House Passes Bill Prohibiting Flammable Floor Products

Somerville Journal: March 15, 2010

Bill would end the use of highly flammable wood floor sealants

Wicked Local Somerville
Posted Mar 15, 2010 @ 05:02 PM
Somerville

A bill that would end the use of highly flammable wood floor sealants passed the House of Representatives and now moves on to the Senate.
Filed in response a deadly fire in Somerville, House Bill 2304 was aggressively sought by an unusual coalition of labor, industry, safety professionals and environmental activists.
“This vote puts us one step closer to ending the use of floor finishing products that were responsible for the three worker deaths in the commonwealth and continue to put countless other workers and homeowners at grave risk every day these products are used,” said Marcy Goldstein-Gelb, executive director of MassCOSH, a nonprofit worker safety organization.
At a July hearing before the committee, a broad-based panel of community, industry and safety representatives testified that the floor finishing chemicals targeted in the legislation, known as “lacquer sealer,” are extremely dangerous and unnecessary. Quynh Dang, whose father owns a floor sanding business involved with a Somerville floor finishing fire in 2004 that burned to death two workers, told the committee, “This lacquer sealer is a dangerous product and the only way to make the industry safer is to prohibit its use.”
Filed in the House by Rep. Martin Walsh with strong support from Sen. Patricia Jehlen, the measure was proposed by an industry-labor-community Floor Finishing Safety Task Force established by MassCOSH in response to the two Somerville fatalities and a third death that took place in Hull the following year. Since that time, many more fires in the commonwealth have been attributed to flammable floor finishing chemicals.
The floor finishing industry in Massachusetts is largely concentrated in the Vietnamese community. Viet AID, a community-based organization that has been a leader in the task force, has been working with MassCOSH and other groups to raise awareness about the dangers of using lacquer sealer.
“It’s urgent that we take immediate action to protect floor finishing workers and homeowners from fires and other hazards in this industry,” said Walsh. “I look forward to working with the task force and the Legislature in passing a piece of legislation that will make the flooring industry safe for Massachusetts while keeping small businesses in business.”
Jehlen quickly became an advocate for floor finishing safety after the fire that took place in her legislative district. “This legislation is necessary to protect against the tragedies that have occurred in my district and across the state,” she said. “Rather than placing both workers and the public in danger while forcing firefighters to deal with the consequences of dangerous and unnecessary chemicals, we should act quickly to prevent such fires from occurring in the first place by prohibiting dangerous and unnecessary flammable products from being used.”