Land of Leather and Argos to name two, have been suspected in
selling furniture that might effect the health of those using it. There are others selling these sofas too.
Apparently "Fumarate" chemical sachets are being put internally into the furniture (to preserve
the leather) and these after a few weeks/months seep out with normal heat within a room and attack people's skin. So far there has been 600 reported cases in England.
Detail of Events
On December the 20th 2007 we were given a new sofa. Our child Dakota had an already
setup appointment in Crumlins Children's hospital for her scolioses treatment on the 8th of January 2008. Between the 20th
of December and that appointment she began to show skin problems.
It should be pointed out that up to the previous 20th of December, she or any of us, had
not any skin problems at all at any stage - ever! Dakota in her previous three young years had no problems prior to
the 20th of December.
Dakota's skin on the 8th of January was brought to the attention of the staff in Dublin.
At this stage it was assessed that it was just part of her normal development that she get skin problems. It was a mild problem
at this stage and we were not to alarmed at this stage given the reassurance from the staff.
Dakota however began to get seriously worse over the coming two months however. It got
to the stage that she was waking at night crying, bleeding, red, sore and swollen. Needless to say by this stage we were attending
our local GP for treatment. After a while we noticed that the treatments ( 3+ times daily) however seemed to be having no
effect. We were frustrated.
We tried everything. We though that she was being effected/allergic by everything from
the bed clothes, to the carpet in our living room, to even the possibility of the washing powder we were using to clean her
clothes. We tried cutting out too, all possible foods that might be causing a body reaction such as hers, sugar, milk, etc.
Still nothing was making a difference.
A relative (to whom we will be forever eternally grateful) mentioned that she saw a repeat
of a BBC programme called "Watchdog" one night. In the programme the presenters explained that a number of sofas had a chemical
in them that was leaking out and effecting skins. To back up their case they mentioned that 600 cases had been reported so
far (Watchdog - Click here)
This rang alarm bells for us because something then else clicked with me. Joanne used to comment
to me (and I used to pass it off without thinking - now much to my regret) that she was always itchy whenever she was resting
on her sofa chair. She had mentioned this a number of times but I didn't think twice about it. I too had begun to develop
skin problems, especially on my legs.
Anyway around the time of the Watchdog programme going on air Dakota problems had developed
to such a very serious extent that after one particular night of her waking, screaming, bleeding extensively from her
arms, face and legs that we took her to our GP (19th May) and then to the hospital the very next morning. She was in the hospital
that day and most of the next. They treated her for her face, body and legs infections and applied the same treatments that
we had been doing previously. It was that this exact time that we became aware of the sofa situation.
This is important. In the time that Dakota was away from the sofa - there was an
absolute change in her skin all over - remember - using the same treatments as before. Nothing changed except we were
now sofa-less. Coincidence???
Needless to say, as soon as I got out of hospital with Dakota, on that very same day,
I with my mother went to the store that sold us the sofa and demanded that it be removed from our home. We told them that
we didn't care what they did with it, we just wanted it out of our house if only for the sake of our kids. We made our case
so clear and strongly to them the effect the sofa was having on our family (we were so convinced by this stage it was
the sofa). Within 3 hours a truck had been sent from Athlone to collect it.
The manager of the store says that he knows nothing about this problem, yet some of his
staff had admitted that previously, a lady had been in before complaining of something similar! We suspect also of another
case of someone in Navan being similar effected and also Duleek.
The sofa now gone and replaced with a non-leather one, NOT from the same store but from "Wogans"
who were very sympathetic to our problem (thank you Mr Brian Lynch) and arranged delivery of a cloth based sofa within 12
hours of us going to their shop.
Today is now the 24th of May. Its been 3+ days since Dakota has been away from the now gone sofa
and she is show more improvement in those three days than she has done in the previous three months! Coincidence???
Other similar sofas might still be out there somewhere!
Dakota is now daily getting each creams, ointments etc applied (at least three times a day) .
The below picture show the items involved.
