According to a 2013 National Fire Protection Association report, 540 civilian deaths in the United States were attributed to smoking material fires in 2011, a number at or near the all time low, and well down from the numbers of deaths in the 1980s. During 2011, an estimated 90,000 smoking material fires caused $621 million in direct property damage.

Several factors, including a decline in smoking and stricter fire resistant standards for mattresses and upholstered furniture, are credited with the decrease in smoking material fire deaths over the last 30 years. The most recent drops in fatalities and injuries, though, owe much to “fire safe” cigarette legislation.

In 2003, states began requiring that all cigarettes sold must be “fire safe” that is, have sharply reduced ignition strength (ability to start fires). By 2010, fire safe cigarette legislation was in effect in 47 states (In Texas, since January 1, 2009). From 2003 to 2010, the number of civilian deaths in smoking material fires fell by an average of 21 percent.

2012 was the first year that such laws were effective in all 50 states. A projection linking the percentage decline in fire deaths to the percentage of smokers covered suggests that when smoking material fire death numbers are analyzed for the year 2012, the reduction in civilian deaths will reach roughly 30 percent.

Other key findings in this report show
Older adults are at the highest risk of death or injury from home smoking material fires, even though they are less likely to smoke than younger adults.
One fatality in four (24 percent) of home smoking material fires was not the smoker whose cigarette started the fire.
Sleeping is the primary human factor contributing to ignition, cited for almost one third (31 percent) of home smoking material fire deaths.

Read more and get the report here.

Retailers, Wholesalers, and Distributors

All cigarettes sold in Texas must be certified fire standard compliant in accordance with Chapter 796 of the Health and Safety Code. Distributors, wholesalers and retailers are responsible for ensuring that all cigarettes they receive and offer for sale are fire standard compliant.

Manufacturers

In order to sell cigarettes in Texas, you must obtain approval of your marking and certify that the cigarettes meet the FSC requirements. Submit a form SF251, Application for Fire Standard Compliant Cigarette Marking Approval, with an example of the mark to the State Fire Marshal s Office. Have each variety of cigarette tested at a laboratory meeting ISO/IEP 17025 accreditation. After the cigarettes have been tested, you may certify the cigarette as fire standard compliant and submit form SF250, Certification by Manufacturer. The certification fee of $250 per variety of cigarette must accompany the form. You must re certify each variety of cigarette every three years. Certifications are valid for three years from the date the certification was received by the State Fire Marshal s Office.

The forms may be downloaded in PDF format here. If you would prefer the forms in Word format, please contact the FSCC Program Coordinator by email.

Note UPC Codes are no longer required on the SF250 form.

List of Cigarettes Certified by Manufacturers for Sale in Texas in PDF format

Additional information for manufacturers from the Office of the Attorney General and Comptroller of Public Accounts.

Non Settling Manufacturer Report to the Attorney General

Cigarette/Roll Your Own (RYO) Cigarette Tobacco Product Special Fee

Complaints

Only cigarettes certified to the State Fire Marshal s Office may be sold in Texas. If you observe a retailer, wholesaler, distributor or manufacturer offering non FSC cigarettes or uncertified cigarettes, you may file a complaint by filling out and sending in an SF252 complaint form. The complaint form is available in PDF format. The completed form may be mailed, faxed or emailed to the address, fax number or email address listed on the form.

Safe Smoking Practices

Whether you smoke a cigarette, pipe or cigar, you are smoking burning tobacco. Under the right circumstances an improperly discarded tobacco product can start a fire. Although fire standard compliant cigarettes may reduce the likelihood that a cigarette will ignite a fire, safe smoking practices must still be used. It&#39 s best to smoke outside and extinguish cigarettes in water or sand. Ashtrays should be deep and sturdy and placed on something that will not easily ignite, such as a table. Ashtrays must never be placed on sofas, chairs or beds. Soak cigarette butts and ashes in water before throwing them away. Hot cigarettes or ashes should never be tossed into a trashcan.

Never smoke in a house where oxygen is in use. You should never smoke near an oxygen source, even if it is turned off. Oxygen can be explosive and causes a fire to burn hotter and faster.

Use personal ashtrays or the ashtray in your car to extinguish your cigarettes. A cigarette thrown from a car window can cause wildland fires that endanger people, homes and animals.

