UL: Still Safety's Symbol? Underwriters Laboratories Draws Fire on Product Tests

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UL: Still Safety's Symbol? Underwriters Laboratories Draws Fire on Product

Tests

By Caroline E. Mayer

Washington Post Staff Writer

Wednesday, November 24, 1999; Page A01

It's on the alarm clock that rousts you out of bed in the morning, the

reading lamp you turn off at night. It can be spotted on your coffee maker

and toaster, your refrigerator, stove and gas grill--and your TV, CD player,

telephone and computer monitor.

It's the UL mark, a small circle surrounding the letters UL. It certifies

that the appliance, no matter what size or purpose, has been approved by the

world's largest independent testing service, Underwriters Laboratories.

Stamped on nearly 15 billion products a year, it is, in the words of a top

UL official, " the American mark of safety. "

But over the past several years, a number of UL-approved products have not

been safe. Space heaters, halogen lamps, baby monitors and toasters have

caused fires. A popular fire sprinkler system failed 30 percent of the time.

And some smoke detectors and carbon monoxide alarms designed to pass UL

laboratory tests didn't work in real-world situations.

There's no question that UL-approved products, such as Christmas lights, are

safer than ones that don't have the mark, and even UL's sharpest critics say

the not-for-profit company provides a valuable service. But many federal

safety officials, local firefighting officials, building-code administrators

and international fire investigators say they are increasingly troubled that

the gold standard of safety signified by the UL mark is falling short in an

era when Americans increasingly put their faith in devices purported to save

time and lives.

" We're having more problems than we had before, " said , president

of Associated Fire Consultants, an Arizona fire-investigation firm. " A lot

of products seem to be hitting the market that are not fire safe but have

been through UL. "

Debra Rade, UL's chief legal officer and senior vice president of

administrative operations, said that among the 17,000 different products

tested by UL, " there are very few [approved] that present a substantial

hazard. " Problems that do occur, she said, are caused by new technology--or

old technology put to a new use. Through those problems, what " we've learned

is that the system works, " Rade said. " As soon as problems are uncovered,

the wheels are set into motion to analyze the issue and respond. "

She added: " Our 4,000 employees live, eat and breathe safety for breakfast,

lunch and dinner. If we see there's a problem, we investigate it thoroughly

and responsibly. "

High-profile recalls, contentious lawsuits and private industry spats have

put UL under increased scrutiny. Firefighting officials, who for many years

championed UL as a world leader in safety testing and standards, have begun

to openly express doubts in the wake of the recall of more than 8 million

sprinklers. In fact, some fire marshals are considering challenging UL's

tax-exempt status, granted by Congress 45 years ago to organizations that

test " for the public safety. "

Interviews with more than 50 fire experts, safety officials, building-code

authorities, engineers and lawyers around the country and a review of

thousands of pages of documents obtained from court suits and the U.S.

Consumer Product Safety Commission under the Freedom of Information Act

highlight a number of concerns about UL:

* UL's safety tests may not reflect what happens in the real world. More

than 350 smoke detectors have failed to sound an alarm in residential fires;

about one-third of those same detectors were sent back to the manufacturer

for retesting and were found to have passed a UL smoke test. And in testing

pop-up toasters, UL has never included any kind of food in its fire

tests--even though there have been an increasing number of reports of

bagels, pop-up pastries and thick slices of bread getting stuck in toasters

and starting serious fires. Between 1993 and 1996, the latest figures

available, there have been at least 30 incidents of fires caused by toasters

that failed to shut off.

* UL doesn't always consider factors that could affect the long-term

integrity of the product, and it rarely tests products once they leave the

factory. UL, for instance, didn't consider how the key components of the

Omega fire sprinkler would react over time with some of the additives and

chemicals commonly found in the sprinkler's water supply. The defects came

to light only when the sprinklers failed to operate in two fires. More than

15 years after the product was first approved, it was found to have a 30

percent failure rate, forcing thousands of buildings to be retrofitted with

new sprinkler systems.

