Some pajamas are more than just warm, snuggly
Which worries you more: The risk of fire or the risk of chemical flame retardants in your kids’ pajamas? That’s the question I asked Cory Miller, a Washington mom of two who’s expecting a third. “I think both my husband and I have accepted that freaking out is an integral part of being mom and dad,” Miller said. But she does put some concerns over others.
“The risk of chemical flame retardants concerns me more than the risk of flammability, mostly because there are so many other measures we can take to safeguard our family from fires, like having our smoke detectors checked regularly,” she said.
Miller may not know it, but she’s applying 2017 logic to a 1970s regulation. Smoke detectors weren’t required in the early 1970s, but Congress decided that flameresistant children’s pajamas should be. To comply, manufacturers started adding a flame-retardant chemical called Tris to kids’ sleepwear. Then, in the late 1970s, scientists discovered Tris was carcinogenic. It was like public opinion whiplash. The Consumer Product Safety Commission moved to ban Tris from pajamas and manufacturers ended up voluntarily removing it. The Tris was gone, but the fire safety requirement was not.
To this day, pajamas for kids age 9 months through size 14 must be flame resistant or fit snugly. (Clothes for younger babies do not have to be flame resistant, because at that age children are not mobile enough to expose themselves to an open flame.)
So how do manufacturers meet that requirement now? Are they substituting some other, mystery chemical to make children’s pajamas flame retardant? A couple years ago, I tested nearly 30 pairs of kids’ pajamas at two certified labs for a “Dr. Oz Show” investigation. We asked the labs to screen for every flame-retardant chemical they knew of — and not one pair of pajamas tested positive. Industry insiders told me they were not surprised by our results because manufacturers rarely use the chemicals in children’s pajamas these days. The Consumer Product Safety Commission confirmed that it is aware of just one flame-retardant chemical used occasionally on loose, all-cotton pajamas.
If pajama manufacturers are not using chemicals, how are they keeping children safe from fire? Two ways: by using inherently flameresistant polyester or tightfitting cotton.
Polyester is inherently flame-resistant because of the structure of the fabric, and the way it is woven, so it doesn’t need to be treated with chemicals. I watched Lexie Sachs, senior textiles analyst at the Good Housekeeping Institute lab, test a piece of polyester pajama fabric by exposing it to an open flame. The scrap of fabric self-extinguished in seconds.