8:41am Thursday 3rd May 2007
A UNIVERSITY professor who has spent the past 45 years researching materials has backed a campaign to make pyjamas flame resistant.
Professor Richard Horrocks said there was little impetus to change the law because fatal and serious injury accidents from pyjama fires were "individual cases" that did not capture the media or public's interest.
However, he said that it would be as easy for manufacturers to make flame retardant pyjamas as it is for them to make flame retardant sofas - a move which has dramatically reduced injuries from fire.
Legislation introduced in 1985 made it law for all children's nightdresses and dressing gowns to be flame resistant. However, pyjamas are exempt, and, when set alight, many burn to almost nothing in little more than a minute.
To be legal, all they have to do is carry a label with red writing saying "Keep Away from Fire".
The Northern Echo is campaigning for the law to be changed across Europe after two-year-old Daniel Mitchard-Harrison, of North Yorkshire, was left scarred for life when his pyjamas set alight.
The shorts were only on him for a few seconds, but he suffered full-thickness burns all over his legs and buttocks.
Prof Horrocks, who has signed The Northern Echo's petition which will be taken to Brussels, said: "The biggest problem is that individual cases do not create headlines, but five or ten do.
"If those five or ten people were put in a bus which spontaneously ignited on the Al then perhaps new legislation would be introduced.
"I fear that, until 20 people are killed in one go, nothing will happen."
Mr Horrocks, who was one of a team of academics at Bolton University who studied the effects of the 1985 legislation and found them to be minimal, said: "It is stupid putting labels in clothes, because everybody ignores them.
"Clothing fires only affect a small number of people, but they often cause disfigurement for life, and cost the NHS a lot of money."
Prof Horrocks said that the UK has the safest domestic furnishing fabrics in Europe and after the regulations were brought in, they virtually halved the fire injury statistics.
Signing the petition, Prof Horrocks wrote: "In spite of protestations from retailers and chains, industry and even so-called consumer protection groups, the technology exists for creating flame-retardant nightwear, including pyjamas, while preserving the required textile characteristics and at an affordable price."
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