Whirlpool announces washing machine recall

Well you can always design a better mouse trap… Long ago, I worked with an ex-Hoover engineer. He always stressed that they had to come up with reliable designs that would be simple and cheap to make. At our place, he could indulge himself with more sophisticated designs, because we were usually only hand building a few for our laboratory.

Thanks Abby. It seems obvious that heat pump dryers are safer, but the only reference to safety I’ve found relates to the lower temperature being safer for clothes.

At least it’s encouraging that most of the ‘Best Buy’ dryers are now heat pump models.

Safety issues other than the heater could be a factor in any tumble dryer catching fire. Other components might fail, the more complex heat pump mechanism might become faulty, contaminated clothes might be an issue…….. heat pump, condenser or vented. If it is shown that all “conventional” dryers from all manufacturers have caught fire because of a lint/heater problem then there would be a case. Otherwise I’d suggest this is a problem that most manufacturers have successfully dealt with by design.

I suggested earlier that if we are to demand every available safety feature as a response to a problem, then all those as “extras” on cars – collision avoidance, distance maintaining, lane keeping etc would be required as standard.

Fires in domestic electrical appliances are currently being considered by an international working group. I’ve several times asked Which? if they can tell us what progress is being made…….

You could fit a lower temperature heater in a “conventional” dryer if it was demonstrated that all such dryers were at risk. It would avoid the complexity and cost of the heat pump. Recovering the cost by energy saving can take many years of course, depending on usage. I use mine rarely, having a clothes horse and a garden with a washing line.

I think it would be useful to establish that heat pump dryers are a safer option.

Like many people, I do not have or need a dryer, but those living in flats etc. find them useful.

When your old dryer was designed, little thought may have been given to what happens in use or as a result of wear & tear. Common sense would suggest that safety tests for products would include well used examples, but I am not aware of any requirement to do this. From what I have read, lint often accumulates unseen within tumble dryers.

Many people do register washing machines, tumble dryers etc., but I wonder how many register the dodgy small electrical goods they buy online – such as the Christmas lights and phone chargers identified recently by Which? I hoped that the OPSS would devise a system that would enable people to be notified of recalled products, as DVSA does with vehicle problems.

I have repeatedly suggested that appropriate electrical products should be automatically registered at the point of sale, as a mandatory requirement. Then (most) owners could be contacted if a problem arose. How many would respond is open to question but it seems to me to be an obvious step forward.

Does anyone agree? Or shall we continue as we are?

It might help if, when a product investigation takes place after a serious incident, such as of Indesit dryers (and the Grenfell fr/freezer) that it is done by an accredited independent test laboratory (BSI for example) for the OPSS and the report is automatically made public. We seem too concerned to hide stuff from the public when their interests are involved – the HS2 report for example.

I’m afraid the OPSS is doing very little overall. Buried away on their website is a record of all their actions/outcomes over their first year. This amounts to just 13 actions, 12 of which involved the same piece of legislation to do with responsibly sourcing wood and involved them simply emailing 12 companies to remind them to comply. They have been commissioning reports from experts (e.g. at Trading Standards) but these tend to get lost in their internal processes. I used to work at BEIS and this does not surprise me at all. You’re right of course, that is exactly what they should be doing. Why don’t you write to the head at OPSS and ask him if they will instigate such a system: [edited] . He should be keen to help, going by what he said in a recent interview: “What motivates me is that this is about protecting people – particularly the most vulnerable people. I think that’s what drives a lot of people in this area.”

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As said, BEIS/OPSS tried to conceal the report they commissioned on the Grenfell fridge-freezer. They did not tender for it, either, which is against government procurement rules. BEIS/OPSS is also responsible for the Furniture and Furnishings (Fire) (Safety) Regulations 1988. They were also given a hard time by the Environmental Audit Committee recently about these Regulations, mainly because they themselves proved 5 years ago that they don’t work! Which means every home in the country contains sofas and mattresses that are flammable when we’re led to believe they aren’t. They’re also stuffed full of flame retardant chemicals which are doing nothing for fire safety, damaging our health, but making huge profits for the chemical industry.

