Whether or not a cigarette can be a competent ignition source, and under what timeline restrictions that can occur, is a question that I get asked time and time again. It can be a tricky topic, as the materials found throughout our homes and businesses are constantly changing, and cigarettes themselves evolve over time, or have some variation between brands. As a starting point though, I like to go to the data that is available out there, some published and peer reviewed, some harder to find. For this month’s article, I’ll be sharing the data that I’ve found to be useful; surely there is more out there, and hopefully more will continue to be published, but we have to start somewhere.
Perhaps the easiest category to talk about is cigarette ignition of gasoline or other common flammable gasses and liquids. A 1996 paper by Holleyhead(1) found that many of the most commonly-encountered substances, including methane and petrol vapor, were not ignited by a lighted cigarette. In the early 2000’s, the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms & Explosions did extensive work to validate these findings, much of which has been published by Geiman and Marcus(2), and show that out of 4500 instances of exposure of lit cigarettes to ignitable concentrations of gasoline vapors in air, none of them resulted in ignition. I’ve personally done this several hundred times with cigarettes, and perhaps 20-30 times with cigars and had the same result: no ignitions.
Ignition of paper products and other similar cellulosic materials is where things get a bit trickier. Despite the fact that cigarette ignition must be considered during the course of many fire investigations, there is relatively little data published regarding the frequency with which cigarettes are likely to ignite various paper products.
Fire Findings published an article in 1998(3) detailing the findings of a study where they conducted 300 tests dropping lit cigarettes into wastebaskets containing a variety of rubbish, including stationary, envelopes, copy machine paper, catalogs, plastic wrap, foam packaging, paper towels, tissues, disposable dish cloths, napkins, popcorn sacks, fast food wrappers, waxed tissue, toilet paper, and paper hand towels. In 300 tests, 5 flaming ignitions occurred (fewer than 2%).
Another paper by Holleyhead(4) summarizes his own work with various materials, and also summarizes a paper by Cooke and Ide(5). The information from this summary is provided in the table below:
In order to expand upon this limited data set, ATF (under the direction of myself and Justin Geiman, but with the help of quite a lot of people) conducted a more extensive study, with a method derived to attempt to control as many variables as possible, while still producing “real world” conditions relevant to a fire investigation(6). During this testing, over 3850 individual items were tested, each with one lit cigarette placed upon it. Of the 3850 items, four were ignited by adjacent items and were removed from the data set. A total of 289 items achieved smoldering combustion, of these 63 progressed to flaming ignition. So, in total, the rate of a cigarette igniting these materials was less than 2%, but there was also a wide variation between materials when the data was explored more closely. The results are reproduced in the table at the end of this article.
It should be noted that the tests used the “non-fire standards compliant” or “non-FSC” cigarettes. However, through additional (unpublished) testing I have done over the years, I’ve found essentially no difference in the ignition propensity of FSC vs. non-FSC cigarettes, so I think it’s safe to continue to use some of these older data points. Through viewing the table, you can see that a great many materials never went to ignition, while a few seemed particularly susceptible. In cases where flaming ignition was achieved, the time to ignition ranged from 65 seconds to 960 seconds, or approximately 1 to 16 minutes. So, the more you can do to identify your potential fuel items, the better off you will be in terms of ruling in or our cigarettes as potential ignition sources. I will also caution the reader of this article, that in more recent times, ATF has conducted testing that indicates some types of cardboard are resulting in frequent ignitions by cigarettes.
In my next blog post, I will discuss other types of materials and the data that we have available, such as cigarette ignition of cloth materials, but organic and blended, as well as upholstered furniture items, and perhaps mulch if I can squeeze it in.
References:
(1) Holleyhead, R., “Ignition of flammable gases and liquids by cigarettes: a review”, Science & Justice, Volume 36, Issue 4, October 1996, Pages 257-266, Elsevier, 1996.
(2) Geiman, J. and Marcus, H., “The Propensity of Lit Cigarettes to Ignite Gasoline Vapors”, Fire Technology 50(6), January 2013.
References:
(1) Holleyhead, R., “Ignition of flammable gases and liquids by cigarettes: a review”, Science & Justice, Volume 36, Issue 4, October 1996, Pages 257-266, Elsevier, 1996.
(2) Geiman, J. and Marcus, H., “The Propensity of Lit Cigarettes to Ignite Gasoline Vapors”, Fire Technology 50(6), January 2013.
(3) Anon., “Cigarette fires in Paper Trash Results Difficult to Believe, Even after 300 Tests’, Fire Findings, vol 6, part 1, USE, pp. 1-3. 1998.
(4) Holleyhead, R., “Ignition of solid materials and furniture by lighted cigarettes. A review’, Science & Justice 1999 vol. 39(2), pp. 75-102.
(5) Cooke, R.A. & Ide, R.H., Principles of Fire Investigation, The Institution of Fire Engineers, Leicester, UK, pp. 225-226 (1985)
(6) Lord, J. & Geiman, J., “Cigarette Ignition of Cellulosic Materials with Non-Fire Standards Compliant (Non-FSC) Cigarettes”, Fire & Materials 2015, Proceedings of the 14th International Conference & Exhibition, Interscience Communications, pp. 357-369, 2015.
(4) Holleyhead, R., “Ignition of solid materials and furniture by lighted cigarettes. A review’, Science & Justice 1999 vol. 39(2), pp. 75-102.
(5) Cooke, R.A. & Ide, R.H., Principles of Fire Investigation, The Institution of Fire Engineers, Leicester, UK, pp. 225-226 (1985)
(6) Lord, J. & Geiman, J., “Cigarette Ignition of Cellulosic Materials with Non-Fire Standards Compliant (Non-FSC) Cigarettes”, Fire & Materials 2015, Proceedings of the 14th International Conference & Exhibition, Interscience Communications, pp. 357-369, 2015.