* When a problem develops, there is evidence that UL is slow to react--and

when it does, UL has first faulted either consumers for not using the

product properly or electricians, plumbers and other workers for not

installing it correctly. To correct problems, UL may require new warnings or

consumer instructions before requiring modifications to the product itself.

And when fixes have been proposed, some were not thoroughly tested or

adequate.

For example, after a number of fires were started by halogen lamps, UL first

told consumers to reduce the wattage of the halogen bulb from 500 to 300

watts and then, a few months later, directed manufacturers to place " Hot

Surface! " warning labels on the lamps. But 300-watt halogen bulbs were also

found by the Consumer Product Safety Commission to start fires--even though

they passed UL's fire tests. It took two more years before UL adopted a

tougher fire test.

Similarly, UL blamed the faulty Omega sprinkler on bad installation and

anomalies of local water systems for more than two years, repeatedly saying

it was a " site specific " problem. UL maintained that position even after

millions of sprinklers were recalled for what the CPSC labeled a design

defect. UL stopped calling it a site-specific problem after the CPSC accused

UL of misleading the public.

* Product-safety decisions are typically made in private, with manufacturers

having greater opportunity to comment than the public or other interested

parties, including competitors. And when questioned, UL often cites client

confidentiality, making it hard to research how decisions were made and thus

difficult to get standards or listing decisions changed, revised or

reconsidered. In 1995, UL approved a special electrical connector to hook

copper wiring with aluminum wiring--even though the CPSC had for years

declared these connectors unsafe. The CPSC was never consulted and has

repeatedly urged UL to reverse its decision, maintaining that the connectors

are fire hazards. UL did give the CPSC its findings in this case, but after

more testing continues to list the product as safe.

In many other countries, standards are set or approved by a government

entity with industry involvement. U.S. safety standards, on the other hand,

are set primarily by private industry--either in independent labs such as UL

or by industry associations or organizations. The CPSC, an independent

regulatory agency charged with protecting consumers from hazardous products,

imposes federal regulations only when it believes industry's voluntary

efforts are insufficient.

Because U.S. companies rely on self-regulation, the issue of how well UL is

doing its job becomes all the more critical. UL, which faces only a handful

of competitors, is the dominant standards writer for electrical and

fire-safety testing.

Many experts interviewed contend that UL's recent problems can be traced to

the way the company is organized and funded--with more than nine-tenths of

its revenue coming from companies for testing products. UL also sets

industry safety standards--which it then measures products against--but does

not charge for that.

In 1998, UL's tax returns show revenue totaling $407 million; $376 million

came from testing. Excluding the $26 million in investment income and

government contributions, testing accounted for 98 percent of UL's revenue.

The actual testing fees are relatively small--say, $7,000 for a toaster per

round of testing--but UL also receives annual payments from companies that

wish to display the UL mark on its products.

Because manufacturers provide almost all of UL's revenue, many fire-safety

officials say UL doesn't always set the most rigorous safety standards or

follow through to make sure the products remain safe once they have been

sold and are in use.

Few manufacturers contacted would comment on UL, but UL officials reject any

suggestion that they are too close to manufacturers. " We are a completely

independent organization, dedicated to safety, " Rade said.

Not all fire and safety officials find fault with UL. Coughlin,

executive director of the Residential Safety Institute, a public interest

group that promotes fire protection, said he thinks UL's critics are wrong.

" It's easy to be critical of them based on anecdotal evidence, but I think

UL is very open and responsive, " he said.

But among other safety and firefighting officials, concerns have mounted to

the point that the National Association of State Fire Marshals is

considering challenging UL's tax-exempt status because it believes UL is not

fulfilling its public-service duty.

" In the last couple of years, we've had cause to reconsider and reevaluate

that maybe things can be done better, " said Bliss, New Hampshire

state fire marshal and chairman of the fire marshals association's task

force on consumer product safety, referring to the recall of millions of

fire sprinklers and the growing number of lawsuits involving UL-listed smoke

detectors.

