From the Times and the Sunday Times, this is the story.

I'm Manvim Rana.

There are moments that shock a country into demanding change.

So in 1979, there was a big fire at a Woolworth's shop in Manchester that started on a sofa.

Ten people died.

And then there was a campaign to bring in regulations to stop this from happening again.

It took almost a decade, but in 1988, the government brought in new fire safety regulations for furniture.

Which established tests that were so tough that it was basically impossible to pass them

without using a lot of flame retardants in the foam and most often also in the fabric of a sofa or an armchair or a mattress.

The government thought it was making our home safer, but it now seems it had the opposite effect.

Some of these chemicals have been shown to be toxic to humans and animals,

and we have indeed in Britain, the most toxic sofas in the world.

Just let that sink in.

The sofas in all of our homes, the place we retreat to at the end of a long day,

our refuge when we need to relax, could be utterly toxic.

It was a realisation that drove the Sunday Times senior reporter Martina Lees

into a long and complex investigation.

It's taken me over two years to investigate this issue.

It is such a complicated subject and I

read through a lot of scientific papers

and met scientists and

spoke to different people who have campaigned

...