Fire Safety Science Digital Archive

Fires attributed to smoking materials are a controversial subject. Critics have suggested that they should be attributed to "unknown" causes. However, correlating the fires attributed to smoking materials with the total sales of tobacco in the form of cigarettes over the period 1947 to 1961 inclusive, produced a correlation coefficient of 0.85. A similar calculation relating the fires attributed to "unknown" causes with the total sales of tobacco in the form of cigarettes produced a correlation coefficient of 0.92. The more detailed analysis undertaken here indications that fires caused by tipped cigarettes appear to be more likely to be attributed to smoking materials, than those caused by standard cigarettes.