CIGARETTE IGNITION OF CELLULOSIC MATERIALS WITH NON-FIRE STANDARDS COMPLIANT (NON-FSC) CIGARETTES

摘要

Cigarette ignition of paper products is often cited as the cause of fires during forensic firerninvestigations, or at times may be ruled out as a potential cause based on other available data. Despiternthe fact that cigarette ignition must be considered during the course of many fire investigations, therernis relatively little published data regarding the frequency with which cigarettes are likely to igniternvarious cellulosic materials. A total of 77 experiments were conducted to evaluate the propensity ofrnlit cigarettes to ignite combustibles under a variety of conditions. Fifteen ordinary combustibles,rnmainly cellulosic materials, were tested. Each experiment exposed 50 samples of the same material tornlit cigarettes, for a total of 3850 lit cigarettes placed on combustible materials one at a time. Analysisrnof the results concluded that the probability of achieving flaming ignition was highly dependent onrnthe type of material used as a fuel and its configuration. Other variables that were statisticallyrnsignificant included air velocity and cigarette type. Of the 63 items that reached flaming ignition, therntime to ignition varied from a minimum of 65 seconds to a maximum of 960 seconds.