" We're concerned that UL relies heavily upon revenues from manufacturers and

developers of products, " Bliss said. " If they have such an intimate

relationship with the manufacturer and are designing safety standards at the

request of the manufacturer, is that in the public interest? "

If UL sets too tough a standard, some believe, it may not have many products

to test. As a result, fire-safety and other experts suggest, UL chooses the

lowest common denominator for its safety standards to gain as many testing

clients as possible.

" They've got to make money off these folks to stay in business, " said Mark

Chubb, a private fire-safety consultant and formerly executive director of

the Southeastern Association of Fire Chiefs. " Don't they have to please the

folks who pay them for tests? If so, are they playing to that audience

instead of public safety? "

Those concerns have become an issue in recent litigation. A former employee

of a smoke-detector manufacturer testified in a lawsuit concerning a faulty

smoke alarm that UL's approval process has a significant loophole that

allows manufacturers to fraudulently modify sample units to pass UL tests.

" They [uL] allow the fox to watch the henhouse, " said A. Minnis,

formerly an electronics engineer with BRK Brands, which makes the First

Alert and Family Guard brands.

According to Minnis, when a product fails any UL tests, engineers simply

return it to the manufacturer with a note saying it didn't pass, without any

analysis of the flaw. Minnis, who was BRK's " point person " with UL,

testified that when the horn of one of BRK's alarms failed to sound after a

UL corrosion test, he oiled the horn contact to make it sound and pass the

UL test--even though oiling the contacts was not going to be part of the

assembly-line process.

" By not analyzing those failures, they [the UL engineers] were relying on

somebody to tell them " what was wrong, Minnis testified.

BRK and UL officials, who dismiss Minnis as a disgruntled employee, said

they have investigated his allegations and determined the alleged

alterations never took place. Rade said when a company resubmits a failed

product, it must describe what changes it made and a UL engineer will

determine whether the fix is legitimate. She added it is not UL's job to

tell companies what's wrong with products when they fail.

Rade acknowledged that sometimes UL's decision-making process may seem slow

and mysterious, but that's only because UL " is an engineering organization, "

she said. " We pay very careful attention to detail " to make sure everything

is in order before issuing any announcement, decision or revision, she

added.

" All UL standards are developed to anticipate real world events and what's

reasonably foreseeable, " Rade said. " If we didn't anticipate for everything,

if there's a misuse of a product that we never thought of, then we change

our standard. " And increasingly, she said, UL is trying to open up the

standards-setting process to allow " anyone who has a complaint " an

opportunity to comment.

UL officials are " very proud of what we've accomplished, " Rade said. " The

U.S. enjoys the highest level of safety in the world. That's indisputable.

And one of the reasons the U.S. enjoys that is because UL set the entire

foundation for product-safety certification. "

There's no question that there is a " high level of expectation and high

level of scrutiny on us, " she said. " . . . Our critics have an interest in

perfection and we share that interest. "

UL's origins can be traced to 1893, when the Chicago Board of Fire

Underwriters sent electrical investigator Henry Merrill to discover

the cause of fires at the Columbian Exposition. Seeing a need for a

safety-testing organization, Merrill then launched UL, in a spare room at a

Chicago fire station, with the backing of the insurance industry.

Initially, UL operated as a not-for-profit organization, but the Internal

Revenue Service revoked that tax-exempt status in 1935, on the grounds that

it was more of a commercial business than a scientific endeavor, according

to ph O'Neil, former executive director of the American Council for

Independent Laboratories.

UL appealed the IRS decision but was turned down in an opinion issued by the

U.S. 7th Circuit Court of Appeals, which said UL " did not operate on the

basis of science for the sake of science " but was " science for the sake of

business. "

In 1954, however, UL again obtained tax-exempt status after Congress amended

the tax laws to include organizations " testing for the public safety " in the

same nonprofit status as religious groups, educational institutions and

charities. " There was very little explanation for the modification--no

hearings, no legislative history, " O'Neil said. The only clue is a UL letter

in the hearing record requesting the exemption so it can " expand its testing

facilities out of earnings. "

What started in 1893 as a two-person operation, with $350 worth of

equipment, has now grown into an international corporation with $512 million

in assets, $407 million in annual revenue, more than 5,200 employees and 13

laboratories worldwide. It oversees more than 700 safety standards and runs

more than 89,000 product investigations a year.

