Are RIP (Reduced Ignition Propensity) cigarettes necessary?

 Picture thief taken from Pat Nurse MA

Apart from the fact that these bastardised cigarettes make people ill, as I pointed out on Saturday, will these chemically treated cigs actually save lives? We have had regulations here in the UK regarding fire retardant soft furnishings since 1988 and many amendments since, some amendments as recent as 2005/6, which has caused much controversy throughout the hotel and bed & breakfast industry.

It would appear that the majority of house fires are in the winter months says an insurance company, who should know such statistics, and they list five contributory factors and smoking comes in at number 4:

• Faulty Christmas lighting and decorations are major reasons why December has more fires in the home than any other month.
• The popularity and use of candles and oil burners around the home as an aesthetic design feature.
• Heaters and open fires being left unattended as temperatures drop.
• People smoking indoors due to colder and wetter weather.
• Faulty or misused household appliances such as electric heaters, electric blankets and cookware used more commonly in the winter.

No surprises there as far as I can see as most of our household appliances and decorations, those things that make our lives a bit easier and bearable, are capable of killing us in a house fire. Technology has greatly reduced those appliances ability to harm us but still we get house fires that maim and kill, why is that? There are only two reasons I can see and the one uppermost in my mind is the terminally STUPID, I mean, who would smoke in bed? Most people these days do not smoke in bed but there is always one that has the stupid gene. Do you regulate by law for the terminally stupid? If you did would that stop them from being stupid?

The other reason I can see is accidental. With the greatest will in the world you will never stop accidents from happening, oh yes, you can greatly reduce the prevelance of accidents but how far into the realms of fantasy does governments and lobbyists have to go because they have a bee in their bonnet about something they do not do, but want you to stop doing it. But where do most accidents occur domestically, and why?

Well I was surprised to find out it was not the bathroom as I was prevously led to believe:

Accidents are classified into various categories, which are generally determined by the cause and the persons or things involved in the occurrence. Some of the most common types of accidents are:
- Home accidents
- Highway accidents involving vehicles
- Workplace accidents

Here we will consentrate on number one, home accidents, as the bansterbators who pushed for the RIP bands in our cigarettes use home fire accidents to push for the poisoning of smokers so they can go to bed at night and self flagellate while having an orgasm over their triumph.

Most home accidents occur in living or dining rooms. These are the places where children spend most of their time. On the other hand, the kitchen is also a common place for accidents at home because of sharp objects and hot surfaces. Slipping cases typically occur on stairs.

So most home accidents take place where an adult rules and works, most typically mothers/women, and have a duty of care towards anyone who enters their abode, adult or child, (and why does it take an act of some countries parliaments to make an adult comply with their very own intuition?) So, thinking of the children, do we ban cookers? Do we ban knives and forks? Do we make, by an act of parliament, objects that are sharp round, like tables? Or do we make gas cooking a thing of the past and use electric rings that are so low in heat outage that touching a hob would warm your hands on a cold winters day?

But I have digressed long enough away from the subject of the impending (in the case of that testbed of new legislation, Scotland, it has now arrived, well, you gotta have a guinea pig I suppose,) RIP act (yes, I can see the bansterbatory joke at us smokers) passed by our sovereign masters in Brussels and our dutiful masters, pupets of the EU elected politicians in Whitehall will implement it with vigour on the 17th of November. Actually some of you should be aware that your cigs are not the same because by that date there, by dictat, will be no 'ordinary' cigs on the shelves as this is a rolling process that must, again by dictat from the EU, be completed by the 17th of next month.

Testing, 1,2,3, testing.

The department of the deputy prime minister has done some testing on the fire safe cigarette against the 'ordinary' cigarette not doctored by RIP chemicals. They sum up their intentions at the beginning of the report thus:

Comparisons of the propensity of firesafe cigarettes and conventional cigarettes to ignite textile materials used in a domestic environment

 As I have stated above the UK government in the past made laws forcing manufacturers of soft furnishings, like settees, bedding, carpets, curtains etc to be treated with fire retardant chemicals so households these days are made much more fire safe due to legislation than they once were. So I am assuming that everything I have around me in the soft furnishing department is low risk to my accidental dropping of a cigarette onto said furnishings. But I do realise that prolonged 'red' or 'white' heat will combust anything near to it, no matter what chemicals are put on them, but that would take an awefull lot of heat and domestic premisis do not have that level of energy.

The purpose of this programme of work was to undertake comparative cigarette ignition tests on a range of textile and related materials used in domestic furnishing that is available at the lower price end of the UK market. Each test sample was subjected to one type of UK typical mass market, “low cost” cigarette and two types of USA Fire Safe Cigarettes, claimed to be of Reduced Ignition Potential (RIP). By incorporating repeat testing a statistically based comparison of the likelihood of ignition of the chosen test samples by each of the three types of cigarette was determined.

The test materials were selected from new materials available at the low price end of the UK market. The selection was divided into different groups of materials as follows.

These were textile furnishing materials that are used alone or in contact with other furnishing materials. They were chosen so as to contain at least a significant proportion of cellulose fibre (usually cotton) so that there was a likelihood of combustion with
current UK cigarettes.

These materials were representative of bed sheets/blankets, throws, scatter cushion covers and mattress covers.

As I said in my last post called Dunce! I have no head for all this statistical analyst gobbledegook so I have included the full report in my post below and await your interpretation of it in the comments.

Talk, enjoy and educate me ffs because I am lost in a mire of misdirection.

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