EU to ban non-childproof cigarette lighters

A BELFAST woman whose five-year-old son died two months after his clothes caught fire yesterday welcomed moves to make all cigarette lighters childproof from later this year.

Under new EU legislation manufacturers will be required to fit lighters with a “push down and twist” child-resistant device similar to that used on medicines that will add a few cent to the cost of a lighter.

The EU will ban all non-childproof lighters within weeks, the European Commission said. The childproof mechanism will cost between one and five cent a lighter.

Between 34 and 40 people - often children - are killed in Europe each year by fires started by children playing with lighters. And about 2,000 are seriously injured each year from fires caused by children playing with lighters.

Five-year-old Jordan Millar died two months after his clothes caught fire when he was playing with a cheap lighter at his home in Belfast.

He had climbed onto a washing machine to retrieve the lighter from a high shelf in August 2004.

His mother, Julie-Ann Millar, 22, said: “What happened to Jordan was horrific. Any lighters sold should be child resistant. I hope the politicians support a ban on the cheap ones that aren’t child resistant so that other families don’t have to go through what we’ve been through. These lighters kill children.”

European manufacturers have been making the safe lighters for years for export to countries where they are mandatory, including the US, Canada and Australia.

The US outlawed the sale of non-childproof lighters in 1995 and the EU said this had led to a 60% drop in fires, injuries and deaths caused by children playing with lighters.

Irish MEP Kathy Sinnott claimed over half of the European deaths and injuries could have been prevented years ago.

But, she said, European manufacturers have continued selling the old, unsafe lighters: “It’s been very cynical of them to sell them in Europe when they know there is a safer alternative that could have saved children’s lives.”

EU Consumer Protection Commissioner Markos Kyprianou said: “Thanks to this new measure, lives will be saved by adding inexpensive child-resistant devices to lighters.”

Yesterday’s meeting of national product safety experts from the 25 member states agreed with the commission that it is time to make such safety improvements legally-binding.