Health Care Systems to Eliminate Flame-Retardant Furnishings

September 17, 2014 1613 Views active learning classroom, Baptist Beaumont Hospital, Bioscience Connecticut, Eastern U.S., IU Health Goshen Hospital, Ken Harman, Mississippi Baptist Medical Center, National Award of Merit DBIA, Springhill Medical Center, Steffian Bradley Architects, UConn Health

CHICAGO — Several major U.S. health systems have committed to purchasing furniture made without toxic, flame-retardant chemicals, building sector-wide momentum to eliminate what these systems now consider an unnecessary health threat.

Advocate Health Care of Chicago; Beaumont Health System of Troy, Mich.; New Jersey’s Hackensack University Medical Center; and University Hospitals in Cleveland — which together represent roughly 7,000 patient beds — announced in September that they will no longer purchase flame-retardant-treated furnishings. Each health care system will specify with their suppliers that upholstered furniture should not contain flame-retardant chemicals where code permits. These four providers, along with Kaiser Permanente, which made a similar commitment in June 2014, spend an estimated $50 million annually on facility furnishings.

The health care systems noted in a statement that commonly used flame retardants can pose reproductive, neurocognitive and immune system threats to human health, among others, and are damaging to the environment. The statement added that safety data on newer flame retardants are still emerging and are often incomplete.

The four health systems are also among the more than 1,100 across the country that have enrolled in the Healthier Hospitals Initiative (HHI), a campaign to improve environmental health and sustainability in the health care sector. The initiative challenges hospitals to green operations in several key areas, including reducing the use of hazardous, flame-retardant chemicals.

"Through our purchasing and operating practices, we at University Hospitals believe we can help to promote the development of safer chemicals and more sustainable materials for use in health care and beyond, fostering a healthier environment for all," said Aparna Bole, MD, manager of sustainability, University Hospitals, and pediatrician at UH Rainbow Babies & Children’s Hospital, in a statement. "We are proud to join Health Care Without Harm and other hospitals systems around the country in taking an important step toward this goal, by committing to purchase furniture free of flame retardant chemicals as our regulations and statutes allow."

"Hospitals take very seriously the links between chemicals in the environment and rising rates of disease," added Gary Cohen, president and founder of Health Care Without Harm and the Healthier Hospitals Initiative, in a statement. "They are committed to creating healing environments, free from products containing chemicals linked to chronic diseases."

This move is also supported by a new California flammability standard that allows furniture manufacturers to meet the standard without the addition of hazardous flame-retardant chemicals. This standards shift, along with the prevalence of automatic sprinkler systems and indoor smoking bans, could also have an impact on the national furnishings market.

"Demand from these health systems will drive the production of furniture that does not include toxic, flame-retardant chemicals," Cohen said. "Because the health care sector is such a large part of the economy, hospitals can help shift the entire marketplace, which will benefit public health and make products safer for all consumers."