I have frequently suggested that problem of fires in white goods could be addressed by replacing plastic and glass in cases with metal, which could contain a fire.

At present the Food Standards Agency does a reasonable job of keeping an eye on food safety and anyone can sign up to receive notifications. Many of these are about undeclared allergens, which are irrelevant to most of us but important to those with severe allergies. Recent notifications of recalls and food alerts can be found here: https://www.tradingstandards.uk/consumers/product-recalls-and-safety-notices I’m not completely happy with the way that food safety is managed, and budgets have been cut, but I think you have a point when comparing the food and appliance safety, Em.

The Whirlpool recall featured on this website within a day of it being announced, but I have not seen anything about recalls of phone chargers, Christmas tree lights and power banks following the Which? reports of numerous dangerous items on online marketplaces.

You’re right about food standards. To give one example, the Food Standards Agency has the legal right to demand to see the client history of test houses. This is to expose companies who have a product they know is borderline so just keep going from test house to test house until they get a pass. However, this right does not exist for most product safety. I know for a fact that dodgy furniture makers produce sofas/mattresses that are borderline fire safe and simply hawk them round the test houses until they get a pass. Some fabric producers even have their own test houses!

Many manufacturers in many industries have their own test laboratories, essential for helping development and quality control. These are fine particularly when they are part of an official and audited scheme that tracks the quality of their output; ours was audited by BSI. Apart from the value to the company it would be impossible to provide such facilities for every manufacturer externally. It also has huge benefits to the staff in the company; one advantage I believe was lost by Which? when they contracted out their testing.

Malcolm: I agree. However, the fire tests for fabrics and fillings for upholstered furniture are very straightforward and many test houses around the country (and overseas) will run them. They too have to be monitored, in this case by UKAS. The problem is that the fire tests for furniture are not representative of finished products and are not accurate enough, leaving a pretty wide margin, or at least perceived margin, which allows all kinds of skullduggery to take place. Which was one of the reasons industry resisted so strongly the new furniture fire tests put together five years ago (but blocked ever since): because they contained no margin of error and were totally accurate to finished products.

I hope there is a way you can report your concerns, Brian.

I would be interested how the potential benefits and risks of flame retardant chemicals are evaluated. We spend about a third of our lives in bed, rather close to a mattress.

It’s somewhat frustrating. All the evidence that these regulations don’t work is on BEIS’s own website and remains unchallenged. They’ve also had a select committee tell them to get on with it yet they’re doing nothing (except covering their backs).

The benefits/risks of flame retardants is a very contentious area. The FR industry produces reports that are meant to show their effectiveness. But there are many, many papers that demonstrate their toxicity. They used to claim FRs give you 12-14 mins escape time in a fire but never provided any proof. In late 2017, tests at UCLAN showed it’s a minute at most and that’s with regulations that work. There are lots of videos on YouTube made by UK fire services which show for example a typical fire started in a mattress (full of FRs that are supposed to prevent/slow down fires) has the entire room ablaze in under 3 mins. Perhaps this is why the FR industry changed their tune when testifying to the EAC earlier this year – now claiming their products give you 4 mins escape time; also unproved, of course, i.e. they make it up as they go along.

Oh, and for nearly 30 years the FR industry claimed that their products are responsible for the 50 or so lives saved per year by the Furniture Regulations. Unfortunately for them these estimates (made by a FR funded university) were based on the assumption the Regulations work. We proved in 2014 that they don’t which means it’s not possible to say that ANY lives at all are saved from fires by FRs. But as you say we’re all spending a third of our lives breathing them in while sleeping; well, more than that since their in our sofas too. Well, I’m not any longer since I’ve bought sofa/mattresses that do not contain FRs.

I would have hoped a university would have given a competent and objective assessment.

Quite apart from the questions over effectiveness of fire retardants, the benefit/risk question is difficult to answer. Maybe smoke alarms in each room, preferably interlinked, might be a better option than treating furnishings with chemicals.

