- Author
-
Slater, J. A.
|
Buchbinder, B.
|
Tovey, H.
- Title
- Matches and Lighters In Flammable Fabric Incidents: The Magnitude of the Problem. Final Report.
- Coporate
- National Bureau of Standards, Gaithersburg, MD
- Report
-
NBS TN 750,
December 1972,
27 p.
- Distribution
- Available from Government Printing Office Available from National Technical Information Service
- Keywords
-
fabrics
|
fires
|
FFACTS
|
flammable fabrics
|
ignition source
|
matches
- Abstract
- Matches and lighters were a major factor in the 1,838 flammable fabric incidents studied for which ignition sources are known. They accounted for 430, almost one-fourth, of the ignitions and led to 375 injuries, of which 57 were fatal. Children and the elderly were the groups most frequently involved in fires stated by matches or lighters. Nearly half the incidents involved children under age 11, and two-thirds of these were children under age 6. Forty-four of the 57 fatalities were children under age 11 or adults over 65. The highest fatality rate, 57 percent, was experienced by persons over age 65. The home was the predominant location of fires involving matches and lighters. Of the fabric items ignited by matches and lighters, garments were first to ignite four times as frequently as non-apparel items such as furnishings and bedding. Over one-third of the incidents involved intermediary materials in the ignition sequence. Match ignitions outnumbered lighter ignitions by 6 to 1. Among the 430 match and lighter incidents, fires invovling children were overwhelmingly the result of playing with matches and lighters, whereas for persons over age 16, smoking was the single most prevalent activity at the time of ignition.