Fire Safe Cigarettes

Firefighters have been battling cigarette makers for years over the fact that a cigarette will burn down to the filter whether it's puffed or not. Just the other day we saw the results of what was probably a cigarette tossed from a car window. See Don't flick your butt, previously.

The Coalition for Fire-safe Cigarette says, "Smoking-material fires killed 800 people and injured 1,660 others in 2005. Ninety-three percent of the deaths and 78 percent of the injuries were in home fires." Maybe 2005 is the last year for which they have stats, however a firefighter told me that the number of fires caused by cigarettes has been declining. That makes sense as more smokers quit and those who smoke usually do it outdoors.

I first learned about this issue in the early 80's when the manager of a building in which I was a tenant asked me to be the junior fire marshal of the floor. Cool. I even got a plastic badge! In reality I was selected because I just happened to be around when the fire department showed up to put on a program about fire safety. The firefighter conducting the class told us that firefighters had been trying to get the tobacco companies to add something to cigarettes to make the flame go out when people stopped sucking on them. The firefighters got the cold shoulder, and he said they learned that the cigarette manufacturers were adding something that made the cigarettes keep burning. Hard to believe, isn't it?

Finally the firefighters' efforts are starting to pay off. If the companies wouldn't do it themselves, maybe a law might make them do it. Texas is one of several states that has enacted such a law, and it can be found in Chapter 796 of the Health and Safety Code. Goes into effect on 1/1/09 after which retailers can sell out their inventory of the old cigarettes, but wholesalers can only deliver Fire Safe Cigarettes.

Here's a U.S. map showing which states have enacted fire safe cigarette legislation.

So, what's a Fire Safe Cigarette? They accomplish this by adding bands of paper around the cigarette in two places. The added bands have lower permeability so that the flame does not draw air through that portion of the cigarette as it burns. And the cigarette is supposed to go out if no one puffs it.

Well, I just had to find out for myself whether they work. So I bought two packs of cigarettes, one the fire safe kind and one the old kind. Look at the bar code on the pack. If you see "FSC" above the bar code then the pack is supposed to contain Fire Safe Cigarettes.

I conducted two tests. Lit the cigarettes and left them alone. The old style cigarettes burned for 13 or 14 minutes and went out when the tobacco had been burned. One of the FSC burned about three minutes then went out. The other burned for about four or five minutes before it went out. You can see the results in the photos. The last photo shows what was left of the four cigarettes after the experiment along side fresh cigarettes to give an idea how much was burned.