Early refrigerators could only be opened from the outside, making accidental entrapment a possibility, particularly of children playing with discarded appliances; many such deaths have been recorded.
The original "refrigerator" was a household appliance that kept food cold using blocks of ice; now called the "icebox", these cabinets became popular in the 1800s and early 1900s.
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 illegal.
[7] At least as early as 1954, alternative methods of securing air-tight closures had been suggested, such as in patent 2767011, filed by Francis P. Buckley et al. in 1954 and issued in 1956.
[9] The act applied to all refrigerators manufactured in the United States after 31 October 1958, and is largely responsible for the adoption of the magnetic mechanism that is used today instead of a latch.
The number of U.S. and Canadian deaths due to suffocation in refrigerators declined a significant amount in the years following federal legislation.
[13] Hazardous items for refrigerator deaths are "places with a poor air supply, a heavy lid or a self-latching door".
[27] A Canadian study showed that the most effective safety education was "targeted, simple, action-oriented messaging" especially when "combined with strategies to change behaviour.