Flame-Retardant-Free Car Seats Are Getting Easier to Find. Here's Why.

Long story short, a very old federal rule that doesn’t really make sense anymore, but that’s proven difficult to undo. 

Back in 1971, the regulators who oversee car safety—now known as the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, or NHTSA—issued a safety standard requiring the fabric and foam of car interiors to be able to either extinguish or considerably slow down an open flame if they came into contact with one. The law was not actually meant to prevent a fire that started as a result of a mechanical or electrical failure under the car’s hood. Rather, it was designed to protect the driver and passengers from a fire that started inside the cabin. (This was at a time when striking a match to light a cigarette while driving was a much more common activity than it is today.)

While research is ongoing, some flame-retardant chemicals are associated with a number of potential health concerns, including lowered IQ and hyperactivity in children, as well as cancer, hormone disruption, and decreased fertility in adults.

Studies of the potential health harms from chemical flame retardants have been mounting for years, but one relatively recent scientific study made the evidence even harder to ignore. Researchers at Duke University and the Green Science Policy Institute conducted an experiment to measure the presence of chemicals in the air of car interiors by having their owners literally collect the chemicals onto absorbent silicone kits. Volunteers across the country hung the kits from their rearview mirrors while driving their old cars or their new cars, in cold temperatures or in hot temperatures. 

The scientists collected and analyzed a wide range of data from 155 silicone kits placed in recently manufactured vehicles across 22 auto brands, and published their findings in 2024. They found that about 99 percent of all cars, both old and new, contained tris(1-chloro-2-propyl) phosphate (TCIPP), a flame-retardant chemical that the U.S. National Toxicology Program is currently investigating as a potential carcinogen. In addition, most cars also contained two other chemicals that California’s Proposition 65 characterizes as carcinogenic, and some chemicals that have been linked to reproductive harm and lowered IQ. 

The researchers matched the chemicals absorbed from the air to chemicals they found in the foam of the car interiors. They also showed that the off-gassing of the chemicals from the foam to the air was much worse in summer temperatures than it was in winter, showing that heat can exacerbate the problem. 

If you have been using a car seat treated with chemical flame retardants, it’s important to keep in mind that research on the health impacts of low-level exposure is ongoing. Keep using a car seat even if you are concerned about these chemicals, because a child in a moving vehicle who isn’t in a car seat is at severe risk of injury or death. As a parent, you are doing the right thing by putting your child in a properly installed car seat for every ride. 

In the meantime, there are some precautions you can take to lower kids’ exposure to these chemicals, like: 

• Open the car’s doors and windows to air the car out for a few seconds before putting your kids in their seats.
• Vacuum the interior regularly to reduce the dust where the chemicals sometimes settle.
• Wash your hands and your kids’ hands after being in the car and before eating.
• Lower the temperature of the car (which can reduce off-gassing of chemicals) by trying to park in the shade or buying a sun blocker for the windshield.

If you do have the option to look for a car seat that’s naturally flame-retardant, without added chemicals, you’re in luck. The child car seat market has made great strides in recent years in developing new types of fabric, CR experts say.

“Each year we see more options for flame-retardant-free car seats and in some cases, it’s the only option offered by a manufacturer, which is great for consumers,” said Emily A. Thomas, PhD, associate director of auto safety at CR.

CR reached out to over 20 leading car seat companies to ask them about their current and future flame-retardant-free offerings, and about how customer feedback and demand have influenced their plans over time. 

While it’s encouraging to see progress toward more chemical-free car seat options in the market, safety experts also say there’s even more work to be done to make clean and nontoxic car seats the (affordable) norm for every family. 

It’s still the case that naturally flame-retardant fabrics tend to be more expensive than fabrics treated with chemical flame retardants. Based on CR infant seat ratings from June 2026, the average cost of an infant car seat free of flame retardants is about $70 more than the average of all infant seats in the category. And some big car seat brands don’t offer any flame-retardant-free options at all.

Safety shouldn’t be a luxury that only some families can afford, CR experts say.

“Just as every child deserves a car seat that keeps them safe in a crash, every child deserves protection from hazardous chemicals—regardless of their family’s economic circumstances,” says CR’s Wallace. “We’re glad to see progress by car seat manufacturers, and look forward to working collaboratively with them to extend chemical-free options across the market at all price points.”

Given the health ramifications and the lack of effectiveness of chemical flame retardants, Consumer Reports’ safety advocates, along with many other like-minded groups, have been pressing the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) for years to revise its outdated rule requiring them. 

Advocates have some reason to hope that the standard may change to better reflect the reality of vehicle fire risk. Similar rules that had previously made flame-retardant chemicals commonplace in couches, cribs, and children’s pajamas have already been changed, so perhaps this one could be next. In the UK, a recent change removed children’s products, including infant car seats, from its flammability regulations altogether.

“This nearly 53-year-old standard does not have a proven fire-safety benefit,” the advocates wrote in a letter to NHTSA deputy administrator Sophie Shulman in June 2024. “Yet, to meet this standard, manufacturers add cancer-causing and neurotoxic flame retardant chemicals to seat foam and other materials—including those in children’s car seats. This exposes vehicle occupants to harm, particularly infants and children whose brains and bodies are still developing.”

The advocates urged the agency to change the flammability standard to require only a “smolder” test, rather than an “open flame” one, which is what the state of California successfully did when revising its own safety standard for upholstered furniture and baby products. Over 44,000 of our readers signed a petition supporting the modernization of the standard, which CR and partner organizations also delivered to the agency’s door.