The requirements include: The word "WARNING" must be in upper case and at least 8mm high. The rest of the text shall be in no less than 3mm high letters.
They go on:-
So this is what the Window Blind industry is asked to do and the standards they must meet and this is why 6 children died last year..
Friday, 10 December 2010
6 Children Strangled by Window Blinds in 2010 - Find out who is to blame.
Monday, 15 November 2010
Window blinds recalled after death
Window shades, blinds recalled amid safety review
Updated: Monday, 15 Nov 2010, 7:23 AM EST Published : Monday, 15 Nov 2010, 7:23 AM EST
Here is yet further proof of the dangers lurking in our homes and what is happening in USA.
WASHINGTON (AP) - The death of a toddler who strangled in a window shade cord spurred a huge recall Wednesday, even as the industry crafts a better standard to make window coverings in American homes safer for children.
The Consumer Product Safety Commission says Hanover Direct Inc., of Weehawken, N.J., has agreed to recall about 495,000 roman shades and some 28,500 blinds. Hanover is the parent company for Domestications, The Company Store, and Company Kids.
CPSC says the 22-month-old boy in Cedar Falls, Iowa, became trapped in the pull cord of a roman shade in May. He was found hanging by his neck and was rescued by his father, but died later at a hospital.
The commission estimates that one child dies every month after strangling on the cords of blinds or roman shades.
Consumer safety groups have complained that the government and industry have been slow over the last two decades to cut child deaths from blinds. More recently, however, CPSC has stepped up its efforts to get safer window coverings on the market.
At a meeting of industry officials and consumer advocates at CPSC headquarters in Bethesda, Md., this week, the head of the commission urged manufacturers to move swiftly to approve new safety rules.
"Chart a new course today," said Chairman Inez Tenenbaum, "a course that promises to eliminate, not just mitigate, the risk of harm to children."
While there have been millions of blinds and shades recalled in the past several years, safety advocates say fatality rates haven't improved much and the process for moving safer designs to the market has been sluggish.
The problem is the cord on the blinds and shades that rolls them up and down. Young children can get tangled and trapped in the cords, leading to injuries and deaths. Since 1990, CPSC estimates that nearly 250 infants and young children have died from accidentally strangling on window cords.
Ralph Vasami, executive director of the Window Covering Manufacturers Association, says blinds and shades can be used by most people with no problem at all. "But there is a hidden risk to children," he said in an interview.
Vasami says manufacturers are pressing ahead to revise the current voluntary safety rules on the books, standards developed by industry. He expects to have new rules ready for a vote by next October.
Current standards for roman shades, Vasami says, call for them to be cordless; have cords that are inaccessible to children; or if the cord is in reach of a child, then it cannot be able to form a hazardous loop that could trap a child's head. That standard would likely serve as a model and be expanded to cover blinds in the new writing of standards under way.
Wednesday's recall involving Hanover is an expansion of a previous recall from October 2009 of about 90,000 roman shades. Thousands more roman shades as well as roller and roll-up blinds are now being called back. The products were sold through the company nationwide from January 1996 through October 2009.
So what is happening in UK?
Answer.
WindowBlindSafe is launched in January 2011 offering the first Child-Resistant Safety Device to meet all the requirements of the new Universal Window Blind Safety Guideline. To learn more, go to www.windowblindsafe.com
Governments across the World fail to take a action.
When the UK government faced an e-petition in early 2009 calling for a ban on all looped cords on window blinds, it was unmoved.
Even though blinds pose a clear and present danger to young children, an official spokesman said: “We understand that one or two young children die each year in the UK from blind cord strangulation. These are tragic accidents and our sympathies go to the families who have lost their children, however the Government does not believe a case has been made for the measure requested in the e-petition.
“The major concern is not the banning of the cords through regulation, but the millions of blinds with looped cords that are already in consumer’s homes.”
Those campaigning for a ban on all blinds with cords are, understandably, looking to the future, but with an estimated 250million window blinds already in UK homes and public buildings, a comrehensive ban will take years, perhaps decades, to have any effect. In the meantime, tragedy will continue to blight the lives of many parents.
We believe that the introduction of a new safety guideline for parents, which we have developed, is a solution. The guideline sets out a simple wrap-a-round test to assess all safety devices on the market. Basically, if you can wrap your hand round one of the cords hanging from a window bind, even if it isn’t a looped cord, then it could strangle a child.
In our test, devices such as cleats, tassels and tensioners have been found to be almost useless. The only device currently on the market to pass the test is WindowBlindSafe. It is the only simple and secure solution with a patented tamper-proof system of stowing and locking blind cords and chains.
A ban on cords might come tomorrow. WindowBlindSafe is the solution for today.