Resources

• Chapter 796 of the Texas Health and Safety Code, Cigarette Fire Safety Standards
• The Texas Fire Standard Compliant Cigarette Rules
• United States Fire Administration Relaunches Smoking and Home Fires Campaign
• NIST Relative Ignition Propensity of Test Market Cigarettes study
• Coalition for Fire Safe Cigarettes
• Nova Search for a Safer Cigarette

How smoking during pregnancy affects you and your baby

Information about buying cigarettes online?

Ob gyn Robert Welch has helped thousands of women with high risk pregnancies realize their dreams of a healthy baby. But even after all those successes, there’s still one situation that truly scares him a pregnant woman who can’t quit smoking.

“Smoking cigarettes is probably the No. 1 cause of adverse outcomes for babies,” says Welch, who’s the chairman of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Providence Hospital in Southfield, Michigan. He’s seen the complications far too many times babies born prematurely, babies born too small, babies who die before they can be born at all. In his view, pregnancies would be safer and babies would be healthier if pregnant smokers could somehow swap their habit for a serious disease such as diabetes or high blood pressure.

“I can control those conditions with medications,” Welch says. But when a pregnant woman smokes, he says, nothing can protect her baby from danger.

Why is it so dangerous to smoke during pregnancy?

Cigarette smoke contains more than 4,000 chemicals, including truly nasty things like cyanide, lead, and at least 60 cancer causing compounds. When you smoke during pregnancy, that toxic brew gets into your bloodstream, your baby’s only source of oxygen and nutrients.

While none of those 4,000 plus chemicals is good for your baby (you would never add a dollop of lead and cyanide to his strained peaches), two compounds are especially harmful nicotine and carbon monoxide. These two toxins account for almost every smoking related complication in pregnancy, says ob gyn James Christmas, director of Maternal Fetal Medicine for Commonwealth Perinatal Associates at Henrico Doctors’ Hospital in Richmond, Virginia.

The most serious complications including stillbirth, premature delivery, and low birth weight can be chalked up to the fact that nicotine and carbon monoxide work together to reduce your baby’s supply of oxygen. Nicotine chokes off oxygen by narrowing blood vessels throughout your body, including the ones in the umbilical cord. It’s a little like forcing your baby to breathe through a narrow straw. To make matters worse, the red blood cells that carry oxygen start to pick up molecules of carbon monoxide instead. Suddenly, that narrow straw doesn’t even hold as much oxygen as it should.

How will smoking affect my baby?

A shortage of oxygen can have devastating effects on your baby’s growth and development. On average, smoking during pregnancy doubles the chances that a baby will be born too early or weigh less than 5 1/2 pounds at birth. Smoking also more than doubles the risk of stillbirth.

Every cigarette you smoke increases the risks to your pregnancy. A few cigarettes a day are safer than a whole pack, but the difference isn’t as great as you might think. A smoker’s body is especially sensitive to the first doses of nicotine each day, and even just one or two cigarettes will significantly tighten blood vessels. That’s why even a “light” habit can have an outsize effect on your baby’s health.

How smoking affects your baby

Weight and size
On average, a pack a day habit during pregnancy will shave about a half pound from a baby’s birth weight. Smoking two packs a day throughout your pregnancy could make your baby a full pound or more lighter. While some women may welcome the prospect of delivering a smaller baby, stunting a baby’s growth in the womb can have negative consequences that last a lifetime.

Body and lungs
Undersize babies tend to have underdeveloped bodies. Their lungs may not be ready to work on their own, which means they may spend their first days or weeks attached to a respirator. After they’re breathing on their own (or even if they did from the start), these babies may have continuing breathing problems because of delayed lung development or other adverse effects of nicotine. Children whose mothers smoked during pregnancy are especially vulnerable to asthma, and have double or even triple the risk of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS).

Heart

Babies whose mother smoked in the first trimester of pregnancy are more likely to have a heart defect at birth.

In a U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) study published in February 2011, these babies’ risk of having certain types of congenital heart defects was 20 to 70 percent higher than it was for babies whose moms didn’t smoke. The defects included those that obstruct the flow of blood from the right side of the heart into the lungs (right ventricular outflow tract obstructions) and openings between the upper chambers of the heart (atrial septal defects).

Researchers analyzed data on 2,525 babies who had heart defects at birth and 3,435 healthy babies born in Baltimore and Washington, D.C., between 1981 and 1989.

Brain function
Smoking during pregnancy can have lifelong effects on your baby’s brain. Children of pregnant smokers are especially likely to have learning disorders, behavioral problems, and relatively low IQs.