This Convo really has departed off topic – “Whirlpool announces washing machine recall”.
However, Brian has raised an important topic. Perhaps he, or someone, would introduce a Convo on furnishing regulations and the problems associated with them.

Furniture is not, as far as I can see, a topic tested or discussed by Which? except, for some reason, mattresses – unless I’ve overlooked something. Perhaps it should be, given the safety issues involved, both toxicity and fire – upholstered furniture, fabrics for curtains, for example.

@abbysempleskipper – what is Which?’s view, Abby?

Okay but those details are in the public domain.

Agreed. But the problem is that all universities now are funded by industry. They’ll tell you that doesn’t affect their research but my experience where flame retardants are concerned is that it very clearly does. Sometimes this is obvious; other times it’s subtle. For instance, one university wrote a damning report into the toxicity of FRs in furniture fires. And while this is almost certainly the case, they are at the same time promoting so-called “green” FRs. Why is that an issue? Well, in this case because the same researchers are supporting the current furniture regulations even though they don’t work – the suspicion being that they want to keep the market open for their green FRs, instead of doing the right thing which is promoting new regulations that won’t require the use of ANY FRs.

If you are around after Christmas I’d be happy to discuss this in The Lobby, rather than in a Convo about an important recall. Hopefully we will get a Convo on the topic because exposing people to potentially harmful chemicals is unwise, particularly if they are ineffective. It will be interesting to read published research on the subject. Any research that has been funded by industry should state this. A lot of university research is funded by industry, but certainly not all of it. Having worked in research I can claim some knowledge, even though it is a bit out of date.

I’m new here so will check out the Lobby; happy to discuss all this there. I take it Which? decides on new Convos? Hopefully you’re right, that not all university research is funded by industry (even if the university receives funding from industry overall). But where the chemical industry is concerned, there’s quite a bit of “owning the science” going on. This is where industry pays both sides of the argument over a particular chemical, ensuring that its side wins out. This happened recently with 3M in Minnesota. A well-respected toxicologist spoke out against the chemicals they were putting in Scotchgard (which also gets sprayed on many of our sofas as a stain-repellent, which just makes them more flammable and more toxic! – Something else that Which? should be advising consumers about). 3M came up with replacement chemicals that he approved of. Then the press did a raid on 3M and discovered that this guy had always been in their pay. He claimed he lived on just a professor’s salary but turned out he had $20m in his bank account.

Newsnight did a good article on all this a couple of years back (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovcu2GY_yrg and https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-42343237) which showed how first in the States then here, Big Tobacco was facing pressure from the government to bring in self-extinguishing cigs because of all the home fires caused by them. They didn’t want to inconvenience their customers and Big Chem came up with the solution: douse everybody’s furniture with flame retardants instead! Win-win. A few years back and all US and EU cigs became self-extinguishing but guess what our furniture is still stuffed with flame retardants. Also, we now have far more and more effective smoke alarms, and a huge drop in home smoking yet flame retardant levels in our furniture are actually higher than they’ve ever been.

You can suggest a new Convo to Which? I’d suggest emailing them with a proposal and reasons. which@which.co.uk. One of the Convo managers has also, no doubt, seen the suggestion here.

I’d forgotten about this Convo – https://conversation.which.co.uk/home-energy/toxic-chemicals-teflon-mary-creagh/

Mary is no longer an MP, so will this topic will figure in a new Environmental Audit Committee?

Let’s move over there. Here is a document worth reading: https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201719/cmselect/cmenvaud/1805/1805.pdf

I don’t have much time for politicians as a whole but it’s a real shame that Mary lost her seat. I can’t really go into the details but let’s just say she went way beyond the basics over the issue of toxic chemicals in our products. Emma Dent Coad also lost her seat; another huge shame. She was on the EAC too and worked closely with Mary on Grenfell-related issues. We’ll have to wait and see who’s on the new EAC.

