Research funded under the Fire Safe Cigarette Act of 1990 (United States Public Law 101–352) has led to the development of two test methods for measuring the ignition propensity of cigarettes. The Mock‐Up Ignition Test Method uses substrates physically similar to upholstered furniture and mattresses: a layer of fabric over padding. The measure of cigarette performance is ignition or non‐ignition of the substrate. The Cigarette Extinction Test Method replaces the fabric/padding assembly with multiple layers of common filter paper. The measure of perfomance is full‐length burning or self‐extinguishment of the cigarette. Routine measurement of the relative ignition propensity of cigarettes is feasible using either of the two methods. Improved cigarette performance under both methods has been linked with reduced real‐world ignition behavior; and it is reasonable to assume that this, in turn, implies a significant real‐would benefit. Both methods have been subjected to interlaboratory study. The resulting reproducibilities were comparable to each other and comparable to those in other fire test methods currently being used to regulate materials which may be involved in unwanted fires. Using the two methods, some current commercial cigarettes are shown to have reduced ignition propensities relative to the current best‐selling cigarettes.
A set of upholstered chairs constructed from five different fabric/foam combinations was subjected to a variety of ignition sources suggested by fire statistics. The sources included a cigarette, a small matchlike flame, an incandescent lamp, a space heater, and a large flame source (CTB 133 equivalent gas burner). The tests were performed in a furniture calorimeter where heat release rate and species production rates were obtained. For any chair type, the time to the peak heat release rate depended on the ignition sequence, but the magnitude of the peak did not, within the scatter of the data for any given chair. HAZARD I, the fire hazard assessment method developed at NIST, was used to quantify the hazard posed by the different ignition scenarios. No deaths were predicted when a working smoke detector was present. When a detector was not present, the results from the limited number of scenarios considered confirm the importance of a low peak heat release rate and a slow rate of rise to lessen the hazard of upholstered furniture fires. No one of the ignition scenarios examined consistently yielded the greatest potential hazard for all chair types tested when ignition and sustained burning was achieved. It is recommended that the hazards of upholstered furniture for residential use be assessed on the basis of resistance to small flame and cigarette ignition combined with peak heat release rate and time to peak subsequent to ignition by a strong source such as the CTB 133 equivalent gas burner.
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