Charles Beroes

The Dangerous Flammable Fabrics: Burning Ourselves, Our Children and Our Senior Citizens Charles Beroes

Historically and persisting to this day, there has been a barbaric attitude toward gruesome and fatal injuries from flammable fabrics. Reliable burn injury data show hundreds of garment burn injury fatalities, annually and morbidly, painfully, and permanently injured victims form flammable fabrics. Industrial representatives argue that the total number of injuries is small and that the cost-benefits to the vast majority preponderantly favor the status quo. The children's sleepwear laws have dramatically reduced the frightful, destructive injuries to innocent children and safer fabrics are appearing in the stream of commerce. An effective warning label on dangerous garment fabrics would help build a market for safer clothing and enable the consumer to choose safer garments. More importantly, an effective warning label would reduce the number of dangerous flammable fabric victims. This text places an emphasis on the value of a warning label, which should be mandated on all new clothing to reduce the flammable fabric injuries and fatalities each year. It is especially important to alert mothers of flammable fabric risk to protect their children. Currently, the largest fatality groups are children 2-5 years of age and senior citizens over age 65. The author hopes to promote the use of an effective warning label to circumvent fabric burn injuries and to reduce disfiguring and fatal burn injuries.