Although there has been talk of fire safe cigarettes reaching the UK for the last seven years, the measure has never come to pass. Now, though, the London Fire Brigade is reporting on its website that the European Commission has now agreed on a safety standard for cigarettes and the EU is expected to start selling reduced ignition propensity (RIP) cigarettes (otherwise known as fire safe cigarettes (FSC)) from November, 2011. The measure is defined as “voluntary” but if manufacturers do not comply their products can be removed from the market. (As of today, the measure has not yet come into force, but is still on the cards.)
Traditional cigarettes, currently still on sale within the EU, stay lit until reaching the butt 99% of the time, while fire safe cigarettes, currently on sale in the USA, Canada and Australia, retain ignition only 10% of the time unless the smoker puffs to keep the cigarette alight. These cigarettes work by adding two or three bands of paper along the length of the cigarette, which reduces the oxygen flow and thus causes the cigarette to go out if not puffed at that moment. There are, however, questions over the safety of these new cigarettes.
The state of New York mandated fire safe cigarettes in June, 2004 and in January, 2005 the Harvard School of Public Health published its study on them. The authors tested nineteen compounds in the cigarettes and all nineteen had higher levels of toxicity than their non-FSC counterparts, with carbon monoxide levels being higher by 11.4% and naphthalene 13.9%. Naphthalene can cause myriad side effects if one is exposed to enough of it, such as anaemia, convulsions, vomiting and even comas. In addition to the increased levels of toxic compounds, the bands of paper are glued together with an ethylene-vinyl acetate, copolymer emulsion based adhesive, which is used as carpet glue or the tube used in a glue gun. There is evidence, therefore, that fire safe cigarettes contain higher levels of toxic compounds than ‘normal’ cigarettes, and in a time when much focus is given to the ingredients in cigarettes, should lawmakers not be aiming to reduce these levels rather than increasing them?
Away from laboratory testing and into real world cases, the Internet is awash with cases of smokers who since smoking fire safe cigarettes have suffered from various health problems, which promptly ceased when they switched back to non-fire safe cigarettes or rolled their own. Such is the extent of the problem, in fact, that a petition to remove these cigarettes from the market now has over 27,000 signatures, many of whom state health complaints from the cigarettes.
It has long been known that traditional cigarettes contain an accelerant to keep the cigarette burning. From a business perspective it makes perfect sense: if the cigarette burns faster, the smoker is more likely to consume more and thus purchase more. Rolling papers do not contain this accelerant and are well known for extinguishing regularly, causing the smoker to relight it. One of the most frequently mentioned facts about cigarettes is that they contain over 4,000 chemicals, and so the question is why not simply remove the accelerant to have the same effect as RIP cigarettes, rather than add more chemicals and increase the toxicity of those already present? In The Medical Journal of Australia in 2004, Simon Chapman wrote that “The elimination of citrate and other burning agents in cigarette paper thus appears to be a simple and effective means of dramatically reducing the ignition propensity of cigarettes.”
A final point to consider is the overall effectiveness of fire safe cigarettes. New York’s statistics on smoking-related fires show that there were 5.36 fires per 10,000 smokers in the four years preceding 2004 and 5.69 in the four years afterwards. In 2008, however, there were 6.37 fires per 10,000 smokers, meaning that the number of smoking-related fires have actually increased since the introduction of RIP cigarettes, which is even more troubling when one considers the smoking rate dropped from 21.6% in 2003 to 16.8% in 2008.
Unlike the heated discussions surrounding other smoking-related legislation like plain packaging, display bans and graphic warnings being based upon the likelihood of success and government interference in personal choice, the debate on fire safe cigarettes hinges on the safety of the product – according to the reports of those suffering from them, the risks of smoking have changed from an increased risk of disease later in life to an immediate impact on health. While no one would argue against cigarettes that do indeed lower the chances of fires (or are safer in any other way), the issue in question here is whether fire safe cigarettes are really the answer they are presented as.
*This entry first appeared at www.smokescreens.org, October 2011, and has been slightly modified here*
This letter reveals all.
“Safer Communities Directorate
Fire and Rescue Services Division
Steven Torrie QFSM, Head of Fire and Rescue Advisory Unit
T: 0131-244 2342 F: 0131-244 2564
E: steven.torrie@scotland.gsi.gov.uk
Chief Fire Officers (Scotland)
28 July 2011
Dear Chief Officer
DEAR CHIEF OFFICER (SCOTLAND) LETTER 10/2011
REDUCED IGNITION PROPENSITY (RIP) CIGARETTES – UPDATE
Introduction
1.
