Episode 6 Watchdog Test House

Take a look around your home.

Can you be sure that every appliance is safe?

Is everything a company tells you about a product true?

And are you getting the best value for your money?

With the help of the country's top experts we're going to see

what it takes to test the household products we use every day.

We'll discover how they're pushed to their limits.

We'll put the makers' claims on trial.

And show you how to make your money go further.

You'll find these products in any ordinary house.

But this is no ordinary house. And no ordinary street.

This is the Watchdog Test House.

Hello. We're deep inside one of Britain's leading science centres.

Here at the Building Research Establishment

some of the products and materials

that we use every day are put to the test,

to make sure that they are safe,

environmentally friendly,

and that they don't fall apart.

Coming up on today's programme...

Car seats for kids. What can happen if they're not fitted correctly?

It didn't cross my mind that it wouldn't keep him safe in a crash.

How clean is your house?

These liquids claims to kill 99.9% of bacteria.

Not exactly what we found.

If it was up to me I'd probably want

to give that another clean again.

And killer tumble dryers -

how Watchdog's campaign for smaller child-proof doors

led to a safer design.

Now, if you've got children, or grandchildren,

you'll know all about these.

Child car seats.

They are crucial for keeping your kids safe, which is why standards

and testing in this area are developing all the time.

One of the biggest concerns?

The way some seats are fitted to the vehicle.

Get it wrong and the consequences could be unthinkable.

Harvey Goulding was nearly three years old

when he was involved in a car crash.

He was in a car seat, and his mother Rachel hoped he'd be safe.

He wasn't.

His car seat moved forwards.

His knees hit the seat in front

and the car seat crushed him from behind.

When they told me that both legs had broken I just felt numb.

He was in a wheelchair for about two months,

with a cast from his ankle to the top of his knee.

The seat, a Nania Trio Plus, had passed official safety tests.

But the nature of Harvey's injuries suggested that it hadn't been

fitted correctly into the car.

I fitted it how I thought was correct.

I did everything I could to make sure it was secure, as any parent would.

It didn't cross my mind that it wouldn't keep him safe in a crash.

Which? magazine also found

that fitting this seat properly can be tricky.

According to their research,

although the instructions are easy to understand, it's difficult

to install due to the way it works with the seat belt.

The manufacturer, Team Tex, has told us they did not receive any

direct complaint about Harvey's accident, but as soon as

they were made aware they tried to contact his mother to investigate.

They say if the seat had been fitted correctly,

the injuries would not have been sustained,

and the seat has been modified

as part of a programme of continuous improvement.

But any car seat that's fitted incorrectly

can put a child in danger.

And here in Blackburn, where independent child safety advisors

are carrying out roadside checks, many parents are getting it wrong.

50% of the seats that we're seeing, they're incorrect.

But 77% of the faults that we're seeing of those, they are fixable.

Harnesses not fastened tightly, seat belts not being used properly.

Those sorts of common things we can sort out for people.

This driver has made one of the most common mistakes.

There's a huge gap down the back of the seat there.

We need that seat to be having

as much contact with that seat as possible.

The problem is that the car's head rest hasn't been taken out.

So we'll remove the head restraint and get a nice, tight fit.

For younger children who are still in a harness,

the key is nice and tight.

Pull it tight, two fingers in here,

and if I can fold it, which I can...fold it over,

it's still too loose.

Keep pulling. struggling to fold it.

There we go, that's perfect.

Its clear there's plenty of confusion

about how to fit child seats correctly.

But here's the good news.

New safety standards - called I-size - are being introduced.

They'll be phased in over the next few years,

and one of the big changes is encouraging a shift towards the

newer Iso-fix style seat that some manufacturers have already embraced.

Some cars and car seats

use just the seat belts to fasten themselves together.

Now that's OK as long as you get it exactly right.

And that's where a lot of parents are getting it wrong.

The whole idea behind Iso-fix is that the seat is simple to fix.

These two metal bars fix directly into the car seat.

They lock on.

And when you see the green light, you're good to go.

The new I-size standards will mean other changes too.

Children will be kept in a rearward-facing seat until at least 15 months

and they will be classified by height rather than weight.

The new standard will also introduce stricter side-impact testing.

