There's an entertaining piece in this week's New Scientist mag (see below). I remember hearing or reading a news item ine recent years about a fire started when a tv remote control slipped down the side of a sofa and overheated when the buttons were pressed, but there doesn't seem to be any record of it now. Does anyone else remember this?

Steve


DO YOU ever wonder how folklore factoids - like the giant alligators in New York's sewers - are born, and end up as questions on New Scientist's Last Word page?

Firetech, a British fire safety company, has been sending the press "invaluable advice" with the explicit warning that a "cause of fires in the home is the TV remote control - this slides down the sofa and a button gets pressed and this can catch fire". As we spend half our life hunting for lost remote controls, we asked whether the wayward remote turns on the TV, which then bursts into flames, or whether the remote itself ignites? A spokeswoman helpfully explained: "When it falls down the side of the sofa or armchair, one of the buttons gets pressed and stays pressed, and this causes the remote to catch fire."

Worried and intrigued, we asked if there was any documented evidence of a fire starting this way. Says Firetech's Trevor Dean, a former fire officer: "I cannot give you any examples at this point." But he was able to refer us to a 1996 report from the British government (www.dti.gov.uk/ homesafetynetwork/pdf/tvfires.pdf). Unfortunately, this report says nothing about flaming remotes. It just reassures that if there was once a risk of TV sets self-combusting while standing by for remote control commands, this was no longer a problem with new sets, even in 1996.

Says Dean: "It depends on how you read it."
(New Scientist, "Feedback", 23 Aug 2003)