Ikea is undoubtedly the biggest ready- to-sell furniture store on the planet; having sold over 147.4 million chests of drawers globally since 1998. Many houses would have one or more pieces of IKEA furniture in their house. Now the Swedish giant has to unfortunately add a $29 million dollar recall to it’s name.
Recently, it was found out that the MALM series of popular chests has crushed 6 toddlers to death in North America.
A picture of the dresser is below:
Surprisingly, Australia is still going to keep selling the product; something consumer advocacy group Choice spokesperson Tom Godfrey is not too pleased about. This is interesting considering ACCC (Australian Competition and Consumer Commission) product safety Australia website notes 14 deaths between the period of 2000-2015.
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission has met with IKEA and said US regulators have not identified a safety defect in the furniture.The company claims that it is stable when properly anchored to the wall and are allowing refunds or a free wall-anchoring kit. All fatalities that occurred were not properly anchored. Godfrey said, “although IKEA’s instructions mention the foothold hazard and provide a bracket to attach the furniture to the wall, the screws/fixing devices are not supplied” (News Corp).
Families really should just resort to buying low set-furniture with stable bases, something that young children can’t climb on.
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