- Author
-
Harwood, B.
|
Kissinger, T. L.
|
Karter, M. J., Jr.
|
Miller, A. L.
|
Fahy, R. F.
|
Hall, J. R., Jr.
|
Eisenhower, D.
|
Forbes, P.
|
Hall, J.
- Title
- Cigarette Fire Incident Study. Volume 4.
- Coporate
- National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, MD
- Report
-
Volume 4,
August 1993,
136 p.
- Keywords
-
cigarettes
|
fire risk
|
surveys
- Abstract
- Data were collected from eight cities on a wide range of cigarette and smoker characteristics for a sample of smokers. Of these, 564 smokers had had fires and were identified through fire department response to those fires, while the other 1,611 smokers had not had fires and were identified through a telephone sample survey of the communities. The characteristics analyzed included those that had shown evidence of a relationship to the risk of a cigarette-initiated fire, either in laboratory sutdies or in previous statistical analysis of fire experience. The smoker characteristics analyzed were (household) income, education, age, gender, and race. The cigarette characteristics analyzed were filter, tobacco column length, filter length, circumference, density, amount of tobacco, menthol, citrate, porosity and pack type. In addition, a variable was used to control for the smoker's city. After controlling for all smoker characteristics and city, logistic regression modeling showed four cigarette characteristics to be significant - filter, filter length, porosity, and pack type. Filter, filter length and porosity all affect air intake, which therefore appears to be an important physical element in the combustion process associated with risk. Analysis limited to filtered cigarettes only showed the same characteristics to be significant, plus tobacco column length. Extension of the analysis to two-way interaction terms did not change any of the conclusions on which cigarette characteristics are important bud did indicate that the role of pack type was different for men vs. women. Sensitivity analyses, shown in the appendix, supported the main conclusions, which were that (1) cigarette characteristics are significant after controlling for smoker characteristics and (2) the four specific cigarette characteristics - filter, filter length, porosity, and pack - are the ones that are significant. These analyses checked the impact of cluster sampling, sensitivity to missing data on smoker characteristics, and sensitivity to non-fire smoker cases with resonses by people other than the smokers themselves. All this means there are already commercially available cigarettes that exhibit reduced ignition propensity when one controls for smoke characteristics. [*] This is one of six volumes in the Final Report, Fire Safe Cigarette Act of 1990. VOLUME 1. Overview: Practicability of Developing a Performance Standard to Reduce Cigarette Ignition Propensity by Jones-Smith, J., et al. VOLUME 2. Test Methods for Quantifying the Propensity of Cigarettes to Ignite Soft Furnishings by Ohlemiller, T. J. VOLUME 3. Modeling the Ignition of Soft Furnishings by a Cigarette by Mitler, H.E., et al. VOLUME 5. Toxicity Testing Plan by Lee, B. C., et al. VOLUME 6. Societal Costs of Cigarette Fires by Ray, D. R., et al.