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Calif. to delay FR enforcement until 2005

By David Perry -- Furniture Today, July 13, 2003

North Highlands, Calif. — Ending a period of uncertainty that plagued the bedding industry, the California Bureau of Home Furnishings has revealed that it plans to begin enforcement of its tough new mattress flammability standards on Jan. 1, 2005.

While those standards will go on the books in California on Jan. 1, 2004, a legal issue with the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission has thrown the enforcement date into question. There has been much speculation but little consensus on when the date might be.

But now the uncertainty is apparently over. California regulators have told key industry players that enforcement will begin one year later than originally planned.

Dick Doyle, president of the International Sleep Products Assn., which has argued forcefully that the industry needed more time than Jan. 1, 2004 to prepare for new open-flame flammability laws, said California will announce the new enforcement date shortly.

"The (California) Bureau has indicated that it will announce ... that it plans to begin enforcement of the Technical Bulletin 603 standards on Jan. 1, 2005," Doyle told Furniture/Today last week.

Those standards will make California the first state to mandate that mattresses be protected from the dangers of open flames.

Federal open-flame mattress standards are expected to become law in the next few years and would establish a national standard that pre-empts the California guidelines. But until then, bedding producers who distribute in California will be required to meet that state's standards for products sold there.

Open-flame protection for mattresses and boxsprings will likely increase the retail cost of sleep sets by as much as $200 for queen sizes, some observers say.

The Jan. 1, 2005 enforcement date in California is a significant victory for the bedding industry, which had protested that the year-earlier date just wouldn't give producers enough time to get new fire-resistant lines ready.

Apparently the industry has also won a significant concession on the substance of the standards themselves. The standards as proposed by the Bureau earlier this year called for a one-hour burn test, a length of time that some said was too long. But now, in response to industry objections, the Bureau has decided to cut the burn test to 30 minutes, according to industry sources who requested anonymity.

In such a test, a mattress would be exposed to flames for about a minute and watched for about 30 minutes to see if it erupts into flames. Those sources also said that the Bureau will propose raising the maximum level for heat release during the test from 150 kilowatts to 200 kilowatts.

The modifications in the standards are expected to be announced this week, but the sources cautioned that those possible changes are not yet final. California officials have not revealed publicly what changes they might propose.

The industry will have a chance to comment on the revised standards before they become official later this year.

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