California regulators ruin sofa shopping in Massachusetts

by philg

Having spent a childhood with Spaghetti-O’s in the pantry closet and Velveeta in the fridge I tend not to worry too much about industrial chemicals in my life. The same cannot be said for the distaff side of our household. Thus a trip to Crate & Barrel to find a sleeper sofa turned into an education regarding flame retardants. It seems that the wise politicians and regulators in California back in 1975 essentially forced furniture buyers nationwide to bring toxic, yet ineffective, flame retardants into their households. Now, 40 years later, the wise politicians and regulators are forcing furniture manufacturers to go in the opposite direction. See this NRDC page for a summary history.

How does this affect a Massachusetts shopper? Just try asking a retail clerk if a particular sofa was made with particular chemicals…

[And separately, maybe this explains Americans’ lackluster performance in school and stagnant wages. The NRDC page says “Americans carry much higher levels of these chemicals in their bodies than anyone else in the world” and “Children exposed in the womb have lower IQs and attention problems.”]

Finally… the government seems to want me to go back to my Velveeta-eating roots. The FDA has banned French cheese, such as Roquefort, made according to 1000-year-old recipes (CNN).

4 thoughts on “California regulators ruin sofa shopping in Massachusetts”

  1. It’s true that the average sofa contains a lot of flame retardant thanks to California and that we didn’t need this stuff in the first place – I’m not going to fall asleep with a lit cigarette in my hand, I but I still get the sofa that’s made to deal with those kind of issues (and ironically it doesn’t even work well for that).

    On the other hand, the dose makes the poison. The flame retardant is largely locked inside the foam where it isn’t getting out (unless you decide to unzip the slip covers and eat your sofa cushions). As the foam deteriorates with age, some may get out in the form of dust, but if you are the kind of nice lady that worries about PPM exposures of industrial chemicals, you are also probably the kind of lady who doesn’t keep sofas around until they crumble into dust and the kind of lady who has her house vacuumed regularly so your kids are probably not the ones with high blood levels of this stuff.

  2. Is this backtracking only in California? I bought a new mattress earlier this year, and was horrified at the chemical smell seeping out of it. It was then that I learned that in 2006 the U.S. federal government updated their mattress guidelines to demand that mattresses be able to endure a half-hour exposure to open flame without igniting themselves.

    From what I could find out, the only way to legally buy a completely flame-retardant-chemical-free mattress in the U.S. was to get a prescription from your doctor as proof that you need one, and have one custom built for you. There were a few places, though, that sold a mattress with a separate chemically-treated layer, which consumers could in theory remove after purchase.

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