Home Fire Danger from Consumer Electronics

Home fire safety is a big deal. In the United States there is a good record of home fire safety and various governmental and private testing companies make sure the products we own are safe. Many products are labeled with logo's and declarations of safety by testing agencies like Underwriters Laboratories and TUV Rheinland. When we encounter a product that is not safe, sometimes the results are disastrous.

Consumer electronics contain many parts that can throw off a spark including resistors, diodes, transistors and capacitors. Basic overloads or component failure can cause a condition producing small fires within your TV or stereo. Voltage surges because of lightning or power company problems are one of the primary causes of electronic part failure. A voltage spike may cause an instantaneous failure or a delayed (or latent) malfunction of these components.

Whenever an electronic part malfunctions, it could simply stop conducting electricity or open the circuit it is in or it might short the circuit. Short circuits might cause excessive heating of the part in question or surrounding circuits. This over heating may cause a tiny fire within your electronic device and is often seen outside the cabinet as a puff of smoke as well as bad smell coming from the device.

It is essential that this tiny bit of fire can not be utilized to ignite any adjoining combustible material and create a more substantial and more dangerous fire. In American televisions, the plastic cabinets are manufactured from fire resistant material and even though you can burn a hole in the cabinet with a torch, the fire goes out once the torch is taken away.

Manufacturing consumer electronics that can't catch fire and burn outside of the cabinet seems not to be a requirement in the United States. We are unknowingly subject to bad engineering, cost cutting manufacturing and testing by testing companies that don't test for possible fire threats. Since these products catch fire in low numbers and sometimes the cause of a residential home fire is undetermined, some of these badly designed and shabbily tested electronic devices go undiscovered and may be lurking within your home.

The question is; Would you want to know if one of the products in your home had even the slightest potential for starting your house on fire? If consumer electronics could be made so they literally cannot start your house on fire, would you not want to purchase those products? Would you sleep much better knowing that your consumer electronics cannot catch fire, or maybe probably not catch fire. Personally, I choose products which cannot catch fire.

There is a internet site where a customer that had a 'whole house' audio unit catch fire within his home and he details his experience with the manufacturer, Russound and the testing agency TUV Rheinland. The Russound CAV6.6 caught fire in his home and burned outside the cabinet. He was able to extinguish the fire using a fire extinguisher, but if he had not been home, his home and family might have been lost.

Rather than admit there was clearly an issue with the product, a Russound executive threatened to sue the customer if he told anybody about the fire. There was a CPSC recall of the product, but the approved fix for the CAV audio unit left the combustible material exposed to all the components that can burn up. Russound and TUV Rheinland instead decided to place a fuse in line with just one component that can discharge a spark.

Neither Russound nor the testing agency, TUV Rheinland examined the Russound CAV6.6 device that caught fire prior to proclaiming the defect and prescribing a remedy. The question is: Would you sleep better with consumer electronics that cannot catch fire, or products like those manufactured by Russound and tested by TUV Rheinland that probably will not catch fire? You choose. Additional information is available at the It's On Fire Web Site