title: Association between fire-safe cigarette legislation and residential fire deaths in the United States.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Cigarettes and other tobacco-related smoking products have traditionally been a major ignition source for residential fire deaths. In the United States, all 50 states and the District of Columbia have passed laws requiring that cigarettes self-extinguish if they are not being smoked (so-called fire-safe cigarette laws). The purpose of this study was to quantify the association between state-level implementation of fire-safe cigarette legislation and the rate of residential fire death.
  
  
  METHODS
  Poisson regression was used to analyze state-years data. Main intervention: Implementation dates for fire-safe cigarette legislation in each state.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Residential fire mortality rate.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Implementation of fire-safe cigarette legislation was associated with a 19% reduction in overall residential fire mortality rates, adjusted for demographic differences between states (rate ratio = 0.81, 95% confidence interval: 0.79, 0.84). This is approximately similar to the estimated proportion of residential fire deaths in which smoking materials are an ignition source (23%). Legislation implementation was associated with a protective effect for every age, sex, race, and ethnicity strata that we examined. State-specific residential fire mortality death rates decreased (defined as a drop of at least 5%) in 32 states after fire-safe cigarette legislation was implemented. In 12 states there was either less than a 5% decrease or an increase, and seven states had insufficient deaths to evaluate state-level changes.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Implementation of fire-safe cigarette is associated with reductions in residential fire mortality rates.
authors.affiliation: Injury Prevention Research Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 137 East Franklin Street, Suite 500, Chapel Hill, NC, 27599-7505, USA. rebeccayau@unc.edu.
authors.forename: Rebecca K
authors.initials: RK
authors.lastname: Yau
authors.affiliation: Injury Prevention Research Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 137 East Franklin Street, Suite 500, Chapel Hill, NC, 27599-7505, USA.
authors.forename: Stephen W
authors.initials: SW
authors.lastname: Marshall
keywords: Fire-related mortality; Fire-safe cigarette; Home injury