Let's not light any fires

The movie, Toxic Hot Seat has begun to churn thoughts in my head about what could be harmful to me in the everyday items that I use and what the consequences could be, both short and long term. Throughout the movie, I was assigned to follow the story of Karen Kerr Stone. Karen is a Lieutenant of the San Francisco fire department.


She has a role in the movie which is critical, she is not arguing the legal side of things but she in interested in researching and creating awareness for companies, fire fighters and fire departments. Karen began researching the effects certain chemicals have on the fire fighters exposed to them. Also she was able to find out which kinds of chemicals are released at what different kinds of fires.


Karen's story puts things into perspective, with her story of being a fire fighter, and her colleague Alison Greene passing away at a young age due to toxins while battling fires. While filing a report of Alison's death, Karen was blown away by the number of toxins her and here colleagues have been exposed to over the year.








So think about it, "Among 40 to 50 year old female fire fighters in San Francisco, the breast cancer rate is 6 times the national average for that age group. So lets do what we can to let these every day household items no take away the lives of those we know and love.








I got thinking. In my life, how have I been affected in my life by the toxins? I was breast fed as a child, does that have any affect on me? Possibly, but testing for the toxins at a long term rate is so difficult to determine.


So for our D Block APES class we began to sample items in our every day life in order to check out our time and amount of exposure. I started by sampling item in my house (mostly furniture), I could determine time exposed to the fire retardant and the health and age risks for me and my family members.


While looking through my house the room I had found myself spending the most time in flipping over cushions and chairs where in the den and the living room. Each of the two rooms have two couches in each, one recliner, and a desk chair. These two rooms are littered with health risks from the fire retardants used in the process of making these items.

This is the tag containing the TB117 label

By far the most abundant product were the chairs in the dining room. All with the tag approved with the TB117 stamped on it.










When I think about the items that are uses most often in my daily life at home I thought the couch, because while searching my mattress for tags I could not find any. After discussing with Alan, I determined that my most used and most impactful item to my health was my mattress.

Dining room chair with lowest health risk

Couch with one of the greatest health risk

The product with the highest health risk would be the most used, which to me would be my mattress as I discussed above, and the product with the lowest health risk would be the dinning room chairs. The chairs that are in my dining room are rarely used and the size of the foam that is on the chair is very small compared to a couch or a love seat.

Today during class we were sampling the wise center for furniture with the TB117. Out of the 28 chairs and couches we sampled, 23 of them were CLEARLY LABLED with the TB117. Below is what we found for the varieties of furniture. *Remember these products are used daily while on campus.*

As all of the information about this health hazard may be overwhelming, there is one thing we need to consider. The regulation TB117 was only implemented in California, which is the only fire retardant regulation in the world. So let's make a stand to ban. (TB117 that is) why don't we just get rid of it all together? It's proven harmful so why do we still feel the need to produce it. We shouldn't.

We need to stop this and prevent these lethal toxins from entering our bodies. 

Lets make a change, it doesn't start without your help.

All photos by Eric Bonewald