Association of Smoking and Alcohol Drinking with Residential Fire Injuries

Abstract

To investigate whether tobacco, alcohol, and their combined use are important risk factors for fire injuries, the authors analyzed data from a population-based case-control study in King County, Washington, between 1986 and 1987. Cases (n = 116) were households with at least one fatal or nonfatal unintentional residential fire injury reported to the Washington State Fire Incident Reporting System from 1984 through 1985. Controls were selected by random digit dialing (n = 256). After adjustment for household size, number of male household members, total household income, and education of the head of the household, the odds ratio for fire injury in households whose members collectively smoked 1-9 cigarettes per day was 1.5 (95% confidence interval (CI) 0.6-4.2) relative to households with no smokers; for 10-19 cigarettes per day, the odds ratio was 6.6 (95% CI 2.5-17.5), and for 20 or more cigarettes per day, it was 3.6 (95% CI 1.9-7.2). Although households with alcohol drinkers who consumed five or more drinks per occasion were found to be at increased risk in the crude analysis, multivariate analysis suggested that this was partly because drinkers tended to live in households with higher smoking levels. Thus, even though households with alcohol drinkers who consume five or more drinks per occasion may be at increased risk of residential fire injury, smoking appears to be the more important underlying risk factor.

Risk factors associated with unintentional house fire incidents, injuries and deaths in high-income countries: a systematic review

“…Of the 11 included studies,12–16 28–33 5 were case–control designs,12 13 29 30 33 2 were cross-sectional31 32 and 4 were classified by the review authors as statistical analyses of routinely collected data 14–16 28. Ten of the included studies were published papers12–16 28–30 32 33 and one was an unpublished thesis 31.…”

Predictors of Mortality From Fires in Young Children

“…It is likely that the association of fire-related mortality with maternal characteristics is mediated by behavioral and environmental factors; these include cigarette use, [17][18][19] alcohol consumption, 17,18,20 use of a space heater, 17,21 lack of a smoke detector, 17 and residence in a mobile home. 17 Of these factors, Runyan found that the greatest increase in risk of fire-related mortality was associated with lack of a smoke detector (odds ratio ϭ 3.4) and the presence of an alcoholimpaired person (odds ratio ϭ 7.5).…”

An exploration of causal factors in unintentional dwelling fires

“…Logistic regression analysis ( Ballard et al , 1992 ;Marshall et al , 1998 ;Shai and Lupinacci, 2003 ) of both fi re incidence and fi re fatality was also undertaken, in order to ascertain whether a logistic regression approach might be more accu rate than a linear regression approach. The two values for logistic regression modelling of fi re fatalities were 0 = no fi re fatalities within an LSOA, and 1 = fi re fatalities within an LSOA.…”