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Indoor e-cigarette use can set off smoke detectors: perceptions of an emerging issue
  1. Andrew Seidenberg1,
  2. Kurt M Ribisl1,2
  1. 1 Department of Health Behavior, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Gillings School of Global Public Health, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA
  2. 2 Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA
  1. Correspondence to Mr Andrew Seidenberg, Health Behavior, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Gillings School of Global Public Health, Chapel Hill, NC 27599, USA; aseiden{at}live.unc.edu

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Introduction

Numerous health organisations and researchers support including e-cigarettes in smokefree legislation due to the potential risks associated with exposing non-users to chemicals in exhaled aerosol and renormalising smoking.1 2 Another potential risk of indoor e-cigarette use is setting off smoke detectors. E-cigarette users exhale an aerosol of particulates and chemicals,3–5 which can trigger both ionisation and photoelectric-based smoke detectors. National fire surveillance systems collect reports of smoke detector false alarms. However, there is no reportable code for e-cigarettes (personal correspondence, Lawrence McKenna, PhD, US Fire Administration). Therefore, the extent to which e-cigarette use is setting off smoke detectors remains unclear. However, recent media reports suggest this is an emerging issue, as e-cigarette use has been setting off smoke detectors in a variety of environments, …

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Footnotes

  • Contributors AS conceptualised the study and led the writing of the manuscript’s first draft. KMR helped draft and review the manuscript.

  • Funding Research reported in this publication was supported by the National Institute On Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health under Award Number F31DA045424. Additional support provided by the UNC Lineberger Cancer Control Education Programme (T25 CA057726). The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.

  • Competing interests None declared.

  • Patient consent for publication Not required.

  • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.