Window-Covering Makers Should Speed Rules, CPSC Says
Window-covering manufacturers should write tougher rules governing product designs as strangling deaths mount among small children, the chairman of the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission said. “A young child is likely to die this month in a window- cord incident,” Inez Tenenbaum said today at an industry meeting in Bethesda, Maryland. “A young child is likely to die every month that this standard is being worked on. No matter what the situation or circumstance is, these tragedies are preventable.” Window-blind manufacturers such as Hunter Douglas NV and retailers like J.C. Penney Co. are meeting at the agency’s Washington headquarters to map out a plan for bolstering voluntary safety rules through the American National Standards Institute, or ANSI. The group unveiled stricter requirements in September for Roman shades, which are drawn up from the bottom into a series of folds. The CPSC orchestrated one of the largest recalls in the agency’s history last December to fix more than 50 million Roman and roll-up blinds, covering all such products sold at retailers including Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Pottery Barn outlets owned by Williams-Sonoma Inc. and Restoration Hardware Inc. U.S. regulators received reports of five deaths and 16 near-strangulations in Roman shades since 2006 and three deaths involving roll-up blinds since 2001, the CPSC said in December. Voluntary Industry Standard A voluntary industry standard adopted by the institute in September falls short of what’s needed, according to consumer groups involved in the rule-writing process, including Parents for Window-Blind Safety and Consumers Union. That effort focused on adding a warning label to Roman shades and not cords in all types of products. “If they choose to eliminate all the known hazards, this will be the goal we’ve been pressing for the last eight years,” said Linda Kaiser, founder of Chicago-based Parents for Window- Blind Safety, whose daughter, Cheyenne Rose, died in a window- blind cord accident in 2002. Today’s meeting kicked off an effort to write tougher rules by next October, Ralph Vasami, executive director of the New York-based Window Covering Manufacturers Association, said in an interview. The effort will apply to all kinds of window coverings and will result in tests for preventing known hazards such as cords accessible by young children, he said. ‘Looking for Solutions’ “We were on a schedule driven by the CPSC to get enhancements out as quickly as possible,” Vasami said. “We’re looking for solutions.” The industry and the CPSC have been working on the same safety problems since the 1980s, said Carol Pollack-Nelson, an independent product-safety consultant from Rockville, Maryland, who served on the ANSI window-covering committee. Companies haven’t felt the pressure to act because consumers are used to cords and don’t consider them dangerous, she said. “The challenge of this product is it’s been around for a long time,” Pollack-Nelson said. “It’s like being afraid of your walls and your floors.”
Wednesday, 7 April 2010
Likening Window Blind Cords to Child Serial Killers « AreWindowBlindsSafe
You will have heard of killers such as Mary Bell, Myra Hindley, Ian Huntley or Jon Venables, but it’ll be a bombshell when the name of the latest person to contribute to a child’s death is revealed. It could be you.
You’ve probably read reams about Victoria Climbie or Carla Nicole Bone or Jasmin Beckford or Baby Peter, but it’s less likely you’ll recognise the names of Harrison Joyce or Muireann McLaughlin or Lillian Bagnall-Lambe. The glare of national publicity and public outrage has passed them by, yet their deaths were tragic, too.
Harrison was aged three, Muireann was two and Lillian just 16 months when they died.
Unlike those who were murdered, however, they didn’t die at the hands of cruel and despicable evil-doers. They died, instead, in happy family homes where their unsuspecting loved-ones never dreamed that a lethal killer was lurking unseen, waiting for an opportunity to strike.
In each case, the perpetrator was the cord of a window blind.
At first reading it may seem a little over the top to liken the death of children at the hands of murderers to that of window blind cords. But the point the article is trying to make is that children are dying because of the inherent dangers posed in the home by window blind cords. The article mentions that while the tragic deaths are reported, the incidents when the child is rescued before strangulation can occur are usually unreported and therefore may be much higher than we’ve previously thought.
In the US, legislation has been passed banning the manufacture of window blinds and shades with hanging cords due to the over 300 deaths of children since 1985. Here in the UK, however, as previously reported, the government has refused to institute any legislation on the production or fitting of window blinds, nor on the fitting of safety products to existing window blinds.
A spokesman said: “The major concern is not the banning of the cords through regulation, but the millions of blinds with looped cords that are already in consumers’ homes.
The Press and Journal picks up on this point with a great piece of logic;
That’s an interesting argument to proffer. It’s akin to saying that 2010 car safety standards cannot be introduced because of the millions of cars that are still on the roads having been built in the 1990s. It sounds to me as though no action is an easier path to take than tackling a potentially huge problem.
It is a huge problem and we believe something must be done. But first we need to unite our voices behind a campaign to raise awareness of this problem, of the lives that have been lost – and of the children who have been badly injured – due to the hanging cords of window blinds and shades.
