IKEA recalling 27 million chests and dressers after toddler deaths

For practical and stylish home furnishings, there is no comparison to Ikea’s haven of affordable Scandi-chic. We don’t know about you, but here at Herfamily.ie we have all fallen under the Swedish flat-pack giant’s spell, and have many collections of DIY assembled furniture at home to prove it.

And with bedrooms, hallways and nurseries choc-a-block with Ikea dressers and chest-of-drawers, you can bet we got a little fright when we read about how Ikea this week has issued a “corrective recall” on more than 27 million pieces of furniture. This move comes following an investigation by the company and the Consumer Product Safety Commission in the US after two American toddlers died in separate incidents last year when dressers from the popular Malm line tipped over.

This, Ikea says in a statement, happened as a result of the furniture not being attached securely to a wall – something their assembly-manual clearly advices it should be.

But if you own a piece of Malm furniture, don’t start tearing it apart to bring it back just yet – just keep the items in question well away from your kiddos (and their climbing ways!) until you have done what you should have done in the first place and mounted the chest or dresser to the wall behind it.

Customers are then advised to contact their local Ikea store straight away for a free wall anchoring kit.

Gerard Bos, IKEA UK and Ireland Customer Relations Manager, said: “Product safety and quality are top priorities for IKEA. Furniture tip-over is a serious safety risk in the home, however IKEA chests of drawers and dressers are safe to use when assembled according to the assembly instruction and attached to the wall using the restraints provided in the packaging of these products.”

Bos urges customers to inspect their IKEA chests of drawers and dressers to ensure that they are securely anchored to the wall.

“Should any customer be concerned about their furniture, they are welcome to contact us on 0203 6450010 (UK) or 01 5413302 (ROI) to request a free restraint kit if the original one was disposed of.”