Making A Fire-Safe Cigarette

Not long after saying good night to the last dinner guest, the Mitchell family was dead.

Billie Mitchell, 33, was a non-smoker-, his wife Kathi, 27, smoked occasionally. A guest may have dropped the cigarette, or maybe it spilled from an ashtray into a crack of the sofa that night in August, 1985. Apparently it smoldered, undetected, as the household slept, finally starting the fire that killed the couple, their children Jennifer, 4, and Joshua, 1, and a visiting cousin.

Bob Calvin, Billie’s friend and boss at a local trucking firm, was called next morning to the home in Taft, California, to help identify the bodies. “After the tears,” Calvin said, “I got sick.”

Calvin had been through this before. During his childhood in Oregon, Calvin recalled, two of his young cousins died, and a third was horribly disfigured by a furniture fire from a cigarette dropped at a party. “How he (the third cousin) lived is beyond everybody’s comprehension,” Calvin said.

Cigarette smoking has been called the nation’s leading preventable cause of death, accounting for more than 300,000 premature deaths a year from cancer and other diseases, according to the U.S. Surgeon General. What’s less known is that cigarettes start more fatal fires than any other ignition source, causing about 30% of all fire deaths in this country, according to government studies.

The toll from cigarette fires–about 1,500 to 2,000 deaths per year–seems paltry compared to that from smoking-related disease. But smokers presumably knew of the risk, while many victims of cigarette fires are children or innocent adults who were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Along with deaths, cigarette fires also cause at least 6,000 injuries per year and $400 million in property loss, according to a study by the National Fire Protection Association.

Cigarette manufacturers deny the frequent charge that they use additives to keep cigarettes from going out. But in the manufacturing process, tobacco moisture, paper porosity and other variables are controlled to produce cigarettes that will keep on burning when not being puffed. A cigarette dropped on a sofa or easy chair may smolder at 700 degrees © for 30 to 60 minutes, according to fire experts, which is more than enough time to ignite many types of furnishings.

The call for a fire-safe cigarette dates at least to the late 1920s, when Massachusetts Congresswoman Edith Nourse Rogers pushed unsuccessfully for a cigarette that would go out a few minutes after put down. In fact, dozens of patents have been issued over the years for such self-extinguishing cigarettes. The cigarette makers contend, however, that these cigarettes would have an unacceptable taste or would require use of hazardous additives.

They see cigarette fires as strictly a problem of carelessness, and not of product design. Their claim that an acceptable fire-safe cigarette cannot be produced has met with considerable skepticism, in part because tests have shown that two commercial cigarettes–Carlton and More–already are slightly safer than rival brands.

Nonetheless, the industry’s carefully guarded immunity from most health regulation extends to the arena of fire safety, where there are fire-resistance standards for many items that cigarettes burn, but none for cigarettes.

That could change after this fall, when a cigarette safety panel makes its final report to Congress. The advisory panel, set up by Congress three years ago, has found that certain physical changes–such as looser-packed tobacco–make for a cigarette that goes on burning with less chance of starting a fire. The findings are certain to renew the call for a fire-resistance standard for cigarettes.

Savvy Campaign

But the industry plans to he ready. During the last four years, it has been building a bridge–actually more of a superhighway–to the group with the most interest and influence on issues of fire safety.

In a unique and savvy lobbying campaign, the Tobacco Institute–the political arm of the cigarette firms–has lavished millions of dollars in grants and contracts on fire departments and state and national fire safety groups. The groups are to develop educational materials on fire safety and run community fire prevention programs. The campaign has been a success, according to the benchmark cited last year in an internal Tobacco Institute memo. By mid-1986, the memo said, the institute was “68 percent toward our goal of 200 working relationships within the fire community.”

This interest in fire prevention was fueled by the momentum of cigarette safety legislation. In 1979, after a family of seven in his district died in a cigarette fire, Rep. Joe Moakley (D-MA.) introduced a bill to require cigarettes to go out within five minutes of being left unattended. The following year, Moakley and Sen. Alan Cranston (D-CA.) took a different tack, introducing bills directing a federal agency to set a fire resistance standard, or to report back to Congress if it found that a fire safe cigarette was technically unfeasible.

The agency was the Consumer Product Safety Commission, which has jurisdiction over some 15,000 products. In the area of fire safety, it has fire resistance standards for children’s sleepwear, mattresses, carpeting and rugs, and applied pressure that led to a voluntary standard for upholstered furniture.

But the safety commission lacks jurisdiction over the product that is estimated to cause more injuries and deaths than any other. In 1972, when the commission was created–and then again in 1976–Congress specifically barred it from scrutinizing “tobacco or tobacco products,” even though no other agency had that authority.