Some seats currently on the market may not pass this new test,

and could therefore no longer meet the highest standards of safety.

What could that mean for your child?

Later, we'll be heading to

the Transport Research Laboratory to find out.

Three and a half billion pounds.

That's how much we spend

on household cleaning products every year.

And if they're going to part you from your money,

the manufacturers need to convince you with their promises.

So do their products

really wipe out virtually all bacteria as they claim?

Well, Sophie, there's hand gels, kitchen surface sprays,

toilet cleaners.

No shortage of products claiming to kill at least 99.9% of bacteria.

Now that's a tough ask, according to Dr Laura.

These are massive claims, because actually what it's worth remembering

is that we are in contact with bacteria all time.

They're on our skin, they're in our hair,

they're up our noses, they're just everywhere.

Everything we're touching is covered in bacteria.

Time to put some products to the test. Our subjects?

Three students - Nick, Harriet and Katie.

Well, it's safe to say

they all know a thing or two about the need for cleaning.

Our products? Three antibacterial hand gels.

Three kitchen surface cleaners.

And, yes, our least glamorous challenge - two toilet cleaners.

All of these types of products claim to kill 99.9% of bacteria or germs.

First up, hand sanitising gels.

For this test, our students need to get their hands dirty.

So where better to send them than on the London Transport network?

It's estimated the average traveller

comes in contact with at least 1,390 bacterial cells per square centimetre

on every Tube journey.

I wonder what our students have managed to find on their trip.

I feel really dirty. You don't normally think about it.

But I feel really horrible now. I wouldn't want to touch anything.

First, Dr Laura swabs each of their hands to establish

the level of bacteria present before they apply the hand gel.

She then gives each of them a different hand gel to use.

Now it feels so clean again.

She then swabs their hands again

and places the samples into sterile containers.

At the end of the day all the swabs

will go back to the lab for analysis.

So, to our next test.

Kitchen surface sprays.

Obviously there's quite a lot of you in this flat

and you must find it quite difficult to keep things clean, is that right?

Because there's five of us it does get quite difficult,

especially when there's deadlines coming up.

Again, we're using three products

all claiming to kill 99.9% of bacteria.

For this test, we need three kitchens,

so we borrow a couple from around the halls of residence.

Again, Dr Laura swabs the kitchen surfaces before the product

is applied to establish the level of bacteria present.

The students then apply each of the sprays

according to the instructions, using a brand-new kitchen cloth.

Another swab is taken, and these are also sealed in sterile

containers before heading to the lab for analysis.

Our kitchen never looked cleaner!

Time for our final challenge - the toilet.

For this we use two products.

Go on, Laura, be brave.

OK, so I'm just going to go into the little toilet cubicle

and take some swabs.

It tends to be quite often where you get a lot of bacteria.

Once all the toilets have been cleaned and swabbed -

before and after the products have been applied -

it's finally time to go back to the lab.

Will all these products actually have killed

99.9% of bacteria in our test as the labels promise?

Find out later.

Now, look around your kitchen.

It's full of appliances and gadgets

with safety features we all take for granted.

For example, your oven.

It doesn't get dangerously hot on the outside.

Or your tumble dryer.

It's designed to stop a child getting stuck inside.

But it hasn't always been this way.

Here's Lynne Faulds Wood.

-TV:

-'Welcome to Watchdog. On tonight's programme...

'All these people have written to us...

'..We also heard from the parents of this little chap,

'five-year-old Daniel Byron.

'He and his two-year-old sister, Lucy, were playing in the kitchen

'when he climbed into the dryer

'and loosely closed the door after him...'

The year was 1989 and Watchdog was campaigning

to make tumble dryers safer.

'Thank goodness their mum, Sue, was only seconds away

'and she says she was able to pull the near hysterical Daniel

'out of the machine.

But in just those few seconds, his back was badly burned.

As our demonstration showed,

it was far too easy for a child to climb into a tumble dryer.

Children had actually died after closing the door on themselves

and the machine left in mid-cycle starting up automatically.

Watchdog wanted smaller doors

and a ban on dryers turning on when the door shut.

But this change was slow in coming.

Tumble dryers are now much safer than they were in the 1980s,

but it just took far too long to get design standards improved -

as it did with another worry we highlighted on Watchdog.