A walk through UL's Northbrook, Ill., headquarters and testing facilities

shows how varied are the products on which the UL mark is applied: window

glass, roof shingles and wallboard; bulletproof vests, safes and locks;

televisions, CD players and pinball machines; vacuum cleaners, toasters and

pizza cookers; hair dryers, disposals and flashlights; medical beds, garage

doors and even pet-bed warmers.

" We don't test for quality, but for any foreseeable hazard--fire, shock,

sharp edges, radiation, " said Drengenberg, UL's manager of consumer

affairs. " We look for the worst possible condition, simulate it and test it

to make sure that if a product fails, it fails safely. "

So fire-resistant safes are subjected to 2,000 degrees of heat and then

dropped the equivalent of three stories onto broken cement blocks to make

sure the safes won't pop open and the papers inside aren't charred beyond

legibility. A hand-held hair dryer is dropped three times on hardwood floors

to see if it breaks to the point that consumers can come into contact with

any live wires or parts and be shocked or electrocuted. Its cord is flexed

3,000 times--10 per minute--to make sure the cord isn't likely to break

during the dryer's normal use.

TVs are deliberately short-circuited to see if they start fires. A

refrigerator door is opened and closed 300,000 times to see if the door can

still be opened from the inside so children won't be trapped at the end of

its normal life.

For pop-up toasters, temperature tests are run to see if cords, wires and

plastic housing get too hot. But no tests are run to see what happens when

the food being toasted ignites, an increasingly current phenomenon as more

consumers heat up large bread products such as bagels and pastries.

Penny Cassella learned that in March when her son plopped a toaster

pastry into the pop-up toaster. After a quick trip to the bathroom, the

9-year-old returned to the kitchen, only to find the toaster, cabinet and

ceiling all on fire. Everyone managed to get out of the house safely, but by

the time the fire was extinguished 20 minutes later, the Cassella residence

in central Florida had suffered about $150,000 in damage--all because the

pastry got stuck in the toaster and jammed the heating element, keeping it

from popping up and shutting off.

UL has declined to add a food test, saying foods such as bread varied so

greatly that it would be scientifically impossible to create a test that

could be repeated precisely in different labs around the country. It took 2

1/2 years for UL to propose another solution: an automatic shutoff switch.

But that proposal, issued only last month, is not scheduled to take effect

until 2002 at the earliest.

" The UL mark guarantees that the product is probably safer than if UL were

not around, " said Aronstein, a New York engineer who has persistently

taken UL to task over the past 20 years, challenging many of its standards.

But he added: " The question is how well it is doing its job, whether it is

truly independent and whether it moves fast enough when problems occurs--or

even moves at all. Those questions have to be answered on a case-by-case

basis. "

Following are three case studies--involving fire sprinklers, carbon monoxide

alarms and smoke alarms--that experts believe show how UL's testing and

standard-setting falls short of optimum safety.

Safety Reconsidered

Here are five products approved by Underwriters Laboratories whose standards

have since been challenged:

HALOGEN TORCHIERE LAMPS

PROBLEM: Fires; 232 incidents, causing 12 deaths from 1992 to 1998.

WHY: A bulb for a halogen lamp is much hotter than an incandescent bulb.

Halogen lamps were first approved to illuminate spaces under construction;

no new standard was written when lamps became so popular and placed in

frequent contact with drapes, blankets and other flammable fabrics.

UL'S INITIAL RESPONSE: In April 1996, UL directed consumers to switch from

500-watt bulbs to 300 watt. However, 300-watt bulbs still caused fires

despite passing UL's fire test -- a double layer of cheesecloth placed over

a lamp for several hours. If the cheesecloth didn't ignite, the lamp passed

the UL test, on the theory that if anything would catch on fire, cheesecloth

would because it's such a light material.