Moakley complained in a speech of a “misguided policy of making the world safe for the cigarette…While hundreds of millions of dollars were being spent to make furniture, rugs and mattresses resistant to cigarettes,” he said, “nothing was being done to make the cigarette less likely to ignite.”

Tobacco executives were understandably reluctant to tinker with cigarettes, which are among the most profitable of’ all legal products. Americans spend $30 billion a year on cigarettes, or about 1 % of consumer disposable income. Naturally, the cigarette companies are wary of any change in cigarette appearance or taste that might affect sales.

Although leery of saying so publicly, the cigarette makers also are nervous about product liability claims from cigarette fires. A few lawsuits have been filed over cigarette fires, and none has been successful. But some legal experts and others believe that a sympathetic plaintiff–such as a burned child–will eventually prevail against the maker of the brand that lit the fire.

The industry would be all the more vulnerable if it were shown “that there is a technology for a fire-safe cigarette,” said a former staff member of the Tobacco Institute who would not speak for attribution. “To them, that’s a very, very scary issue.”

Andrew McGuire, a San Francisco health activist and member of the cigarette safety panel, said a lawyer for R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., the number two U.S. cigarette maker, once acknowledged the industry’s fear of liability suits.

Over lunch about five years ago, McGuire said, he was asked by the lawyer, Max Crohn: “What would be your opinion if we were to ever so slowly change the way we make our cigarettes so that they became fire-safe?”

McGuire said Crohn went on to explain:

“We are between a rock and a hard spot with products liability. If we come out with a fire-safe cigarette tomorrow, it may…show that we could have done it…If we do it gradually, then there’s a chance that it won’ be an issue.”

Crohn has a different memory of this conversation. He said he believes it was McGuire who raised the question of product liability. Crohn also said he knew of no way to make a fire-safe cigarette, and so had no basis to ask such a hypothetical question. Crohn added: “There is no way that Reynolds was not investigating the issue because of it fear that if it solved the problem it would bring about lawsuits.”

Whatever its private legal worries, the industry publicly has focused on the problem of technical feasibility, contending that a fire-safe cigarette would be unappealing to smokers or hard to mass produce. As they usually do when threatened by regulation, industry officials portray themselves as defenders of’ science against political meddling.

“Congress cannot legislate science into existence,” was a phrase heard with regularity during debate on the bills.

Industry officials further argued that a fire-safe cigarette, if one could be made, would not burn as thoroughly as current brands-and thus would deliver more tar, nicotine, and carbon monoxide in the smoke.

As there was no point in saving hundreds of people from fires so thousands more could die of disease, this seemed a potent argument. Also a novel one, coming from an industry that denies smoking causes disease. Industry officials explained that health authorities and their customers worry about nicotine and tar, even if they do not.

But after several years of’ successful resistance, the industry was forced to reassess its position. By 1984, cigarette safety bills were pending in several states, including New York, California, Massachusetts, and Illinois. Federal involvement did not seem so dreary, compared with the nightmare of different rules from state to state. So the industry cut a deal that bought it time and held the states at bay.

With tobacco industry support, Congress passed the Cigarette Safety Act of 1984–which called for a study of’ the technical and commercial feasibility of making cigarettes with “a reduced propensity to ignite upholstered furniture and mattresses.” State legislators informally agreed to put their bills on hold pending completion of’ the federal Study.

The act created a 15-member Technical Study Group–with members from government agencies, health and fire prevention groups, and the cigarette and furniture industries–to oversee a battery of technical and economic studies. The most significant research involved tests on experimental cigarettes with varying physical characteristics. The study concluded that thin cigarettes with less densely packed tobacco (those with less tobacco ‘fuel’), that were wrapped in less porous paper, were considerably more fire-safe than the best commercial brands.

Vulnerable Industry

Moreover, the study said, “some of the best performing experimental cigarettes had per puff tar, nicotine and CO2 (carbon monoxide] yields comparable to typical commercial cigarettes,” apparently knocking down a key industry argument.

In a draft of’ its final report to Congress–due October 30–the study group said “it is technically feasible and may be commercially feasible to develop cigarettes that will have a significantly reduced propensity to ignite upholstered furniture and mattresses.” An Interagency Committee–made up of top officials with the CPSC, U.S. Fire Administration, and Department of Health and Human Services–is to follow with policy recommendations by December 30.

Spokesmen for the Tobacco Institute have declined comment until of the report is final.

Dr. Richard Gann, chief’ fire scientist with the National Bureau of Standards and study group chairman, said the industry would be vulnerable to lawsuits and state legislation if it ignores the study findings.