Why you don’t want a toxic new sofa

If you’re thinking of buying a new sofa in the January sales, or indeed at any time, you might want to reconsider.

Did you know sofas are highly toxic? So toxic in fact that the end of a sofa’s life, when you take it to the tip it is now classified as hazardous waste and incinerated. When the sofa was sold to you it wasn’t classed as hazardous waste though, was it?!

As a consumer you would rightly expect anything you buy to perfectly safe, but unfortunately the Flame Retardant chemicals used in modern upholstery foams and fabrics are known to affect the endocrine system, the thyroid, the metabolism, and to cause neurotoxicity and cancer.

Since the 1980s furniture makers have been forced by UK law to douse their component materials in Flametards. As these chemicals do not bond with the foam they are applied to their molecules are let loose and vaporised every time we bounce about on a sofa or chair, meaning we are breathing it in. The particles fall downwards and sit in dust meaning children are particularly exposed due to playing on the floor and their hand-to-mouth activity.

These chemicals have even been found in women’s breastmilk, penguins and seal lipids, because they are now in and polluting our waterways, on a global scale. This should be a national public and environmental health and consumer rights SCANDAL, but as yet it isn’t.

In Europe and the USA these nasty FRs aren’t required because they use a 45 minute smoulder test to determine the safety of a sofa if exposed to a lit cigarette for example, whereas in the UK we measure it using an open flame test which means putting a flaming Bunsen burner on the back of the seat, and failing anything that catches alight in 20 seconds or under. This doesn’t reflect how fires realistically tend to start, and requires a lot of FR chemicals to make anything pass that test. Our fire death rates are not even any  better than the statistics for the EU or USA.

As an interior designer I’m frustrated because I could design and make custom sofas and reupholster chairs using only naturally fire retardant materials like horsehair and sheep wool, stuffed under pure linen and cotton fabrics, but if the frame of an item of furniture is newer than 1950 I can’t. It wouldn’t be compliant with our complicated and nonsensical UK fire law. There are “sustainable sofas” on the UK market, but we are not yet convinced they are truly any better than the conventional ones on offer.

While we campaign for change you can limit the toxicity of the air of your home by hoovering furniture and floors frequently and thoroughly, getting loose covers made for your sofas to inhibit the spread of the chemicals, and getting any pre-1950 vintage furniture traditionally and naturally reupholstered, or even learning upholstery yourself and make your own natural, safe seating.

There is more and regularly updated information about this complex issue at the Eco Chair campaign site: https://www.eco-chair.co.uk