A 6-year-old Massachusetts law requiring that only “fire-safe” cigarettes (FSCs) be sold in the state appears to decrease the likelihood of unintentional residential fires caused by cigarettes by 28 percent, according to a new study by Harvard School of Public Health researchers. The study appeared online in the American Journal of Public Health. “This study is the first rigorous population-based study to evaluate the effectiveness of the fire-safe cigarette standards, and shows that science-based tobacco product regulation can protect the public health,” said lead author Dr. Hillel Alpert, research scientist at the Center for Global Tobacco Control at Harvard.