Please register your support on our official website and on our Facebook Page.
Monday, 29 March 2010
Another Toddler Dies After Strangling on Window Blind Cord
A two-year-old Long Island boy died Saturday (2oth March 2010) after getting his neck caught in the cord of a window blind. According to local news reports, the boy was playing with another child when he became tangled in the cord. His father and medical professionals were unable to revive him.
The report continues as follows;
This sad event underscores the dangers that the cords on blinds and shades pose to young children. Last December, the Consumer Product Safety Commission and the Window Covering Safety Council joined together to “recall for repair” 50 million Roman shades and roll-up blinds. Since then the CPSC has announced the recall of 400,000 more shades and blinds. And a number of major retailers have joined the recall as well.
In the past twenty years there have been 200 fatalities from blind and shade cords, says the CPSC. Other groups say the number is higher. Parents for Window Blind Safety, an advocacy group, reports that a child dies every two weeks from strangulation on corded window treatments.
Read the story here.
Currently in the United States pressure has been forced on the Government to take notice of the needless deaths of babies and toddler each year through strangulation on window blind cords. However, the result is a massive recall of the window blinds and shades, leaving families with the choice of having no blinds at all, or replacing them with expensive cordless blinds
In the UK no such policy is in place, the Government publicly stating that it’s the responsibility of parents, blind manufacturers and fitters to ensure the safety of children. While this is a matter of common sense, the reality is very different in the home, with young children demonstrating time and again how quickly they can get into serious difficultly with the cords of window blinds and shades.
Please lend your support to our campaign to have a recognised safety device brought to market and fitting in all homes, businesses, nurseries, doctor’s waiting rooms, etc, where there are window blinds and shades present.
Monday, 22 March 2010
Meijer, Lutron recall blinds and shades
The report accurately details the problems with the window blinds and shades;
Strangulation can occur with roll-up blinds if the lifting loops slide off the side of the blind and a child's neck becomes entangled on the free-standing loop or if a child places his/her neck between the lifting loop and the roll-up blind material.
Strangulation can occur with Roman shades when a child places his/her neck between the exposed inner cord and the fabric on the backside of the blind or when a child pulls the cord out and wraps it around his/her neck.
Yet here in the UK there are no such plans to recall similar products that are in no way less dangerous than they are in North American homes. Neither are there plans to have a safety standard for such products. You're forced with either running the risk of strangulation or removing the blinds from your home.
Does this make sense?
Please let your support to our campaign for legislation and safety standards for window blinds and shades, follow us on Twitter and become a Fan on Facebook.
Thursday, 18 March 2010
Is Enough Being Done to Raise Awareness of the Dangers of Window Blinds?
Shopping for her nursery, Kelly Horvath bought a new window shade because its label advertised its child safety features. She later found her 16-month-old son dead in his crib, the shade’s cord wrapped around his neck, another young victim of what U.S. government records show are some of the deadliest recalled consumer products.
"It was the hardest thing I’ve had to go through in my life," said Horvath, a stay-at-home mom in Painesville, Ohio, about the death of her son, Josiah, in February 2007. "I just take it second by second, not even day by day."(read full article here)
The Government in America has failed to take definitive action on the deadly problem of hanging cords from window blinds and shades, even though over 500 children have died in their homes over the past 20 years. Pressure is mounting here in the UK for the Government to have clear legislation and approved safety products available to worried parents who are faced with the choice of having to remove blinds and shades from their home and the expense of replacing them with something safer.
In America manufacturers don’t want new government rules, according to this article. The blinds and shades industry says it has improved safety standards for window coverings and organized educational campaigns to warn about potential dangers.
While this may be true, children are still dying, as demonstrated by the tragic deaths of two children in Staffordshire last month (February 2010). Clear guidelines, safety standards, and safety products must be launched to the market here in the UK to prevent further needless deaths.
Join our Facebook Page to show your support for the campaign to make window blinds safe.
The Australian Government Has Recognised the Dangers
"These terrible tragedies highlight the need for parents and caregivers to be alert to the dangers posed by hanging blind and curtain cords that can create a loop that small children can hang themselves in," Mr Lawlor said.
"13 children have died in Australia after being strangled by cords since 2000.
"In the United States, more than 170 children have died from injuries associated with curtain and blind cords since 1991.
"The good news is that parents can do one simple thing to help prevent these tragedies."
Mr Lawlor has announced a 12 month long education campaign to raise parental awareness of the risks, injuries and deaths caused by hanging blind and curtain cords.
Read more here.
In the UK pressure is mounting on the Government to act in a similar way by publicly recognising the dangers and instituting legislation to address them.
