The World Fire Safety Foundation
Toronto 3 of 3
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Toronto Sky-Line

Toronto_2:  ULC - Flawed Testing

Toronto_1:  Has UL Deceived YOU?

Toronto_3: The UL Letters   

After over an hour of discussion . . .

AB: Hey John, the bottom line is, UL217 (America’s smoke alarm standard) is a damn joke and the problem UL has is that you can’t possibly fix it.

JD: Adrian, I can assure you UL will always act in the best interests of the public and we are working towards changing the standard.

AB: Mate, UL has been saying they’re going to fix UL217 since 1978!  Your testing of ionization alarms is a joke.  The problem is if you ever came up with a legitimate test then your manufacturer’s ionization alarms will fail because they don’t detect smouldering fires and some of those manufacturers would be put out of business.

JD: UL always acts in the best interests of consumers, not the manufacturers.

AB: (censored)

Adrian Butler
Chairman, The World
Fire Safety Foundation

A Chat With UL’s Mr John Drengenberg

Jan 2008.  The World Fire Safety Foundation’s chairman spoke to UL’s John Drengenberg.

This was 26 months AFTER UL had failed to respond to his third letter (see above).  The text below is an accurate
representation of the essence of the conversation regarding UL’s flawed testing of ionization smoke alarms:

John Drengenberg
UL Consumer
Affairs Manager

Note:
The essence of the problem always come back to the Standards.  Ionization smoke alarms are given the ‘green light’ by UL and other Standards organisations
around the world.  In 1999 UL’s Chief Legal Officer and Senior Vice President, Debra Rade, declared UL had “set the entire foundation for product-safety certification.”

Did Rade’s statement implicate UL in the flawed standard’s testing of ionization smoke alarms globally?

The UL Letters

All World Fire Safety Foundation films are produced by MC2E Productions.
MC2E’s documentary, ‘Stop The Children Burning’, was inspired by the Washington
Post’s award-winning story, ‘How Safe are Products Bearing the UL Mark?’.

The Washington Post article exposed Underwriters Laboratories (UL) flawed smoke
alarm standard.  UL is the worlds largest independent standards testing organisation.

In October 2005, MC2E wrote to UL asking one simple question:

MC2E Request 1:

UL Response 1:

MC2E Request 2:

UL Response 2:

MC2E Request 3:

UL Response 3:

UL claimed it would change its flawed smoke alarm standard
in 1999.  What steps has UL taken to change the standard?

Scroll to view all ‘UL Letters’

What steps has UL taken to rectify it’s flawed standard?

States VP and UL’s CEO treating MC2E’s request with “utmost seriousness”.

Restates question and re-requests UL to please answer it.

Responds but still fails to answer the question.

Restates question FOR THE THIRD TIME

No Response

The UL Mark
on over 21 billion products in 2008

UL Inc’s Headquarters
Chicago, Illinois, USA

The UL Letters - Summary