Common smoke alarms fail to quickly rouse children from sleep: study

The younger the child, the less likely they are to respond, researchers find in a novel study
Reuters Health

The best smoke alarm to rouse children from deep sleep is one that combines a human voice with a low-frequency tone, researchers have found.

After an experiment with children aged between five and 12 they concluded that commonly used home smoke alarms with a high-frequency tone only are inadequate to wake many children in time to escape a fire.

Among the cohort of nearly 550 children the median time to awaken and median time to escape decreased with increasing age for all smoke alarm types.

“Young children are resistant to arousal during slow wave sleep — the deepest part of sleep — especially in response to the high-frequency tone alarm found in most homes,” said Professor Gary Smith, director of the Center for Injury Research and Policy at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio.