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A refrigerator death is death by suffocation in a refrigerator or similar device such as a freezer. Because, by design, such devices are air-tight when closed, a person trapped inside will have a limited supply of oxygen. Early refrigerators could only be opened from the outside, making accidental trappings—particularly of children playing with discarded devices—a possibility, and several such deaths have been recorded. Modern designs close with a magnetic mechanism that can be opened from the inside, reducing the danger of accidental trappings.
United States
Such deaths were not uncommon for children in the United States before the passage of the Refrigerator Safety Act in 1956. Children would occasionally play in abandoned refrigerators and become trapped. The first reactions to the deaths were to ask people not to abandon refrigerators and to detach the doors of unused refrigerators. At least one state, Oklahoma, enacted legislation making the abandonment of a refrigerator with a latch in a location where a child might find it a felony. In the mid- to late 1950s troops of people would sometimes search out abandoned refrigerators, detaching the doors and smashing the locks. However, these efforts were not entirely effective, and children were still dying inside of refrigerators that had not been found and dismantled. The continued occurrence of refrigerator deaths led to a law that required a change in the way refrigerator doors stay shut. The act applied to all refrigerators manufactured in the United States after October 31, 1958, and is largely responsible for the adoption of the magnetic mechanism that is used today instead of a latch.
The number of deaths due to suffocation in refrigerators declined a statistically significant amount in the years after the law.
The problem with children suffocating in the appliances was well known. At least as early as 1954, alternative methods of securing air-tight closure had been suggested, e.g., in patent 2767011, filed by Francis P. Buckley et al. in 1954 and issued in 1956.
The Refrigerator Safety Act is codified at 15 U.S.C. 1211 1214) as Public Law 84-930, 70 Stat. 953, August 2, 1956.
Individual American states also have similar laws, such as California and Washington.