FEDERAL PACIFIC PANEL RECALL            

Investigations indicate that Federal Pacific Electrical (FPE) panels contain defective circuit breakers that create a substantial risk of fires. Some estimates indicate that these dangerous electrical panels cause around 2,800 fires and more than one dozen deaths each year.Federal Pacific and Zinsco are both manufacturers of electrical panels that were recalled in a class action law suit from 2002.The style of Federal Pacific panels that used their Stab-Lok breakers were found, through independent testing in the 1980s, to fail to trip in the case of overload. This failure could result in overheating and fires.The whole purpose of a circuit breaker is to trip or “break” the flow of electricity when a circuit becomes overloaded thus preventing the risk of fire or serious electrocution.In a 1980’s court case it was revealed that not only were the breakers failing to pass the Underwriter’s Laboratories (UL) guidelines but that Federal Pacific committed fraud and a cover-up regarding their testing. They labeled the breakers as meeting the UL standards when they clearly did not.It was discovered that many of these Stab-Lok breakers did not disconnect when overloaded. In the 1980s the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) investigated the performance of the circuit breakers. CPSC performed its own laboratory tests on samples of
FPE Stab-Lok single-pole and double-pole breakers. For these samples, they found that 85% of the double-pole breakers and 39% of the single-pole breakers failed one or more of the UL test criteria.In some cases the breakers failed to trip at ANY amount of current which poses a critical danger to occupants!