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Fire Technology, 50, 13911412, 2014 2013 Springer Science+Business Media New York (Outside the USA). Manufactured in The United States
DOI: 10.1007/s10694-013-0380-3
Howard A. Marcus and Justin A. Geiman*, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco,Firearms, and Explosives (ATF), U.S. Department of Justice, 6000 Ammendale Rd., Beltsville, MD 20705, USA
Received: 8 August 2013/Accepted: 7 December 2013
Abstract. Fire investigators regularly evaluate available fuels and potential ignition sources to determine the cause of a re. This work examined the propensity of lit cigarettes to ignite gasoline vapors, expanding on previous work to include a large number of trials and a wide range of test conditions. Experiments were conducted exposing lit cigarettes, both at idle and under draw, to gasoline vapors in various congurations including pools/pans of gasoline, gasoline on textile substrates (clothing), and sprays of gasoline. Five major brands of commercially-manufactured tobacco cigarettes were tested. The experiments conducted for this study consisted of 70 distinct tests involving a total of 723 cigarettes and over 4,500 instances of exposure of a lit cigarette to ignitable concentrations of gasoline vapor in air. There were no instances of the ignition of gasoline vapors from the exposure of those vapors to a lit tobacco cigarette during any of the experiments.
Keywords: Fire investigation, Ignition, Cigarettes, Gasoline
1. Introduction
Fire cause determination involves determining how a fuel, an ignition source and an oxidizer combine to cause a re [1]. NFPA 921 cautions investigators not to prematurely conclude the cause of a re based solely on the presence of a readily available fuel and a potential ignition source, but rather to understand the ignition sequence and determine whether a competent ignition source exists for the rst material ignited (see 18.4.2 and 18.4.4 of NFPA 921 [1]).
Lit cigarettes are a potential ignition source that may need to be considered by re investigators at many scenes. There were an estimated 90,800 reported smoking-material res in the US in 2010 [2]. An additional 155,000 home cigarette res go unreported each year, according to a study by the US Consumer Product Safety Commission [3]. Despite the prevalence of smoking material res overall, cigarettes are generally considered to be poor ignition sources for ignitable liquids. This study examines whether a lit tobacco cigarette, commercially manufactured in the US,...