Smoke alarms fail to wake up children in fire, study shows
- 7 years ago
DERBYSHIRE, UNITED KINGDOM — Scientists in the UK have found that smoke alarms may not wake children in case of emergency.
The research was conducted by Dundee University and Derbyshire Fire and Rescue. An experiment showed only 7 of 34 children aged between 2 and 13 were woken up by standard smoke alarms. Those who woke up were all girls.
The researchers suggest children are not pre-programed to recognize digital danger warning sounds, which could be the reason they fail to respond to standard alarms, BBC News reported.
A prototype new alarm would lower the standard smoke alarm frequency of 3,000Hz to 520Hz and include a female voice that issues a verbal warning. Young children are said to be more likely to respond to this new sound alert. The researchers are recruiting 500 families to test the new alarm.
“Boys are especially hard to wake, and we think they will respond to a human voice,” Professor Niamh Nic Daeid, a forensic scientist at Dundee University told BBC News.
The research was conducted by Dundee University and Derbyshire Fire and Rescue. An experiment showed only 7 of 34 children aged between 2 and 13 were woken up by standard smoke alarms. Those who woke up were all girls.
The researchers suggest children are not pre-programed to recognize digital danger warning sounds, which could be the reason they fail to respond to standard alarms, BBC News reported.
A prototype new alarm would lower the standard smoke alarm frequency of 3,000Hz to 520Hz and include a female voice that issues a verbal warning. Young children are said to be more likely to respond to this new sound alert. The researchers are recruiting 500 families to test the new alarm.
“Boys are especially hard to wake, and we think they will respond to a human voice,” Professor Niamh Nic Daeid, a forensic scientist at Dundee University told BBC News.