This time - oven doors.

Oven doors that were dangerously hot on the outside

and exactly the right height for passing toddlers' hands.

I'd been warning about this for ten years by 1992.

By then, 7,000 children had been so severely burnt

they needed hospital treatment.

Children like little Andrew West.

They don't seem to be healing.

The skin is very hard

and it's almost welded together.

They're never going to heal completely

but they might be able to improve on how they are at the moment.

Now, this is the Wests' cooker.

The temperature's now reading 115 degrees.

So the outside of the Wests' oven door

is considerably hotter than a pan of boiling water.

And it's all perfectly legal.

It was legal because until the late 1980s

safety standards allowed oven doors to be hotter than boiling water.

In 1989, that was brought down - but only to 100 degrees.

Still far too hot.

Finally in 1992, some manufacturers took action.

In the last few days, several major cooker manufacturers

have told me because of our campaign,

they're completely redesigning their oven doors or have already done so.

Today the standard says glass doors

should get no hotter than 80 degrees.

But why did it take consumer pressure from a programme

like Watchdog to make such change happen

when products are legally required to be safe?

I think originally, with things like cookers and any domestic appliance

in the kitchen, the kitchen was felt very much to be

a no-go area for children. You don't have children in the kitchen,

so if the outside door gets hot,

you know it gets hot and you avoid touching it.

These days, manufacturers, retailers and safety organisations

all work together to draw up the standards -

and these are used by nearly all makers

of domestic appliances as ways of making sure their products are safe.

They're constantly evolving to keep up with changing products

and - in the case of oven doors - changing times.

The discussions take place during the development of the standards

to recognise, actually, this is being used in this way,

we need to think about what will happen.

And then the standards need to be set

to ensure that those things don't happen.

Back in the '80s lots of the machines we take for granted were pretty new,

and design standards were struggling to keep up.

But by the mid-1990s the problems Watchdog exposed

were less to do with safety

and more with whether machines worked properly.

In 1996, Watchdog visited a development in Bishop's Stortford

where the houses all had the same Whirlpool oven.

But because of faulty door seals,

it was better at heating the home than the dinner.

At Jamaica, number 11, it's 88 degrees Centigrade.

Over at Trinidad, it's 94 degrees,

and, as you can see, palm trees are growing.

At Tobago, it's 132 degrees and rising.

While at the Isle of Skye for some reason, it's still cold and wet.

In the end, Whirlpool agreed to compensate the hot home owners.

But perhaps one of Watchdog's more memorable

domestic appliance stories was this one.

Hotpoint washer-dryers that ripped your clothes.

I ended up with holes in my jumpers, my husband's trousers,

the legs were shredded completely.

I suppose, in total, it would amount up to about £400

this machine has cost me in clothing alone.

Watchdog showed the problem was clothes getting caught

in a gap between the drum and the seal,

and Hotpoint's own paperwork confirmed it.

But the company refused to accept responsibility or compensate customers fairly.

This led to one of Watchdog's more famous campaigns,

the washing line of shame.

So, until Hotpoint changes its tune each week we'll bring you the latest

line of clothing torn in Hotpoint washer-dryers.

So if your Hotpoint washer-dryer is causing trouble,

send us the evidence to place on the Hotpoint washing line of shame.

We'll continue to embarrass Hotpoint until the company starts offering decent compensation.

The washing line returned week after week,

until Hotpoint eventually agreed to pay a standard rate of compensation.

By the end of the campaign,

500 people had contacted Watchdog.

You helped to improve lots of things in our homes.

And today, not only are appliances much safer,

they're more efficient, too.

Now, we spend more than £3 billion a year on over-the-counter medication,

from painkillers and anti-histamines to cold and flu remedies.

But with a wide range of products and prices, how do you know

what's going to be most effective and worth spending more on?

Well, Professor Jane Lawrence from the Royal Pharmaceutical Society

is with us now to talk us through it all. There is a big difference

in price, isn't there? Because you go to a shop or a chemist's nowadays,

there are so many on offer, but what is the difference between the

branded products and the, let's say, supermarket-branded products?

I think the first thing is, there is a big difference with cost

but the customer should be reassured that regardless of cost

all their medicines are made to the same high standards,

so they shouldn't be worried about that.

