E&T investigates claims that children in Britain are put at risk by a product meant to protect them.
Plastic covers are widely used to prevent young children tampering with electrical sockets, but a group of professionals argues that they are actually unsafe – and they have won the backing of television presenter Adam Hart-Davis.
The FatallyFlawed campaign traces its roots to 2002, when IET member Graham Kenyon used the discussion forums on the Institution’s website to raise his concerns about the lack of regulation or testing for socket covers. Last January, Peter Munro aired the subject in the letters pages of E&T, pointing out the danger of a child inserting a cover upside-down, opening the shutters and exposing the live parts.
Munro’s letter brought together a group of engineers, doctors and childcare specialists who decided the issue was important enough for them to set up a lobbying organisation.
Among them are two Edinburgh-based IET Fellows, Prof John Roulston OBE and David Peacock. “In recent years, many companies have been marketing plastic ‘safety socket covers’ in the misguided belief that these are an essential tool to prevent children from inserting their fingers or other objects into plug sockets,” said Peacock. “It has now been established that plug-in covers are actually unsafe.”
The requirement for sockets to be child-safe and include a shutter mechanism dates back to a government-commissioned study published in January 1944, when a committee convened by the IET’s predecessor, the Institution of Electrical Engineers, said: “To ensure the safety of young children it is of considerable importance that the contacts of the socket-outlet should be protected by shutters or other like means, or by the inherent design of the socket outlet.” This led to the publication in 1947 of British Standard 1363 for fused plugs and shuttered socket outlets.
FatallyFlawed says that the possibility of being inserted upside-down isn’t the only problem associated with covers. “Only one of the covers we tested complies with the BS 1363 dimensions for the distance between pins and the periphery of the plug,” said Peacock. “The two most popular designs actually allow needle-like objects to be inserted directly alongside the live pin, and this is when the covers are fully inserted into the socket.”
According to FatallyFlawed, none of the covers tested complied with the line/neutral pin dimensions in BS 1363 and that this leads to unpredictable behaviour. “The contacts of some compliant sockets exert an outward force onto pins which are too short, resulting in the covers being partially ejected. The effect is usually not visible when viewed from above, but leaves a gap between the lower edge of the cover and socket faceplate, making it easy for a child to remove the cover and put it back upside down.”
The group is aiming to persuade the UK Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (BERR) to ban the sale of any device intended to plug into a BS 1363 socket without the intention of making electrical contact.
So far, they have had little success, said Peacock. “BERR claims that the issue can be dealt with by Trading Standards departments under the General Product Safety Regulations, but attempts to do this have failed because inverted insertion is considered misuse, and the probes used to test accessibility are too large.”
They hope that their cause will be helped with the recruitment as patron of the science and technology broadcaster Dr Adam Hart-Davis. “I normally refuse to join in campaigns but this seemed so important, and the ‘safety’ covers so absurd and dangerous, that I agreed,” Hart-Davis told E&T.
FatallyFlawed argues that as the IEE took the original responsibility for ensuring that sockets are safe, the IET has a duty to support them. Following representations from the group, the IET referred the issue to the BSI committee responsible for BS 1363. Having investigated the issue in detail, BSI concluded that a standard is not required at this stage and that problems identified with some covers are a matter for Trading Standards. “The committee will meet again in May 2009 and welcomes any new information,” a BSI spokesperson told E&T.
FatallyFlawed claims to have won a small victory, however, by persuading education regulator Ofsted to reverse its policy of requiring nurseries and childminders to use socket covers. It is disappointed that rather than warning carers about the risks associated with covers, Ofsted refers them to the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA), which declined to take any action beyond stating that covers are unnecessary.
A RoSPA spokesman said the society has to give priority to issues where it can have the greatest impact in terms of saving lives and reducing injuries. As BS 1363 is among the safest designs in Europe it doesn’t recommend additional covers, but has seen no evidence to suggest that their use is causing injuries to children.
RoSPA actively discourages the use of decorated socket covers, but the organisation acknowledges that plain socket covers “can stop inquisitive youngsters from plugging in electrical products which could cause serious burns”.
Clippasafe, one of the leading brands, has sold more than 4.5 million covers since the year 2000 and, said managing director Roger Cheetham, received no customer complaints.
Cheetham argues that the shutter in a normal three-pin socket is not inherently safe because a child could insert a small object into the earth aperture and thereby expose the live terminals. “Our socket covers can only be removed by using the earth pin of a plug,” he said. “It is much easier for a child to remove a plug itself and invert it, so it is therefore far safer to cover up the area.”
