uncertainty in what stage a component needs tested has led to doubt over the legality of prosecution1. Whilst the intention was to protect life, the reality is both an ineffective test and increased exposure to harmful chemicals, resulting in a wider threat to society and the environment. And here we remain.

Since these regulations were introduced in 1988, we banned the use of asbestos, got online, cloned a sheep and decoded the genome; we also built the channel tunnel, brought the good Friday agreement to Northern Ireland, spent £700 million pounds on the millennium dome and learnt that even Daenerys Targaryen is susceptible to the tyranny of power and entitlement. We’ve also had thirty more years of health, environment and toxicology research. We now know that flame retardants leach out of products and accumulate in our blood, our children and our wildlife and we’ve linked exposure to a wide range of serious health implications.

Look around you right now. Are you at work? Are you sitting on a foam-filled desk chair, fabric blinds keeping light from bouncing off a computer monitor in its black plastic casing, your hand gently resting on the smooth shell of a mouse or dusty keyboard as you scroll through these words? Or are you at home? Perhaps slouching comfortably in a favourite armchair, the curtains pulled closed, a TV in the corner and a mobile phone in your hand. Is there a carpet? Each of these items, be they in your home, your office, your car, no matter the location, they are all likely to contain potentially toxic flame retardants.

Of course, in writing this I’ve made an assumption; I’ve assumed you are reading this in the UK or Ireland. If you are sitting in California, Washington, Sweden, Norway, France, New Zealand, Liechtenstein, anywhere else in the EU, anywhere else in the world in fact, you will not be subject to the same legislation that requires furniture to be laden with chemical flame retardants; there are US states and EU countries where many of the flame retardants you are being exposed to in the UK have actually been banned.

We are therefore developing a series of non-halogen flame retardants for textile back coating. These products were historically classified as Environmentally Hazardous Substances.There is no change in their flame retardant performance or processing characteristics.

 Young Yao

Marketing development manager

Zhejiang Ruico Advanced Materials Co., Ltd. (Stock No.873233)

Add: No.188, Liangshan Road, Linghu Town, Nanxun District, Huzhou City, Zhejiang Province, China 313018

Phone: +86 (572) 2903236

Fax: +86 (572) 2905222

WhatsApp: +86 15088303595

Wechat: 18458299199

Website: www.ruicoglobal.com

[email protected]