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Flames have been a hazard since man first discovered fire and while careless cooking cannot be blamed for the extinction of the dinosaurs, it was certainly responsible for the key event of 1666 - the Great Fire of London.
Thomas Farynor, baker to King Charles II, had his bakery in Pudding Lane in London. On the night of 2 September 1666, around 1am, a servant awoke to find the house in flames. The baker’s family escaped but a terrified maid was trapped in the blaze and the fire eventually destroyed around 80% of the city. The death toll was remarkably low – around 16 people are thought to have perished and the city was rebuilt to a safer standard. The cause of the blaze was traced to an unattended stove that had set alight the timber frame of the building.
Cooker hobs being left unattended are still one of the main causes of domestic fires and occasionally even fatalities. Contributory factors are reckoned to be forgetfulness (in the older population) or intoxication (in the younger) with chip pans a particular risk.
The UK has seen a declining death rate, due in part to the advent of the deep fat fryer and oven chips - a dry fire in the oven cavity may damage the oven but does not set the kitchen alight.
European efforts
Over the years there have been many public information campaigns and recent changes in cooking habits with the availability of more convenience foods also seems to be having an effect.
In 2003, the Scandinavian countries raised the issue of cooker safety with the EU Commission but a paucity of data meant that their call for a new safety standard for cooker hobs did not go ahead. CECED, the trade association for European domestic appliance manufacturers, sponsored some research which looked at both product solutions and other options, such as smoke and motion detectors. Its 2005 report concluded that more work was needed and referred to research from US manufacturers which suggested that it would be difficult for a device built into the hob to reduce the risk of fire without a serious drop in performance.
In 2008, Norway proposed a change in the safety standards based on research data from Finland, which had seen a big rise in the number of cooker fire accidents in 2004 that has since stayed fairly constant. The reduction in the Finnish tax on alcohol in 2004 was one suggestion as to why this might have happened!
CECED commissioned some research to see if controlling the temperature of oil in pans could limit the number of fires. The Norwegian proposal was to limit the temperature of 10mm of sunflower oil in a pan to around 265°C (within the flashpoint of 316°C). However it was found that existing hob technology could not keep the oil within these limits without an unacceptable decline in cooking performance. Even on an induction hob with electronic controls, if the pans were not absolutely flat, a fire could still occur. Plus the cooking time was much longer and meat, in particular, ended up more like leather than steak.
The industry is not happy about the idea of making a ‘super-safe’ product that cannot cook, and even at the suggested temperatures it would still be possible for the oil to catch fire since used cooking oil has a lower flashpoint.
In some parts of Scandinavia, kitchens are fitted with a wall detector that switches off power to the hob if it senses too high a temperature. But there are a lot of false alarms. Such a system might be acceptable in sheltered housing where users might view a limit on their range of cooking options as a trade-off for not having to worry about forgetfulness.
Recently the EU Commission group looking at the Low Voltage Directive prepared a draft mandate for CENELEC, the European standards body, to work on a solution. The CENELEC group, looking at standards for vulnerable persons, proposed setting up a multi-disciplinary group with experts in appliance controls, detector design and wiring installation to look at the options.
At AMDEA we are talking to the London Fire Brigade about their views on the causes of cooker top fires. In particular, we are discussing whether water mist fire suppressions systems could be part of an integrated system.
But at the end of the day it may be that there is a limit to what product designers can do to protect people from themselves.