So, if you go into your pharmacy and you want perhaps a painkiller

for back pain, you go looking at 200mg ibuprofen.

If you have a 200mg ibuprofen that is generic formulation,

and the same formulation that's branded,

the patient actually won't see any difference in their effect - they will effectively be the same.

They all look the same, because we've got a little pile here, haven't we?

Those are branded, and they are

supermarket-branded as well. You wouldn't know the difference.

No, they've both got a coating and they will act in the same way.

What about the group of tablets that promise to work faster? Do they?

They are evidence based. If you go in a lab and test them

they will actually work quicker, but the problem is we're

so variable as humans, depending on what we've perhaps eaten that

day or whether we take our tablets with water or no water,

and that can make just as much effect on how fast the tablets work.

So probably most of us aren't going to see much benefit.

And what about the ones here that promise to target specific pain?

So if you've got a backache, for example,

if you've got a headache, what is the difference between them?

Well, they will work where they say they work,

so they will target the inflammation, for example, in your back,

but you have to realise it will also act perhaps on their period pain.

So that's quite important to realise. So that if you're taking a tablet for period pain

and you have perhaps back pain you don't take another tablet -

your tablet for period pain would probably work for your back pain.

We spoke to the association who represent over-the-counter medication,

and they say that all the claims on the product packaging

are evidence based and they can be trusted.

Let's look now at the placebo effect. Is there one? Does that happen?

There is a placebo effect and the placebo effect is incredibly strong,

and I think it is important to realise if a patient

feels a branded one is going to work best for them it probably will work

best for them, so they should use that if that's their preference.

-Professor Lawrence, thank you very much.

-Thank you.

Back now to our household cleaning products.

After our students' hands were swabbed,

their kitchen surfaces scrubbed and their toilets sanitised,

all the samples went to the lab for analysis.

So, did the products kill at least 99.9% of the bacteria present

as they claimed?

The results are in.

Yes, they are, and it's interesting stuff, Sophie.

The swabs were put onto these plates which help to grow bacteria

and then placed in an incubator overnight.

So, in our tests, will the cleaning products live up to their claims?

If so, there should be little or no bacteria growth on the samples

compared to the ones before the products were applied.

So we'll be able to have a look now once we've examined

the plates to see whether those products that claim

that they kill at least 99.9%

of all known bacteria and germs

are living up to what they actually claim.

Let's start with the three hand gels.

How well did they perform in the battle against bacteria?

Well, according to our one-off test,

the product used on Harriet's hands killed 95% of the bacteria present.

The plate on the left is the bacteria on her hands

before the hand gel was applied, the plate on the right is after.

As you can see, there are very few colonies present.

So it did a good job.

The product used on Katie's hands only killed 70% of the bacteria

according to our test.

-What?!

-Oh, my God!

-That is so bad.

And the product used on Nick's hands only

killed 40% of the bacteria present in this one-off test.

40% - that's so low!

So with one of the products killing 60% less bacteria than it claimed,

it makes you wonder about those big claims on the front of the packaging.

Next, the kitchen cleaners.

Overall, according to the results of our test,

they performed better than the hand gels.

One product did in fact kill 100% of bacteria present.

As for the other two, one killed 96% and the third product

killed 92%. Not a bad result for those two, but still not 99.9%.

There are still some bacteria there.

If it was up to me, I'd probably want to give that another clean again

using the product in order to kill some of these that are left.

Finally, the results of the dreaded toilet test.

One product in our test killed 99.4% of bacteria present.

And the other removed only 84%. 15% less than it said on the label.

It was my toilet, so I was there. We did exactly what the package said!

So, with our one-off tests complete, although the products did kill

quite a lot of the bacteria, only one product has appeared to deliver

on their 99.9% promise. So how are they allowed to make this claim?

Whilst their claims are backed up with evidence,

all their testing is carried out in strictly controlled

laboratory conditions and not in the real world.

The industry bodies that represent the cosmetic

and cleaning products industries, say this testing is robust

and provides scientific evidence to back up the 99.9% claim,

and that consumers can be assured that products which pass

these tests will produce a safe surface when properly used.

They say the testing carried out is what is required under European law

and that our testing was inadequate and falls far short and cannot

be used as the basis on which to comment on product performance.

