Serta sleep set withstands ignition test
By David Perry -- Furniture Today, September 5, 2005
Sharon Hill, Pa. — Where there was smoke there was fire, a fire that completely consumed a mattress made without fire-resistant materials. But an FR-protected sleep set made by Serta survived its trial by fire.
The mattress fires were the focus of a fire safety event conducted here recently at the Delaware County Emergency Services Training Center. The mattresses were exposed to an incendiary mix of kerosene and napalm-like materials, touched off with a torch.
Watching the fiery test were officials of the Congressional Fire Services Institute in Washington and more than a dozen area fire officials. Pennsylvania Congressman Curt Weldon, a former fire chief who helped organize the fire services caucus in Washington, participated in the event.
During the event, Serta officials made a $5,000 donation to the Congressional Fire Services Institute, and also donated a trailer full of more than 100 FR-protected Serta sleep sets to the Community Action Agency of Delaware County.
In his remarks, Weldon thanked Serta "for this outstanding donation and their commitment to public safety." He hailed Serta's decision to incorporate open flame FR protection in all of its bedding as "a major step forward," and added: "This example that is provided is a national example, one that we hope will be taken across the country as a challenge to other bedding manufacturers to continue to develop fire-safe materials so that we can reduce the risk of loss of life and property damage in America."
Weldon noted that as a U.S. congressman he is not allowed to endorse any products, but said: "All I can tell you is I'm going to be happy sleeping on a Serta mattress this evening."
The event, which attracted media attention, zeroed in on a variety of fire safety topics, among them the importance of looking for a mattress with open-flame protection. California now requires that mattresses made this year and sold in that state must have open-flame protection. A federal standard is expected to become effective in 2007.
Serta's Al Klancnik, group vice president for research and development, and chairman of the bedding industry's Sleep Products Safety Council, was a featured speaker during the event. He talked about Serta's commitment to making safer mattresses, which the company provides with its FireBlocker system, a proprietary blend of natural and synthetic fibers. That system helps isolate the impact of a fire and resist its spread into the mattress.
Serta says it is the first and only nationally distributed brand to include open-flame protection in all of its bedding lines.
The Serta mattress, and an unnamed competitor's mattress without FR protection, were put to the test in a blackened burn room in Building 5, where live burn tests are conducted. The unprotected bed was reduced to a steel innerspring skeleton, resting on the burned-out frame of the box spring.
The portion of the Serta bed blasted by the torch burned through to the innerspring unit, but the fire was confined to that area of the mattress.
Firefighting officials watching the test said later they were impressed with the ability of the Serta sleep set to resist ignition.
The officials staged the event to educate Philadelphia-area families on how to better protect themselves and their loved ones from the dangers of fire. In addition to addressing the importance of fire-resistant mattresses, the event also emphasized the need to purchase and test smoke detectors and the need to create fire escape plans.
Fires and mattresses can prove to be a fatal combination. Serta released statistics that show that more than 700 lives are lost each year in bedroom fires, and that there is a home fire every 79 seconds somewhere in the United States.
