Flame Retardants at Proctor

Flame Retardants at Proctor

Due to the flame retardant requirements of California Bureau of Home Furnishings Technical Bulletin 117, flame retardant furniture and other products can be found in nearly any facility, and even in your own home.

Image from Google Images

This notice tag means that the product has been doused in flame retardant. You cant find these tags on the bottom of most upholstered furniture. These flame retardants are made up of toxic synthetic chemicals that can be harmful or even cause death to humans. They also do not do their job very well, they only hold back fires for a matter of seconds, and they make the fire burn hotter than it would have without the flame retardants. There are far more effective flame retardant method's that are natural, such as tightly woven wool or cotton. However these methods are more expensive, and this is why most of the world had resorted to using the cheap chemical flame retardants that are in so many of our products today. 

Chart of Upholstered Furniture in Proctor Academy Facilities

The kind of room that we found the most potential flame retardants in was the meeting house, because of the sheer number of foam chairs and the electronic devices found in the room with the projector. We could not find a tag to confirm that there is flame retardants in each of the seats, but we have reason to believe that they had them. The most abundant product to be found doused in flame retardants would be electronic devices. These are most abundantly doused in flame retardants because they are most likely to start fires, like a projector for instance, in which the lightbulb can reach startling temperatures. The product that gets the most use from people, however, would probably be the chairs of the meeting house. They are used almost every day by hundreds of students and faculty. I believe that the electronic components will tend to have the least health risk because it is harder for flame retardants from to get from the electronic devices into the bloodstream of humans, where the stuff can become airborne just from a someone sitting in a foam chair. 

After watching Toxic Hot Seat, I believe that there is not much that can be done about exposure to PBDE and TB 117 from products already in existence, but what can be changed is the future. All companies should not be allowed to take the cheap shortcuts in the production of products, that in turn lead to the mass creation of dangerous synthetic chemicals. Instead these companies should have to find natural ways to make their products flame resistant. Concerns including PBDEs include that evidence shows that high concentrations of it causes neurological effects in Animals. Which could easily also be true for humans. Though there has not been enough time since the creation of PBDEs and TB117s for there to be conclusive evidence on the effect they have on humans, which is also very scary. Especially considering the amount of these chemicals that we are exposed to in our daily lives. 

Proctor Academy Meeting House