Fire Safety Science Digital Archive

The suggestion that the increasing number of fires in buildings attributed to "smoking materials" was associated with the rapidly increasing consumption of filter-tipped cigarettes was examined statistically in a previous report(l) with somewhat inconclusive results and it was therefore decided to make a laboratory comparison between plain and tipped cigarettes. In the first situation examined, with the cigarettes smouldering on wood shavings in a draught, it appears that plain cigarettes can be more hazardous than tipped cigarettes. It is concluded that any further consideration of the relative fire hazard of different types of cigarettes must include some assessment of the actual circumstances in which fires are caused by them.