Whilst it's true that the companies use really robust conditions

when they are undertaking the tests, and the tests are done under

really standardised conditions, which is great for us as a consumer

because it means we can compare products like with like

and know full well that we're getting really good answers that way,

it does have problems. And the problems are that

when we're using the products we're not using them

under these robust, standardised laboratory conditions.

We're using them in real-life conditions.

So the amount of bacteria that you're using can be variable,

what you're using it on can be variable

and the way that we use it can be very variable too.

And that, of course, is going to impact on the result that you get

at the end having used that product.

Earlier we heard how new safety standards could now mean some

child car seats currently on the market may no longer meet

the highest levels of safety.

So how strict are these tests?

Well, this is the pace to find out.

The Transport Research Laboratory in Berkshire.

Today, we'll be taking a mid-range booster seat for children

aged between three and a half and 12

through a range of tests to find out if it meets

the latest standards, and that all important new side-impact test.

We have dummies ranging from a newborn baby,

right up unto a larger male.

So this is the dummy we'll be using for the first test today.

It's called a P3 and it replicates a three-year-old child.

So that's the passenger, and this is the car.

Although it may not look like your normal car,

the bench is designed to replicate the average vehicle.

Unlike the average vehicle, this one's powered by 12 bungee cords.

Just like giant rubber bands, you pull them back, and let them go.

And it comes hurtling down the track.

These spears will go into the holes in the wall here,

hitting into these polyurethane tubes.

It's designed to replicate that crumpling of the vehicle.

Once the car seat and dummy are in position,

the team retreat into the safety of the control room.

Then the rig or sled is slowly pulled back inch by inch.

We're pulling the sled back to give us a tension which allows

us to fire the sled into the wall at around 50 kilometres an hour.

And this is the requirement for the current crash testing regulation.

Ready...set... and trigger.

It's over in a flash, but slow-motion cameras capture

every detail of the action, so the results can be analysed.

It's important that the head in a collision doesn't

come into contact with any parts of the vehicle interior

such as the seat in front, or the roof.

This marker point here is actually the limit for the horizontal travel.

And the marker on the top of the sled is

the limit for the vertical travel.

If the head passes these marker points, then the product would fail the test.

It doesn't, so this is a pass. But they also need to check

the readings from the dummy's on-board sensors, which measure

the acceleration or G-force that the child experiences.

The limit is 55.

If the chest is above that for more than 3 milliseconds

it's likely you'd see some internal injuries to the organs.

The acceleration's not reaching that limit

so this would be a good result.

This would be a pass test.

Next, a visual inspection of the dummy's midriff.

Inside the dummy we have a clay block

we use to measure the penetration,

or the way the belts cut into the abdomen during the test.

And as you can see, there's no cutting into that clay.

This would be a pass test.

So that's one of the typical crash tests currently performed

on all car seats in order to comply with the current legal standards.

But with the introduction of the new I-size standard,

there'll be another test to carry out.

The current standard only looks at forward and rear impacts.

20-30% of impacts are of a side-impact nature.

Side-impact crashes like this one.

This footage shows what happens when a car seat doesn't offer full

head and neck protection in a side-on crash.

So the new test has been designed to fix that.

This time the chair and dummy are placed on the rig sideways.

Then, just as before, it's a case of wind it up and let it go.

We're looking to see how well the head is contained within the child seat.

One of the key things we don't want to see is the head hitting

the door structure

on the test rig.

If we do see that, then it's an ultimate failure.

On this chair the wrap-around head rest keeps the child's

head in place, and there's no contact with the side of the car.

Also one of the key things you'll notice is that the side

of the child seat is absorbing a lot of energy during the impact as well.

This just softens the blow for the dummy.

It meets the regulation standard for the side impact

and the product has passed that test.

Some products on sale now, though, won't pass.

And as the new standard is phased in over the next few years,

booster cushions which have no sides or backs for example,

are likely to stop being sold altogether.

Ultimately, the introduction of the new regulation is about saving lives.

It will make manufacturers bring more advanced products onto the market,

ensuring that the child occupant is offered a better level of safety.

If you want more information

on the safety of products in your home,

you can go to our website...

That's all for today. Thanks for watching.