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Comments
The good old 13A socket has to be about the safest small power outlet anywhere in the worls but as usual someone has to try and make it better. These so called safety covers make the outlet unsafe. as the picture shows but a child still has to work this issue out and then get the conductive componant into the other two slots to get their just deserts. As with so much in our modern society - education is the key - small children should not be allowed to play with any electrical items. That why in the good old days switched were at 4'6" or even 5' so that little 'uns could reach! Jim W
Mr James Walker, Lincs
25 Mar 2009
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Dear Sir, I write in connection with Dominic Lenton's article published in Issue 5 of E&T concerning the use of plastic covers on electrical sockets. Many years ago, a major well known manufacturer of electrical accessories brought out a BS 1363 socket outlet with an interlocking system that requires equal pressure to be inserted on each pin simultaneously to cause the shutters to open, in effect preventing deliberate overriding of the shutter mechanism. These sockets, in effect, do away with the need for any other protective measure such as the plastic shutters described in the article. Mr Cheetham of Clippasafe "argues that the shutter in a normal three pin socket is not inherently safe..", a comment that does not apply to a socket outlets with equal pressure interlock. The real issue here is that specifiers should not be selecting 'normal' BS 1363 socket outlets and that as part of 'designers duties' specifiers should be carrying out a risk assessment of not only where the sockets are to be installed, but perhaps more importantly, who is likely to have access to them. It follows that in the domestic environment and in public buildings such as schools there is a signifcant risk of unauthorised interference justifying any decision to specify accessories by manufacturer and product reference. One possible problem is that as far as I am aware the idea is patented. Public procurement rules can be perceived by some as an obstacle preventing specifiers from selecting products by manufacturer or by product reference but this can be solved by specifying the product generically. Master specifcation systems such as NBS Engineering Services have facilitated this for a number of years. W.Clark M.I.E.T
Mr William Clark,
23 Mar 2009
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Mr Cheetham’s claim that Clippasafe covers “can only be removed by using the earth pin of a plug†is patent nonsense as we demonstrate in the video on www.FatallyFlawed.org.uk . Because the Clippasafe socket is manufactured with non-standard length pins, its performance when inserted into a standard socket is entirely unpredictable, and in some perfectly good BS 1363 sockets it is impossible to properly insert the cover into the socket, it simply pops back out leaving a gap of several millimetres, making it extremely easy for even the smallest child to remove. (It is actually not difficult to remove with the fingers alone even when in a socket which does not cause it to pop out.) His claim that “it is therefore far safer to cover up the area†is erroneous, as the hole in the cover, into which it is intended to place the earth pin used for extraction, provides direct access into the live contact of the socket. Furthermore, we have found that when inserting the Clippasafe cover into the earth pin only it is prone to break, leaving the broken earth pin permanently holding open the shutters. All this is shown in photographs and video on our site. RoSPA’s claim that covers can stop inquisitive youngsters from plugging in dangerous appliances is completely unfounded, as we explain in detail on the FAQ page of our website. We have found RoSPA’s indifference to the issue particularly worrying, they have written to us stating that that were not willing to take action “unless evidence suggests that socket covers have suddenly started to seriously harm hundreds of children every yearâ€. We subsequently learned that at the time of that statement they were involved in a competitive tendering process (which they have now won) for an £18million UK Government contract to run “Safe At Homeâ€, a National Home Safety Equipment Scheme. This may be evidence of a serious conflict of interest! David Peacock IEng FIET Co-founder, FatallyFlawed
Mr David Peacock,
23 Mar 2009
(Report to moderator)
Mr Cheetham’s claim that Clippasafe covers “can only be removed by using the earth pin of a plug†is patent nonsense as we demonstrate in the video on www.FatallyFlawed.org.uk . Because the Clippasafe socket is manufactured with non-standard length pins, its performance when inserted into a standard socket is entirely unpredictable, and in some perfectly good BS 1363 sockets it is impossible to properly insert the cover into the socket, it simply pops back out leaving a gap of several millimetres, making it extremely easy for even the smallest child to remove. (It is actually not difficult to remove with the fingers alone even when in a socket which does not cause it to pop out.) His claim that it “it is therefore far safer to cover up the area†is erroneous, as the hole in the cover, into which it is intended to place the earth pin used for extraction, provides direct access into the live contact of the socket. Furthermore, we have found that when inserting the Clippasafe cover into the earth pin only it is prone to break, leaving the broken earth pin permanently holding open the shutters. All this is shown in photographs and video on our site. RoSPA’s claim that covers can stop inquisitive youngsters from plugging in dangerous appliances is completely unfounded, as we explain in detail on the FAQ page of our website. We have found RoSPA’s indifference to the issue particularly worrying, they have written to us stating that that were not willing to take action “unless evidence suggests that socket covers have suddenly started to seriously harm hundreds of children every yearâ€. We subsequently learned that at the time of that statement they were involved in a competitive tendering process (which they have now won) for an £18million contract to run “Safe At Homeâ€, a National Home Safety Equipment Scheme. This may be evidence of a serious conflict of interest! Yours, David Peacock IEng FIET Co-founder, FatallyFlawed
Mr David Peacock,
23 Mar 2009
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Young Children tend to put things in their mouths. A socket cover that is wet with saliva would be easliy inserted creating another shock risk. Terry Jones MIET
Mr Terence Jones,
19 Mar 2009
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