Interlaboratory Study of an Alternate Substrate for Use in ASTM E 2187

____________________________________________________________________________________ This puication is avilable ree of carge rom : http://dxorg/10.6028/N IS T.TN .874 ASTM E 2187 has become the internationally referenced standard for designing and specifying less fire-prone cigarettes. In this test method, a lit cigarette is laid on multiple layers of filter paper, and the observer identifies whether the cigarette burns its full length or not. Historically, a specific brand of filter paper has been used as the test substrate, with specified ranges of mass and moisture uptake necessary to achieve reasonable repeatability and reproducibility of the test results. This approach became less viable when the manufacture of the paper was moved to a different plant, and when an increased demand for the paper resulted in long delays in delivery. This Technical Note describes an interlaboratory study (ILS) of an alternate substrate composed of a thin sheet of full hard 302 stainless steel and a single sheet of filter paper. Seven laboratories examined the effect of filter paper from four manufacturers and steel from three manufacturers on the test results for four cigarette designs. The findings of the ILS were (1) that the ignition propensity results obtained using the steel/paper substrates were not statistically distinguishable from the result obtained for testing on 10 layers of the original filter paper, (2) there were no statistically significant effects of the substrate materials on the test results, for those combinations of cigarette, paper, and steel, and (3) the filter paper manufactured in the new plant gives test results that are more than a factor of two lower than the results from the original plant.