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They’re one of the appliances in our kitchens we use every day and an indispensable way to keep milk, eggs, cheese and fruit cool and safe to eat.
But there’s one part of a fridge’s design that has a dark history and regulations written in blood – and a lot of people are only just realising.
Fridges, whether they’re small portable ones, freestanding fridges or integrated fridge-freezers inside cupboards in our kitchens all share one thing in common: they’re magnetic.
The doors are held closed by magnets, which snaps them shut with a little push and means they can be pulled open again with a little force, and the seal keeps everything airtight inside.
Posting on Reddit’s Be Amazed, a poster said: “Did you know? Refrigerator doors are magnetic because kids used to get trapped inside them and suffocate.
“Before the Refrigerator Safety Act of 1956, doors could only be opened from the outside, and many children died because they found abandoned refrigerators and got stuck inside while playing hide and seek.”
The new act required fridge manufacturers to make sure fridge doors were openable ‘easily from the inside’.
Although the law didn’t dictate how this should be done, most manufacturers decided to switch to a magnetic mechanism which would allow doors to stay shut when you wanted them to but could be opened from the inside with a push.
The new law led to a drastic reduction in the number of kids dying from being stuck inside fridges, with the number of deaths in fridges dropping in half between 1960 and 1981.
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