The EU proposal for Green Public Procurement (GPP) Criteria for furniture notes that in public buildings, in most EU Member States, fire resistance requirements for furniture and mattresses is part of the “overall approach to fire safety”. The proposal rejects the idea “flame retardant free furniture” or exclusion of certain types of flame retardant, preferring instead to instead use horizontal criteria excluding all SVHCs chemicals (Substances of Very High Concern). The document notes that these criteria already effectively exclude a number of halogenated flame retardants: HBCDD, TCEP, SCCPs and DecaBDE. The proposal recommends that if procurers do decide to specifically restrict flame retardants in furniture, then this should be done on the basis of hazard class properties (as available in each substance REACH dossier and CLP classification), and should not categories families of flame retardants because toxicological properties can vary widely within the categories halogenated and non-halogenated.
European Commission working document SWD(2017)283 “EU Green Public Procurement criteria for furniture”, 10th August 2017 http://ec.europa.eu/environment/gpp/pdf/toolkit/furniture_gpp.pdf