Ikea recalling millions of dressers after 6 kids killed

Ikea Canada is recalling millions of dressers over concerns the furniture could topple over, following the deaths of six children in the United States.

The list of recalled dressers spans more than a dozen models including Malm, Hemnes, and Brusali, and includes dressers manufactured after January, 2002. The full list of affected dressers is on the Ikea Canada website.

Customers are being advised to immediately tether the dressers to a wall or return the furniture to an Ikea outlet for a refund.

Ikea says it has always sold its chests of drawers with anchors and tethers to secure the furniture pieces to the wall, and that its dressers are safe when secured.

While the tethers are “a required step” according to the furniture retailer’s assembly instructions, many customers have failed to use them. In the U.S., six children have died from Ikea dressers falling on top of them. There have been several reports of injuries from furniture toppling as well.

The recall does not affect customers who have anchored their Ikea dressers to a wall. “…They are fine to use and no further action is required,” Ikea said in a statement Tuesday.

Customers who want to keep their dressers can get a free wall-anchoring kit at any IKEA location or can have one delivered by visiting Ikea.ca/saferhomestogether.

People with untethered dressers are advised to move them into storage “where they cannot be accessed by children” until they get the anchoring kit.

Customers who cannot secure their dressers to the wall for any reason are advised to bring them back to any IKEA location for a refund. Chests of drawers manufactured before 2002 will be eligible for a partial store credit.

Ikea says it is also working with Health Canada and will now only sell dressers that meet North American standards on “free-standing stability” set by ASTM, a group that sets standards for thousands of consumer products sold around the world.

There have been problems with Ikea dresser tip-overs for some time. In July, 2015, Ikea issued a notice advising consumers not to use its Malm dressers unless they were secured to the wall with the anchors provided in the original packaging.

That followed 16 reports of incidents involving Malm dressers that resulted in the deaths of two toddlers and four other serious injuries in the United States. A third child in Minnesota died in February, 2016, after a Malm dresser tipped onto him and pinned him against his bed.

The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission says at least six children, all 3 years old or younger, have been killed by Ikea chests or dressers falling on them.

The company offered to provide owners of the furniture with a new wall anchoring kit if they no longer had the original. More than 45,000 of the free kits were handed out to Canadians.