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Children's Sleepwear and Fire Safety

The City of Shelton Fire Prevention Bureau encourages you to consider the following fire safety information to help protect children from fire and burns. The best way to prevent burns or fire is to keep children from being exposed to open flames or hot surfaces. Follow these tips:

Keep all matches and lighters up high and out of the sight and reach of children, preferably in a locked cabinet.

Children and candles are not a good combination. If you use candles, never leave a child unattended in a room with a candle. Keep candles up high, out of reach of children. A child should never sleep in a room with a lit candle.

Never leave a child unattended in the kitchen. Close supervision is essential, whether children are helping an adult cook or are simply watching. Never hold a child while cooking. Put pans on back burners and turn all pot handles toward the back of the stove. Unplug kitchen appliance cords when not in use and keep them tied up and out of children’s reach.

Consider U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) guidelines pertaining to children’s sleepwear. The U.S. CPSC sets national safety standards for children's sleepwear flammability. These standards are designed to protect children from burn injuries if they come in contact with an open flame, such as a match or stove burner.

Under amended (June of 2000) federal safety rules, garments sold as children's sleepwear for sizes larger than nine months must be:

Flame Resistant -- Flame resistant garments do not continue burning when removed from an ignition source. Examples include inherently flame resistant polyesters that do not require chemical treatment.

Or,
Snug-fitting -- Snug-fitting garments need not be flame resistant because they are made to fit closely against a child’s body. Snug-fitting sleepwear does not ignite easily and, even if ignited, does not burn readily because there is little oxygen to feed a fire.

**The rules for flame resistance or snug fit do not apply to sleepwear for sizes nine months and under because infants that wear these sizes are insufficiently mobile to expose themselves to an open flame.

Children should never be put to sleep in T-shirts, sweats, or other oversized, loose-fitting cotton or cotton-blend garments. These garments can catch fire easily and are associated with 200 to 300 emergency room-treated burn injuries to children annually. Most manufacturers are using hangtags on their snug-fitting sleepwear to let consumers know that the product meets federal safety standards. The hangtags remind consumers that a snug fit or flame resistance are necessary for safety.

The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission protects the public from the unreasonable risk of injury or death from 15,000 types of consumer products under the agency's jurisdiction. To report a dangerous product or a product-related injury, you can go to CPSC's forms page and use the first on-line form on that page. Or, you can call CPSC's hotline at (800) 638-2772 or CPSC's teletypewriter at (800) 638-8270, or send the information to info@cpsc.gov. Consumers can obtain this publication and additional publication information from the Publications section of CPSC's web site or by sending your publication request to publications@cpsc.gov. If you would like to receive CPSC's recall notices, subscribing to the email list will send all press releases to you the day they are issued.

Always have working smoke alarms installed on every level of your home, test them monthly and keep them clean and equipped with fresh batteries at all times. Know when and how to call for help. And remember to practice your home escape plan.

More Information: Shelton Fire Marshals Office at 924-1555, CPSC website above or US Fire Administration website: www.usfa.fema.gov