By Delores Gempel Lekowski

Author of "The Hurting Angels"

Note: While many of the details mentioned here relate to North America, the message is just as valid for us in Godzone Downunder!

A beautiful little four year-old girl was proudly wearing a dress that her mother had just finished sewing, having put the finishing touches on it that same morning. The little girl had helped her mother pick out the dark blue material with purple and white flowers, and she was excited to show off the new dress that her mother had so lovingly made for her. The dress was a jumper, and the little girl wore a turtleneck shirt under it. She was dressed to go out to dinner and could hardly wait to show off her lovely new dress. While her mother was out of the room, the little girl climbed up on a brick wood-box so she could turn on a light near the mantel. A candle was burning on the wood-box and, as she reached over it to turn on the light, her dress caught fire. The little girl started screaming and running for help, but by the time she reached her mother, she was already completely engulfed in flames. She suffered third degree burns on 90 percent of her body, and only a small piece of the dress and the collar of the turtleneck remained.

I will make the assumption that the majority of the population doesn’t consider fire safety when they purchase clothing or fabric. We as consumers have a false sense of security, because we automatically assume that what we buy is safe. In fact, there is a minimum flammability standard that must be met by all general wearing apparel and fabric sold in the United States. However, that standard is 50 years old and grossly inadequate.

The Standard for the Flammability of Clothing Textiles (16 CFR 1610), which is enforced by the US Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), first emerged as the "Flammability of Clothing Textiles, Commercial Standard" in 1953 as a specification of the Flammable Fabrics Act (Pub. L. 83-88, 67 Stat. 111). While standards for children’s sleepwear have been made somewhat stricter, the general wearing apparel standard has been largely ignored. This is not because the standard serves safety; in fact when you consider that newspaper and tissue paper will pass, you have to wonder how effective this standard really is. Obviously, it wasn’t strict enough to prevent this four year-old little girl from being burned, nor has it prevented countless others from being burned similarly.

In 1951, even before this minimum standard went into effect, the dress I was wearing went up like a torch in seconds when ignited by a spark from a pile of burning trash. I’d like to think that the fabric from which my dress was made couldn’t be sold today. However, I have discovered that there are still fabrics on the market that have the same instantaneous flashpoint as the fabric of the dress I was wearing that fateful day. And every day, the very old and the very young, in particular, are in danger of becoming human torches if they are unlucky enough to encounter an ignition source.

Even the sleepwear standard has been relaxed. In 1996, the CPSC decided to amend the flammability standards for close-fitting cotton sleepwear for kids. Also, when you think about the children’s sleepwear standard, many kids wear t-shirts to bed. T-shirts are not covered under the sleepwear standard, so effectively children are right back where they started, in many cases - unprotected.

When I think about the advancements we have made in other areas of safety and technology over the last 50 years, I find the lack of concern or progress in promoting the safety of clothing fabrics to be a disgrace. Certainly, the textile industry was instrumental in making sure that the standard resulted in the most minimal requirements on their part, and in the past half-century, the industry has done everything possible to prevent the standard from being changed. The CPSC is currently looking at "updating" the general wearing apparel standard (an advance notice of proposed rule was issued in 2002), but the proposed changes are minimal and do not make the standard more rigorous. Individuals and organizations, such as the National Association of State Fire Marshals (NASFM), have enjoined the CPSC to take a strong stand for the safety of the consumers it represents and make some decisive changes to improve the standard. It remains to be seen whether this will happen.

However, a new project involving the CPSC, the American Burn Association, the Shriners Hospital for Children and NASFM gives reason for hope. The National Burn Center Reporting Project will collect data in order to develop a more accurate picture of burns involving children aged 15 and under. The CPSC will work with emergency responders and burn hospitals to retrieve and analyze the clothing worn by burned children to determine what role the fabric may have played in the incidence and severity of the burn injury and to develop a more informed judgment about how the ignition could have been reduced or prevented. This is an important step in the right direction - but I, for one, won’t rest until that 50 year-old wearing apparel standard is strengthened.

In the meantime, we all should take the time to remind clothing manufacturers and retailers of their moral obligation to keep hazardous products out of the marketplace. Adherence to a minimum standard is no protection against liability, and should never be an excuse to make or sell products that could turn any of us - but particularly the most vulnerable among us, our children and elderly - into human torches.