4 Summary The project Electrical safety in domestic housing started in the fall of 2017, with the purpose of mapping the status of electrical safety in existing Swedish homes. The project includes looking at the risks of fires caused by electricity and electrical accidents in households, focusing on fixed electrical installations. The Swedish National Safety Board does not have the authority to carry out private household inspections. This leads to insufficient knowledge about the status of electrical safety in households, in contrast to other electrical installations in which the agency has legal access, for example industries, hotels and schools. This project can therefore contribute to the planning of activities to improve household safety. Available data and other supporting documents have been collected and analysed, which were reported in the interim report released at the end of 2018. During 2019, the report was supplemented with inspections, questionnaires, interviews with subject matter experts and technical tests. This final report is the result of all the activities that the project has carried out since the start of the project. Every year at least 8 people die in electrical fires in Sweden. More than half die in fires where electricity is the direct cause of the fire. The rest die due to misuse of products whose inadequate protection results in fires. There are a large number of fatalities in fires where the cause is unknown. Although conducted interviews indicate that all fires are not electricity-related, it is reasonable to assume that there are electricity-related fires among these. If the distribution of causes is the same as for fires with a known cause, it may be up to 14 people who die in electrical fires every year. Every year, more than 800 people in homes are so severely damaged by an electrical accident that they must seek emergency care. On average, one person per year is killed by an electric accident in or in connection with a home, and often it happens in their spare time.Every year, the emergency service responds to approximately 1 800 electricity-related fires. 1 260 of these fires are due to the misuse of electrical products, 280 due to electrical failure in electrical products, 150 due to faults in fixed electrical installations and 110 because of electrical faults in fixed installed appliances. Fires in detached houses / townhouses account for 73 % of the insurance companies' costs for electrical fires. Fixed electrical installations appear on average more than twice as often as the cause of fire in detached houses/townhouses as those in multi-family houses. Furthermore, these fires are more common in older residential homes. For detached houses / townhouses built before 1940, the risk is twice as high as to those built in 1980 or later. Compared to multi-family houses built in 1980 or later, the risk of fires in detached houses / townhouses built before 1940 is four times as high.Fires in fixed installed appliances are also more common in detached houses / townhouses, while fires in electrical products are common in both housing types. Fires due to improper use of electrical products are heavily over-represented in multi-family houses. Both electrical fires caused by direct electrical faults and incorrect use can be explained by a number of underlying causes, such as intermittent contact and
Previous page: Trender och orsaker till elbränder i bostäder [3 / 84]
Next page: Trender och orsaker till elbränder i bostäder [5 / 84]
