New safety standard reduces risk of tippy furniture

Today, ASTM International announced an important revision of its furniture safety standard to address tip over hazards.  “Safety Specification for Chests, Door Chests, and Dressers,” ASTM F2057, is intended to reduce injuries and deaths to children from tip over of common clothing storage units including dressers and chests of drawers.

We recently reported on research that estimated an average of 14,700 serious injuries per year, with a growing injury rate, associated with tipping furniture. And each year, about a dozen children are killed when furniture they climb on tips over, or when a TV set atop that furniture topples on them.

Consumers Union conducted tests—demonstrated in the video—to study the hazards associated with placing televisions of various sizes on top of unstable furniture.

Instrumental in the development of the new standard, CU engineers asked ASTM to improve its standard after uncovering a rising injury rate associated with tipping furniture and demonstrating that even furniture that passed the former standard still presented a serious risk to children. Previous testing had shown that much of the furniture commonly used in a child’s bedroom did not comply with even the weaker former standard.

“We are pleased that we’ve finally been able to get some significant improvements made to this standard,” said Don Mays, CU’s Senior Director of Product Safety and Technical Policy and a member of ASTM’s committee on furniture safety. The improvements include more realistic test procedures, warning labels that tell consumers not to put heavy objects such as televisions on top of furniture not made for that purpose, and the mandatory inclusion of a tip restraint to anchor furniture to the wall.

This must come as welcome news to parents of children killed or injured by falling furniture such as Bob and Judy Lambert whose daughter Katie Elise Lambert died four years ago at the age of three when a large wardrobe cabinet fell on top of her.The Lamberts have worked to strengthen the safety standard.

Although compliance with the standard is voluntary, furniture manufacturers are expected to abide by it as not doing so would appear negligent.