Ikea issues voluntary recall of 29 mn chests and dressers
29 Jun 2016
Furniture giant Ikea has issued a voluntary recall of around 29 million chests and dressers following incidents of children getting injured or killed after the furniture tipped over onto them.
''Enough is enough,'' Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) chairman Elliot Kaye told ABC News. ''These are inherently very dangerous and unstable products if children are around them.''
The announcement comes after six children were killed and at least 36 others injured by the units, which were prone to toppling forward when not secured to the wall.
The deaths – all children under the age of 4 – dated back to 1989, with the most recent one in February, according to the CPSC.
According to the CPSC, Ikea was offering a refund or repair kits for affected styles, including the Malm – responsible for killing three toddlers, the CPSC said.
Customers with furniture manufactured between 2002 and 2016 would be entitled to a full refund, while those before 2002 may receive a partial store credit.
People who do not want to install a wall anchor themselves might request that the company send a crew to perform the work, the CPSC said.
The fatalities included Curren Collas, 2, whose mother found him pinned between his bed and a toppled Malm dresser in February 2014.
Ikea said it had been in "close contact" with the Consumer Product Safety Commission, which would help to carry out the recalls, about how to remedy the hazard.
The problem was seen in several styles of dressers, but the Malm chests and dressers were the most affected and had been linked to at least two of the deaths over the past two years.
Though the company launched a repair programme in 2015, it did not alter the design of the product or take it off the market.
Under the repair programme, new kits to attach the dressers to the wall were provided to customers who had not used the original hardware to secure the dressers.
