New Smoke Alarm Technology
Forty years ago, people had 17 minutes to escape their home in the event of a fire. Today, fire is faster due to synthetic fabrics in furniture, lighter construction materials, and open floor plans, leaving people with three minutes or less to escape. Every one of these minutes counts and smoke alarms can give people the earliest warning possible that there’s a fire, so they can get out quickly and safely.
The UL Standard for smoke alarms was recently updated to require new technology that enable alarms to better differentiate between the smoke from cooking and that of an actual, potentially life-threatening fire. The National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) and Consumer Products Safety Commission (CPSC) cite cooking nuisance alarms as the leading reason for a smoke alarm to be disabled. This practice is extremely dangerous as the NFPA also shares that roughly three out of five home-fire deaths occur in residences where there are no working smoke alarms.
For more information and resources on smoke alarms and their new technology, visit smokealarms.UL.org.