Testing labs burn the midnight oil
Fire tests give critical insights into FR materials' capabilities
By David Perry -- Furniture Today, November 23, 2003
High Point — Mattress flammability is a growth industry for testing labs, which are burning the midnight oil as they set fire to a steadily increasing number of beds.
"Sometimes we have to work night-shifts," admitted Chip Haby, manager of tunnel and furniture testing services at Omega Point Laboratories, one of the busiest flammability labs in the country. "We have worked until 2 a.m. or 3 a.m."
Omega has been burning approximately 200 beds per month since it started the tests this past January.
A growing number of labs across the country offer their services to the industry, turning open flames on mattresses and box springs in a controlled test. Bedding producers and fire-resistant material suppliers rely on those tests to see how various bedding constructions and FR materials fare on the stringent new open flame bedding standards proposed in California.
The labs are critical, behind-the-scenes players on the flammability front. Their names, for the most part, are unknown to retailers. But the tests that they carry out will determine which products wind up on retail floors and which products won't.
It's a simple pass-fail test, one that the labs typically charge $400 to $500 to conduct.
California is proposing a test of the finished bed and not of the individual component materials. That has led producers to submit a number of beds for testing, varying the amounts of FR materials and the ways those materials are incorporated into the beds. Burning the bed — or trying to — is the only way to see if a bed will pass the test.
How the test is conducted
The California Bureau of Home Furnishings originally proposed a one-hour burn test, a figure that drew criticism from some industry members. Open flames are trained on the top and side of the mattress and box spring set for about a minute. Then the testers watch what happens, and monitor the intensity of the fire that results.
To pass the test, as California initially indicated, the bedding could not exceed a peak heat release rate of 150 kilowatts at any time during the hour. That is about the amount of heat released in a roaring fireplace fire. In addition, the total heat release could not exceed 25 megajoules in the first 10 minutes of the test. California later revised the burn test to 30 minutes, and raised the peak heat release rate to 200 kilowatts.
If flashover — total combustion of the bed — is inevitable, the bedding fails the test.
The beds initially tested at Omega had a much higher failure rate than those being tested nowadays, Haby said. "Producers have been coming back with improved products." Now, he said, the majority of beds tested at Omega are passing.
Twin-sized bedding is tested. The labs do their testing in what they call a burn room. They film the tests so the producer can see how the beds fared.
"We watch the test by video," said Brent Larson, project engineer at one of the newest flammability labs, recently set up at Twin City Testing Corp. "The heat and gas output is so intense."
The company paying for the tests gets the video and a full report on how the bedding fared, complete with before-and-after pictures.
Critics of the longer test argued that there is no evidence showing that a 60-minute test provides more safety than a 30-minute test. They also noted that the labs could test twice as many beds if the testing period were cut in half.
The revised proposal issued by California's Bureau of Home Furnishings on July 15 calls for a mattress to be exposed to an open flame for about a minute, then be watched for a shorter period of 30 minutes to see if it erupts into a fire.
Some have said that there aren't enough labs for all the beds that must be tested, but California regulators say the number of test labs is increasing.
While labs around the country are staying busy testing beds for the proposed California standard, a looming national standard could spark even more burn tests.
"Everybody knows the Consumer Product Safety Commission will eventually make a move," said Larson. "When a standard goes national, I've been told there won't be enough labs to keep up with demand."
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Labs burn midnight oil
Jul 20, 2003
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