During Fire Prevention Week (Oct. 3-9) and throughout the year, let caregivers in the community know that pre-teenage children may not wake up to a high-frequency tone smoke alarm.
Smoke alarms manufactured specifically to awaken pre-teenage children are not commercially available. When caregivers create their home fire escape plans, they need to consider this and make sure someone is assigned to wake pre-teen children.
high-frequency tone alarms
Research indicates high-frequency tone alarms awaken only 56% of children and prompt 55% to “escape” from the bedroom.
Children sleep longer than adults and spend more time in slow-wave sleep, a sleep stage that requires the loudest noise to wake someone. This is especially problematic because data show that 31% of people killed in home fires are sleeping at the time of the fire.
Research on waking children with smoke alarms continues
NCH studied sleeping children’s ability to wake up and escape in response to a variety of smoke alarms
Researchers from the Center for Injury Research and Policy at Nationwide Children's Hospital (NCH) in Columbus, Ohio, have studied sleeping children’s ability to wake up and escape in response to a variety of smoke alarms for many years.
A 2020 study1 by NCH looked at how quickly children awaken from slow-wave sleep and perform an escape procedure in response to smoke alarms using a:
- Female voice
- Male voice
- Combination of a low-frequency tone plus a female voice
- High-frequency tone
The study indicated that female voice, male voice, and hybrid voice-tone alarms awakened 85-89% of children and prompted 84-89% to “escape” from the bedroom, compared with 56% awakened and 55% escaping for the high-frequency tone alarm.
"The fact that we were able to find a smoke alarm sound that reduces the amount of time it takes for many children to wake up and leave the bedroom could save lives," said Mark Splaingard, MD, Project Researcher.
Research Takeaways
- The median time to escape for the male voice, female voice and hybrid voice-tone alarms were 12-13 seconds. It was more than a minute and a half for the high-frequency tone alarm.
- Voice alarms don’t need to use a child’s name or their mother’s voice. This allows the alarm to be manufactured at a lower cost using a generic recording. Decreased cost and no need for voice personalization increase the likelihood that the alarm will be purchased, used, and installed correctly.
- Alarm signals that awaken and prompt escape among children also work for adults and older adults.
Participants
Children under age 5 were not part of the study because they are too young to reliably rescue themselves
188 children aged 5-12 years old were recruited for the study. Adolescents over the age of 12 were not included because they generally respond well to high-frequency smoke alarms.
Children under age 5 were not part of the study because they are too young to reliably rescue themselves from a home fire.
Future research
The findings of this study add important information to the research team’s previous studies and the work of others to develop a commercially available, effective, and practical smoke alarm for children. Use of these alarms in children’s sleep areas may reduce home fire-related injuries and deaths among children old enough to perform self-rescue.
A remaining question to be answered by future research is how a child’s escape response is influenced by the message content of a voice alarm.