November 12, 2020
UFAC is pleased to note that reported fire deaths are down for residential fires where upholstered furniture was supposedly the first item ignited. This positive news, reported in CPSC staff’s Annual Residential Fire Loss Estimates, is in line with a long downward trend since the UFAC construction criteria were first put into place in 1978. Since that time, reported deaths decreased from approximately 1,250 annually to an estimated annual average of 390 deaths from 2015 through 2017, the most currently available data analyzed by CPSC staff. This figure includes ignition from smoking materials, open-flames, and other sources. UFAC’s construction criteria are focused on reducing the likelihood of smoking material ignition, which has historically been the largest category associated with furniture-related fire deaths.
In its report, CPSC staff itself states, “It is noteworthy that for 2017, the estimated number of deaths where upholstered furniture was the item first ignited declined to 290 (from 510 in 2015 and 370 in 2016), which is below the 2017 estimate for mattress or bedding deaths (340).” Furthermore, what makes this result all the more notable is that a few years ago, CPSC staff publicly stated that it would expect to see an increase in these types of reported deaths for the years in question. Their expectation was based on changes that CPSC staff were making in the manner that it was conducting its statistical analysis, when it began using a statistical procedure called “raking” in its review of the reported fire data and used other “data cleaning” techniques.
Source: 2015-2017 Residential Fire Loss Estimates, U.S. National Estimates of Fires, Deaths, Injuries, and Property Losses from Unintentional Fires. Author: David Miller, Division of Hazard Analysis, Directorate for Epidemiology, U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, July 2020.
The fire loss estimates presented in CPSC staff’s report are based on the National Fire Protection Association’s (NFPA) national fire loss estimates and the U.S. Fire Administration’s (USFA) National Fire Incident Reporting System (NFIRS) data. As noted, CPSC staff have “cleaned” the data, including via the technique of “raking”, which means that staff allocated reports with “unknown” data into categories matching the marginal distributions for the known data. For each year, the raking procedure was applied by CPSC staff separately for fires, deaths, injuries, and property loss. In their report, CPSC staff cite statistical literature to demonstrate their view that “raking” is an accepted statistical technique. In addition, CPSC staff further investigates certain fires every year to try to better categorize reports of “Other” into more specific categories. Again, by CPSC’s own reckoning, “This editing that was done in 2015, 2016, and 2017, will have the effect of increasing the deaths estimates (Table 2b in the Residential Fire Loss Estimates report) for the “Smoking Material Ignition” subset of “Upholstered Furniture” and “Mattress, Bedding” and decreasing the “Other” estimates.” Even so, with CPSC’s staff “raking” and “recategorizing” of certain fire reports and attributing them to smoking ignition of upholstered furniture, reported deaths (and injuries) were still lower than prior estimates and expectations.
CPSC staff have historically paid special attention to mattresses and upholstered furniture because of the larger fuel loads, which tend to lead to bigger, more dangerous fires when they ignite.
UFAC believes that the safer construction of furniture using materials rated by the UFAC construction criteria are significantly less prone to smoldering fire ignitions, which has contributed greatly to the reported reductions in these fire deaths and injuries. Major advances in smoke detectors and reductions in cigarette smoking have also provided significant contributions. With the increase in recreational and medical marijuana use (and related devices), UFAC will continue to carefully monitor the available fire data concerning ignition sources, injuries, and deaths.
To read the full CPSC report, click here (PDF).
To read UFAC’s Family Fire Safety Tips (available for use by your participating company), click here.