PROPOSAL: The Consumer Product Safety Commission called for a new test in

July 1996, using many layers of cheesecloth, to take account of new, heavier

fabrics that could trap heat and start fires if in contact with the lamp.

UL, however, maintained the double-layer test was " a reliable indicator of

the risk of fire " and warned consumers to keep all combustible materials

away from all halogen lamps, even those with 300-watt bulbs.

RESOLUTION: In May 1998, UL adopted a 20-layer cheesecloth test, effective

for all lamps made after June 1, 1999.

POP-UP TOASTERS

PROBLEM: Fires; at least 30 incidents from 1993 to 1996.

WHY: Food such as bagels and pop-up pastries get stuck in the heating cavity

and jam the mechanical lever that pops food back to the top. When the lever

is left in the down position, the heating element remains on and fire can

start. UL doesn't test for food fires in pop-up toasters.

PROPOSAL: In March 1997, the CPSC urged UL to conduct tests with toast.

UL Response: Said it was impossible to conduct a food test that can be

repeated reliably in different labs. In November 1998, UL said it would

revise its standard to address food fires.

RESOLUTION: In October 1999, UL issued a proposal requiring heating elements

to shut off automatically, no matter what position the mechanical lever is

in. The proposed rule is not scheduled to be effective until 2002 at the

earliest.

OMEGA FIRE PREVENTION SPRINKLER

PROBLEM: High rate of failure.

WHY: Rubber O-ring would react to some chemicals and additives found in the

water used in sprinkler systems.

UL REACTION: Called on fire officials and building owners in April 1996 to

test sprinklers. In May 1997, after testing 800 sprinklers and finding a 30

percent failure rate, UL called the problem " site -- specific " and proposed

a fix for existing sprinklers.

COURT ACTION: CPSC sued the manufacturer in March 1998; the lawsuit was

settled in October 1998 with the recall of 8.4 million Omega sprinklers. As

part of the settlement, manufacturers asked UL to withdraw its approval of

Omega sprinklers. UL did but still called the problem " site specific. " In

January 1999, the CPSC accused UL of misleading the public by continuing to

say the problem was " site specific. "

RESOLUTION: UL immediately dropped " site specific " from its statements about

Omega.

IONIZATION SMOKE DETECTORS

PROBLEM: Often fails to sound alarm in smoldering fires.

WHY: Manufacturers say it's due to " cold smoke " -- what happens in a

smoldering fire that's not hot enough to drive the smoke up to the ceiling

and detector. Several fire experts say the problem is with UL's standard

smoldering fire test.

PROPOSAL: For years, fire experts have called on UL to reconsider its

smoldering fire test. Some say it's based on 20-year-old tests that used

different furniture than what's now found in homes. They note that UL

conducts four flaming fire tests for detectors, but only one for smoldering

fires.

UL RESPONSE: UL says that " a fire is a fire " -- it would be too difficult to

develop a smoldering fire test to consider all the variable items found in a

home.

RESOLUTION: UL is now in talks with the CPSC to discuss the possibility of

new fire research to see if a new smoldering test is warranted.

CARBON MONOXIDE ALARMS

PROBLEM: False alarms.

WHY: The initial standard set too low a threshold at which an alarm must

sound.

UL RESPONSE: Revised the standard.

NEW PROBLEM: Failure to sound and inability of consumer to know if sensor

detecting gas still works after alarm leaves factory.

WHY: UL standard does not require long-term reliability testing; the " test "

button on the detector only determines if the circuitry is working but not

the actual sensor response to carbon monoxide.

UL RESPONSE: No simple way for consumers to test sensors, but UL recently

proposed requiring manufacturers to pull hundreds of detectors off assembly

lines every three months, and test these every quarter, to see how long

sensors remain effective.

SOURCE: Underwriters Laboratories, Consumer Product Safety Commission and

industry documents