Fighting for Safety

Landscape Shifts

The study, completed the following year, said some fire retardants were safe to use. Work on the rule resumed, but the political landscape had shifted. The tobacco companies had signed the multi-state settlement and agreed to close the Tobacco Institute. In 2000, New York passed the first fire-safe cigarette law, which took effect in 2004. Twenty-one states have followed suit, including Maryland, effective in July.

Sparber, however, had an incentive to stick around. Starting in 1999, lobbying registration records show, he went to work for the top producers of brominated fire-retardant chemicals, which include Chemtura of Middlebury, Conn., and Albemarle of Richmond. The industry stands to benefit if the CPSC adopts the fire marshals' original proposal.

"Like in the 'Sound of Music,' sister always said 'when the Lord closes a door, somewhere He opens a window,' [Sparber] could always figure out a way to get something done," said Michael Brozek, who had worked with Sparber at the Tobacco Institute and is now a lobbyist in Wisconsin.

Sparber's new clients had a lot in common with his old ones. Like the tobacco companies a decade earlier, the makers of brominated fire retardants are facing the prospect of mounting legal restrictions because of health and environmental concerns about their products. Brominated fire retardants are being found in breast milk, San Francisco Bay harbor seals and polar bears near the North Pole. They have been shown to harm brain and reproductive development in animals. EPA scientists last year reported a link between thyroid disease in cats, uncommon until about 30 years ago, and elevated levels of brominated fire retardants.

To defend its products, the fire-retardant chemical industry has turned to some familiar faces. Chemtura is a member of the fire marshals association president's roundtable with annual dues of $7,500, the group's executive director Jim Narva said. Last summer, when Washington state was considering banning the fire-retardant chemical deca, Thomas Brace, a co-founder of the fire marshals association, testified against the ban, saying he didn't want environmental concerns to overshadow fire safety. The ban was approved.

Increased awareness of the health risks of fire retardants, meanwhile, confronted the CPSC with a dilemma: how to strike a balance between the need to prevent fatal fires and the risk of exposing millions of consumers to potentially harmful chemicals. It was enough of a conundrum to drive away consumer groups, which in recent years have chosen to sit out of the upholstered furniture debate.

Industry Impasse

The impasse between the chemical and furniture industries forced the CPSC back to the drawing table again and again. A staff proposal in 2001 that would not have required the use of fire-retardant chemicals prompted the fire marshals association to withdraw its petition. Another proposal in 2005 that would have encouraged the use of fire-retardant chemicals upset the furniture industry and its suppliers.

However, by 2005, the politics had shifted yet again. The European Union and California had banned two brominated flame retardants additives, octa and penta, and the furniture industry had new allies: Friends of the Earth and a University of California at Berkeley scientist named Arlene Blum.

In the late 1970s, Blum's research led the CPSC to remove two fire retardants from children's sleepwear. She recently began collecting data on the presence of fire retardants in common household items after one of her cats was diagnosed with thyroid disease and was found to have high levels of the chemicals in its blood.

Blum briefed the CPSC staff last fall, and some furniture industry lobbyists credit her with helping shape the agency's latest version of the upholstered furniture standard. Approved by the commission in December, the proposal relies on the use of fire-resistant fabrics as flame barriers, rather than chemicals. If there are no more delays, the commission could vote on a final rule this year.

Sparber hasn't given up. He has opened new fronts. Through the fire marshals association, he has unleashed a flurry of proposals that would have the same effect as if the CPSC were to adopt the regulation the association wants. One petition before the Transportation Department would classify polyurethane foam as a hazardous material. If approved, it would mean trucks delivering sofas with untreated foam would have to bear warning placards as if they were gasoline tankers. Sparber is also pursuing building code changes that would place restrictions on retailers that didn't sell fire retardant-treated furniture.

He laid out the building-code gambit in simple terms for executives at Chemtura and Albemarle in a Jan. 4, 2007, e-mail: "Taken alongside NASFM's other initiatives, this is hardball of the first order."