The story of that inquiry is interesting. I was at a meeting of CHEM Trust that Mary Creagh was chairing. I said a few things about the Furniture Regulations and flame retardants, and after the meeting she came straight up to me wanting to know more. I happened to be standing next to an environmental journalist I’d worked with on the subject some time back and he said to Mary that this is the greatest-ever scandal in UK product history. She asked the two of us to write her a paper that could be considered for an Inquiry.

We did so and sent it to her. After reading it she was being interviewed by a colleague of my journalist friend and he asked her what she’d made of our paper. She said that it had turned her prematurely grey hair even greyer; was a “real shocker”, but she thought it might be “too big” for the EAC. This was disappointing of course but they did in fact launch an inquiry, just widening the scope to “toxic chemicals in everyday life”. However, most of the focus of the inquiry turned out to be on furniture and flame retardants.

It’s worth watching/reading some of the sessions, e.g. K Kannah from Lanxess, formerly Chemtura. Chemtura/Lanxess is one of the big 3 worldwide flame retardant producers. Mary hit him hard, pointing out that in the US, Chemtura had bribed burns specialists, set up phoney fire safety groups (to push their products) and spent over $20m on a lawsuit to prevent Califonia/US changing its furniture standards in such a way that would remove flame retardants in US furniture. “Are you doing the same sort of thing here?” she asked K (as he likes to be known). “Not to my knowledge,” was the reply, which raised a chuckle of two.

I know K pretty well from the days when he used to try and persuade me not to change the UK’s furniture regs (also depleting their market). I spoke to him before his EAC appearance and asked him what his company was doing about all that DecaBDE (a toxic flame retardant now banned) that is still in millions of UK sofas and mattresses. His reply was typical of the industry: “No hospital has ever ascribed a death to a flame retardant chemical.” Well, that’s okay then.

Sounds like a good idea.

Abby – The EU publishes weekly reports about recalls etc that are added to its Rapex database: https://ec.europa.eu/consumers/consumers_safety/safety_products/rapex/alerts/?event=main.listNotifications&lng=en

Which? does report on some of the problems but it would be good to have a user-friendly list of problems. The CTSI/Trading Standards list is useful in this respect but the information is removed too soon, in my view.

As I mentioned above, I have not seen any recalls following the Which? discovery of dangerous products being sold via marketplaces and Amazon etc. seem to be doing nothing. Does Which? push for recalls?

Agree, if you look at the furniture flammability regulations, it should be an open and shut case. The proof that they do not work in up to 90% cases is actually on BEIS’s website! Yet BEIS gave in to industry pressure and blocked its own safety changes (if they’d come in, then the chemical industry would have lost millions per year and the furniture industry its much-treasured trade barrier that the UK regs create). A select committee has reprimanded BEIS and told them to fix things. They’ve essentially refused. And that’s pretty much the end of the story unless the public get involved.

Well, the fire services, too. A new contaminants group has just formed up within the London Fire Brigade, run by firefighters who are angry that their management has been keeping from them the full truth about the toxicity of UK home fires. One of their aims is to get flame retardants out of furniture. And one way do that is put pressure on BEIS officials who, believe me, do not have any excuse for not acting other than they’re protecting industry profits and themselves for failing to put things right 5 years ago.

I agree with Which?’s recommendation in your “Strengthening the consumer product safety regime” report, that there needs to be an independent consumer product safety body. The fact that we don’t already have one in the UK says much. What’s happened is that in fairly recent times what were organisations more connected to the government and less to industry have all been privatised and commercialisted, wholly or mostly: the British Standards Institute, the Building Research Establishment, the Laboratory of the Government Chemist, the Furniture Industry Research Association and so on. What’s worse is that all of these give consumers the impression that they are still independent when in fact their primary motive now is making cash. BSI is a good example: if say you are a small company and you want to know what standards you need to apply to your product, phone BSI and they will do their utmost to sell you a bunch of standards, at a few hundred quid a time. What they won’t tell you is to phone a test house who will tell you the same thing for nothing, since they are the people who actually use the standards.

