Dressers Exempt From Industry Safety Standard Fail Consumer Reports' Tests

Even though a piece of furniture is low and seems stable—perhaps a dresser only three drawers high—it might still pose a deadly tip-over risk to small children in your home, a Consumer Reports investigation has found.

Right now, dressers sold in the U.S. are not governed by a mandatory stability standard and are not required to pass any premarket tests. The industry operates under a strictly voluntary safety standard, and it is up to individual manufacturers to decide whether they will meet the standard or not.

The treatment of shorter dressers represents a potentially deadly loophole in the industry’s standard, which says dressers taller than 30 inches should stay upright with 50 pounds of weight hanging from any open drawer when the other drawers are closed and the dresser is empty. Dressers that are 30 inches tall and under are exempt.

The need is urgent because every 17 minutes an unsecured piece of furniture, appliance, or television tips over and injures—or kills—someone in the U.S., according to the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the government agency with oversight of household products. And research shows that dressers and other clothing storage units are particularly lethal, accounting for at least 206 reported deaths since the year 2000.

Most of the victims are children younger than 6.

The nation’s furniture tip-over epidemic is particularly insidious because the danger is all around us, inside our homes—unless parents, grandparents, and other caregivers use special kits to strap or anchor furniture to walls.

But some parents whose children were killed in a tip-over incident have told CR they didn’t know about the need for furniture anchors or straps until after their children died.

Brett Horn, whose son, Charlie, died in 2007 after a 30-inch dresser fell on him, says he could not have imagined that the low dresser in his little boy’s room could end up being so dangerous.

That day, Charlie, 2½ and a triplet, woke up from a nap in the bedroom he shared with his brother. Investigators believe Charlie opened the bottom-left drawer of the 30-inch-tall dresser in his room, and while it is unclear exactly what happened, the dresser tipped over onto him.

Charlie’s “body cushioned the fall of the dresser so there was no loud noise when the dresser fell,” the CPSC incident report says. It was so quiet that it didn’t even wake his brother from his nap in the same room.

When the babysitter went into the bedroom to retrieve the brothers, she found Charlie underneath the dresser, unresponsive. He did not survive.

In addition to the family’s initial grief and shock, Horn told CR in a recent interview that he was stunned to discover that the dresser at fault was the shorter one, not the taller, bigger one that was also in the bedroom.

“The fact that that dresser could fall over on one of my kids never even crossed my mind,” said Horn, who on the day of the incident asked his brother-in-law to remove the deadly dresser. “When I got home that evening, I thought they took the wrong dresser. I still had assumed, like a lot of parents would assume, that it was a large dresser that had tipped over with a huge impact and killed Charlie. But it wasn’t. It was a dresser that was only 30 inches high—three drawers high and two drawers wide. . . . I never dreamed that anything like that could happen and hurt my child.”

Many safety proponents believe that even if manufacturers do meet the current voluntary standard, it’s not sufficient to protect against tip-overs because the testing isn’t rigorous or creative enough.

“Stronger standards that hold up under real-world scenarios are what’s needed,” says Nancy Cowles, executive director of Kids in Danger, a nonprofit child safety organization.

According to industry trade group the American Home Furnishings Alliance, when the standard was first established in 2000 it was focused on furniture thought to be most likely to be involved in tip-over incidents: pieces taller than 30 inches.

But because furniture designs and styles have evolved in the 18 years since the standard was created, many, including CR, are reevaluating the need for expanding the types of dressers that need to be put through safety testing.

The CPSC was supposed to issue a proposed rule earlier this year addressing the tip-over hazard posed by clothing storage units, like dressers, potentially including those 30 inches tall or less. In an official notice requesting comments on the subject, the agency said that “there have been incidents involving [clothing storage units] that are 30 inches tall or less. These products may present a hazard particularly to children because low-height [dressers] may be intended for children and these products can weigh as much as 100 pounds.”

When CR reached out to Ann Marie Buerkle, acting chairman of the CPSC, to ask whether she is in favor of expanding the voluntary standard to include shorter dressers, she said that she “strongly supports the voluntary standards activities underway” and looks “forward to hearing more of the standard’s development, including clothing storage units 30 inches and under.”

That said, the CPSC’s recently approved operating plan shows that the agency is no longer planning on issuing either a proposed rule or a final rule during the fiscal year ending in September 2019 but instead is focusing on collecting more data through testing.

We notified all the companies whose products failed our 50-pound test. All those that responded said they meet current voluntary standards, which currently do not apply to these shorter dressers. Wayfair, which sold the Drumnacole, said that in addition to removing the product from its website in response to our findings, it is also working with the supplier of the product, which said it will look to strengthen its safety guidelines and make changes as needed.

We noted that four dressers that failed our 50-pound test—one from Pottery Barn Kids, one from Nexera, and two from South Shore—did not come with furniture straps, which serve as anti-tip restraints, and are required, as part of the voluntary standard, to accompany dressers taller than 30 inches. So a parent buying one of these shorter dressers would have to buy aftermarket furniture anchors.

Some manufacturers told CR they test all their products regardless of the exemption. Laura Wood, international sourcing coordinator at Lexington Home Brands, says that the company tests dressers for stability irrespective of their height. “Fundamentally we believe that an item should be inherently stable,” Wood says. “If it is not, it is not serving its intended purpose. Meaning if you can’t open a drawer and put clothing in it without it falling over, that is a problem.”

CR’s testing also illustrated, yet again, that a dresser’s stability is not obvious to the naked eye because it is not contingent on any one characteristic or design element. Many factors contribute to a dresser’s stability—for example, its overall weight and depth, whether or not it has a back weight, and its drawer extension length. Therefore, it is not easy—or even necessarily possible—for consumers to discern which dressers are unsteady and which ones are safer.

There is something you can do now to help prevent tip-overs at home: Anchor your furniture to the wall.

Note that this may require you to buy anti-tip restraints separately from your furniture purchase because there is no expectation that shorter dressers—which are not covered by the voluntary standard—will be sold with the additional hardware.

So it’s up to you to make sure you have an appropriate anchor or strap, and attach it to the wall and your furniture—no matter the height or size of the dresser or whether you bought it new or received it used. It requires extra steps and extra effort, but it is worth it.