Fire-safe cigarette delay 'costing lives'

More than 100 people die in the UK every year from cigarette fires

Anti-smoking campaigners say lives will be lost because of a delay in bringing in new self-extinguishing cigarettes.

So-called fire-safe cigarettes burn out quickly when dropped, meaning they are less likely to cause fires in the home.

They were due to be introduced across the EU later this year, but work on developing an EU standard is running at least six months behind schedule.

Deborah Arnott, of anti-smoking group Ash, said the cigarettes would mean a "significant decline" in fire deaths.

More than 100 people die in the UK every year from fires caused by cigarettes which are dropped or discarded without being extinguished.

Fire-safe cigarettes, which have barriers of flame-proof paper, meaning they burn themselves out, are already the only kind on sale in most US states and in Canada and Australia.

'Certainty needed'

The 27 EU member states gave the go-ahead in November 2007 for self-extinguishing cigarettes to be introduced.

Ms Arnott said they should be introduced by manufacturers across the EU immediately.

She added: "If they were, then basically we should see a significant decline in the number of smoking-related fires. These fires kill at least one person a day in Europe."

Christopher Ogden, from the Tobacco Manufacturers Association, said such urgency would not be practical.

"If the manufacturers introduced these new cigarettes in the European market, only to be told a few months later 'No, no, that's not the standard, we want this standard', then they'd have to go through the whole process of changing the project design all over again," he said.

"So we can't make the move until we have certainty."