Earlier this year, the New York World wrote about the Citizens for Fire Safety Institute, a lobby group we described as presenting itself as “a coalition of fire safety professionals with roughly the same agenda as Smokey the Bear.” In fact, as originally reported in the Chicago Tribune, the group’s only members were three leading producers of flame retardant chemicals. We further reported that Citizens for Fire Safety had spent $210,000 last year fighting to defeat a New York State ban on a flame retardant in children’s products that is widely believed to cause cancer.
The Citizens for Fire Safety Institute has since been shut down, according to an article published this morning on the website PR Watch. Its website – which previously featured dramatic video of firefighters in action as a narrator declared “The Message: Safety First” – has been closed and replaced with a statement.
It now reads: “The three founding members of Citizens for Fire Safety Institute: Albemarle Corporation, Chemtura Corporation and ICL Industrial Products have elected to conduct all advocacy and communications efforts through the American Chemistry Council’s (ACC) North American Flame Retardant Alliance (NAFRA).”
