Smoke alarm updates address cooking & construction materials

CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa (KCRG) - As we “fall back” one hour this weekend, it’s also a good time to make sure your smoke alarms are working.

It may also be time to purchase updated smoke alarms. Ones labeled UL 217 are the new standard smoke alarms.

UL stands for Underwriter Laboratories, a third-party safety certification company that’s been around for more than a century.

You’ve probably seen the UL label on many products ranging from appliances to fire extinguishers to life jackets.

The UL 217 smoke alarms enhance fire detection for newer construction materials and help eliminate cooking nuisance alarms.

“Eliminating cooking nuisance, alarms is really important because silencing of those nuisance, alarms is cited as one of the main reasons why people take batteries out of the smoke alarms. One of the things that we did is we change the requirements so that the smoke alarms have to distinguish between different types of smoke,“ said UL Solutions Technical Director Dwayne Sloan

Sloan emphasized the importance of having working smoke alarms on every floor of your home and inside and outside of sleeping areas.

He says you should be testing your smoke alarms once a month.