Can you open a refrigerator from the inside

So imagine if you're a small child looking for a place to hide. Are you starting to see the horrifying problem? According to Buzzfeed , back in the day so many children were climbing into refrigerators, getting stuck inside, and suffocating to death that the government passed the Refrigerator Safety Act in Until then, refrigerators could only be opened from an outside latch and were lined with an airtight rubber seal, making it harder for parents to hear their children calling for help.

Talk about scary. But you're not a small child playing hide-and-seek. The act said that all new fridges had to be openable "easily from the inside". A few years earlier, in , California had passed a law that made it illegal to dispose of a fridge where children could access it, and a couple of years after that they added an amendment that required people to remove doors or latches before discarding them.

Switching to a magnetic opening and closing mechanism meant that fridge doors would stay closed when you wanted them to, but could be opened from the inside with a little bit of a push. The Straight Dope homepage. Filed under:. Is it impossible to open a refrigerator door from the inside? By Cecil Adams Mar 4, Share this story Share this on Facebook Share this on Twitter Share All sharing options Share All sharing options for: Is it impossible to open a refrigerator door from the inside?

Reddit Pocket Flipboard Email. Dear Cecil: Last night someone mentioned that once you are inside a fridge and have closed the door, it is impossible to open the door from the inside. Why is it called a restroom, anyway? How did public libraries get started? Refrigerators are very important in everyday life. They are the most important appliance inside your kitchen. We all love to open our refrigerator again and again and check whether it has something to eat.

We do this on and on and sometimes every few minutes. It is possible that, while doing this, again and again, we might forget to close the refrigerator door. In this situation, there might be one question arising in your head that is what will happen if I leave my refrigerator door open for a long time? Today I will try my very best to answer all your doubts regarding this question arising in your head. We use refrigerators to keep the foods at a cool temperature, as a cool temperature is good to keep the food items fresh for a long time and preserve them.

This helps us to prevent any kind of wastage and spoilage. If you leave your refrigerator door open for a long time, the temperature inside your fridge will start increasing as all the cooling will be released in thin air and this will turn the food warm.