Their reputation for “independence” and the government’s failure to establish anything that actually is, means you get the situation for example where BRE is given the contract (a very expensive one) to test cladding following the Grenfell Tower fire, when BRE board members were sitting on other boards of companies contracted to refurbish Grenfell Tower and in one case also while being fire safety advisor to the government, signed off the same cladding as being safe before the fire!

Also, what is consumer product safety doing in the Department for Business/Office of Product Safety and Standards? It’s already bad enough that many BSI standards-making committees are dominated by business. But I’ve seen first hand how business also works on officials at BEIS/OPSS to make legislative decisions in the interests of business, not consumers.

It may be that a specific supplier’s component in the door mechanism has been found to be the cause of the problem and it’s use traced to a specific range of serial numbers. If the implication is that Whirlpool knowingly continued to use a faulty or under-specified component that could cause a fire then I doubt (in hope) that is the case. However, when Indesit possibly concealed the fault in their dryers for so many years………

I suggest we need a proper enquiry into the circumstances surrounding these faults, independently carried out but funded by the manufacturer, to establish whether or not negligence, incompetence, prior knowledge was involved. Not just for Whirlpool but for any similar incident.

Manufacturers don’t always use the same parts when assembling their products. For example, two computers with the same model number may contain different makes of RAM, hard disk and power supply module. If there was a problem with a power supply, the manufacturer could recall only the affected computers. Keeping a record of what goes into each computer means that they just have to recall affected ones rather than all of them.

There may well be prior knowledge because a decision to issue a voluntary recall will be based on the number of incidents and their severity.

Congratulations and spare a thought for those running out of clean socks.

Let’s hope Santa will be lenient to those whose stockings have a little more aroma than usual.

Maybe Santa will be delivering an unusually high number of new washing machines…

Ironically, the spokesperson chosen to break the news about the recall and delay in action is Jeff Noel. I remember when Hotpoint was regarded as a decent brand.

“Manufacturers don’t always use the same parts when assembling their products. For example, two computers with the same model number may contain different makes of RAM, hard disk and power supply module. If there was a problem with a power supply, the manufacturer could recall only the affected computers. Keeping a record of what goes into each computer means that they just have to recall affected ones rather than all of them.”

Absolutely. Any production line worth its salt has Batch Travellers to record such nuances – and a glance at their Quality Control Policy (and referred documents) would reveal whether Whirlpool and subsidiaries abide by this. I am sure they would have something of this ilk in place to enable them to do a “card sort” and identify every serial number that has rogue switches.

The report by a customer where the technician identified a blackened door switch in another model should alert the powers that be to their issue possibly being wider spread.

I am amazed that any input transducer on the door needs to have more than logic levels – or that the lock itself more than a low power bidirectional pair of coils on a solenoid.

It’s amazing how we have ‘progressed’.

Sadly it’s not just cheap products that can have problems. Recall the major recall of Bosch/Neff/Siemens dishwashers because a component could set light to the plastic fascia. Had the machines had metal fascias a fire could have been contained, making a recall unnecessary.

Hi Ann – The recall I mentioned was an old one, but you will still find a link to the recall on the home page of the Bosch website: https://www.bosch-home.co.uk There is a link to the same information on the Neff and Siemens websites. Some manufacturers may hide their responsibilities but – as you can see – others behave responsibly.

At present the Hotpoint website has a link to the problem with washing machines but the one relating to fire risk dryers has been removed, even though many unmodified machines may still be in use. I don’t have much confidence in Whirlpool, the owners of the Hotpoint brand.

There has been a total recall of Indesit et al dryers so clearly there will be no more out there needing to be replaced or modified…………. At least, that seems to be what the demand of government and consumer groups require and expect. Except you cannot recall all products if you do not know who owns them, and if those who do are not informed or don’t bother to check on line or read Which?.

Until we set up a system of compulsory registration for appropriate products we will keep facing this situation and burying our heads in the sand. Something must be done…….