Dear Chief Officer (Scotland) Letter 15/2010 – Reduced Ignition Propensity Cigarettes Update, provided an update on the new Standard and Test Method for RIP cigarettes. I am now in a position to provide you with a further update on the good progress which has been made on this issue.
Background
2.
CEN (the EU standards making body) published the Safety Standard and Test Method on 17 November 2010, with Official Journal of the European Union (OJEU) Referencing planned for 12 months from that date. This period is to allow manufacturers sufficient time to change the necessary manufacturing process to meet the new standard. The EU has said that the Standard will be referred to the OJEU on 17 November 2011. In parallel, the British Standards Institution (BSI) published the equivalent BS EN 16156 (Cigarettes Assessment of the ignition propensity) on 31 December 2010.
Current Update
3.
Following the publication of both the CEN and BSI standard, policy colleagues in the UK Government and Chief Fire and Rescue Adviser in England (CFRA) have continued dialogue with the main UK tobacco manufacturers to ensure they have in hand plans to comply with the Standard. These meetings have been very positive and the manufacturers are on track to deliver compliance for all cigarette products at point of manufacture in advance of the publication of the Reference Standard on 17 November 2011.
4.
The tobacco industry have advised that although every effort would be made to ensure there is ‘sell through’ of product lines before the Reference Standard takes effect, it may not be possible to guarantee all retailers stock would be compliant by the Reference date. The industry is working with their sales teams to inform retailers of the incoming standard, and the importance of ensuring that as much non-compliant stock is sold through by 17 November 2011.
5.
The industry expects to have achieved a complete sell through of non-compliant products by the end of summer 2012.
6.
My colleagues in CFRA are working closely with the General Product Safety and Better Regulation teams at the department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) to understand how the new Reference Standard will be implemented. BIS’s standard practice is to communicate the existence of new standards through the Trading Standards Interlink to Local Authority Trading Standards departments on the date they take effect. This will confirm the UK Government’s expectation that all cigarettes sold in the UK and EU will comply with the new safety standard.
7.
As is normal with Reference Standards, this will be a light touch. BIS will not instruct nor expect Trading Standards to enforce the standard. It will be a matter for local Trading Standards to determine their role in any monitoring and enforcement activity.
Conclusion
8.
I would ask that you note the further good progress on this important issue and I will keep you informed of any future developments.
Yours sincerely
STEVEN TORRIE
Head of the Scottish Fire and Rescue Advisory Unit
Excellent article! The figures on health and chemicals are obviously troubling, and the figures on the number of fires are an absolute disgrace:
“that there were 5.36 fires per 10,000 smokers in the four years preceding 2004 and 5.69 in the four years afterwards. In 2008, however, there were 6.37 fires per 10,000 smokers, meaning that the number of smoking-related fires have actually increased since the introduction of RIP cigarettes, which is even more troubling when one considers the smoking rate dropped from 21.6% in 2003 to 16.8% in 2008.”
I.E. in the 8 years prior to FSCs there were an average of about 5.5 fires/10k smokers while in the year after FSCs that number jumped to about 6.4: a 16% increase. Given the drop in smoking rates the “After FSC” figure, if there had been NO change to FSCs SHOULD have been 16.8/21.6 (78%) of 5.5: i.e. about 4.3.
In reality, if we looked at the numbers as factual representations of cause and effect (which Antismokers usually love to do) and compared the expected 4.3 figure to the actual 6.4 figure, we could argue that FSCs “caused” an increase of roughly 50% in the number of fires over what would be expected.
Imagine if Philip Morris or BAT came out with a new cigarette that had a GREAT taste and marketed it like mad and smokers bought it in droves and then it was discovered that the rate of fires increased by 50% because of the chemicals they’d added to produce that “GREAT taste.”
Can you imagine the uproar? The demands for criminal prosecution? The bankrupting of the companies by lawsuits?
And yet, when the government does it at the behest of Antismokers who knew that the resulting products would be distasteful to smokers and expensive/difficult for the tobacco companies, the change goes through and is treated as sacrosanct and beyond criticism.
And that’s even if one totally ignores the 20,000+ health complaints about the new cigarettes.
And government does nothing — because the antismoking lobby is simply too powerful to confront politically.
Sad.
Michael J. McFadden
Author of “Dissecting Antismokers’ Brains”
Heh… just picturing someone going before a government agency and saying:
“Hello! I’m here to ask for approval for an improvement to home heaters! My improvement will emit between 11 and 14% more poisonous gasses and cause 50% more fires than the current models, however they will also smell bad, thus encouraging citizens to use them less because of the stink and thereby conserve energy!”
Think it’d fly?
– MJM