Tobacco Documents Online

C ( n Tobacco . Institute Newsletter INFORMING THE INDUSTRY OF NEWSWORTHY DEVELOPMENTS 1875 I Street, N.W., Washington. D.C. 20008 • 202/457-4800 Number 318 November 2, 1982 J "NONSMOKING [Federal] Government workers who are hypersensitive to smoke are eligible for disability unless they are moved to a job in a clean environment," said UPI about a San Francisco court decision. IN COURT A three-judge U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals panel unanimously ruled that Irene Parodi must be given a job away from smokers within 60 days or be placed on disability and awarded $20,000 in back payments. The judges said she has an~•"environmental limitation." Parodi was transferred in 1977 to an office with smokers. She claimed breathing difficulties, but her case was rejected by the Federal Office of Personnel Management and the Merit Systems Protection Board. Her attorney, John Browne III, former president of the American Lung Association in San Francisco, called this a "landmark decision" that, while applying only to Government workers, could influence judges deciding private sector cases. "The court is essentially rec- ognizing that secondhand smoke can be harmful to one's health," Browne said. Mike Causey in his "Federal Diary" in The Washington Post said the decision "could have far-reaching consequences here and in other major Federal centers."

TI Newsletter 2 November 2, 1982 The physicians found that 68.5 percent of smokers in a group of 336 healthy young men contracted influenza, compared to 47.2 -percent of the nonsmokers. AZso, they claimed, influenza was more severe in smokers. "We conclude that smoking is a major determinant of morbidity in epidemic influenza and may contribute eubstantiaZZb to incapa- citation in outbreaks in populations that smoke heaviZb," said the researchers. They said the study should "stimuZate anti- smoking intervention poZzcies in large industrial and service organizations." THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT'S recently released $115 million MRFIT study (NL 315) showed that "stopping cigarette smoking...appears to have reduced coronary heart disease mortality significantly, though confounding factors cannot be excluded," writes a Scot- tish cardiologist in the British Medical Journal (10/16). But, writes M.F. Oliver, "much as we might like to think otherwise, it is not yet possible to prevent coronary heart disease in the community...[F]alling mortality from coronary heart disease in the United States remains largely unexplained." . "The results prove nothing," said an article on MRFIT in The Lancet (10/9). CIGARETTE SMOKING is not linked to "morning sickness" in preg- nant women, according to a Swedish study, The New York Times re- ported. The findings were presented at the 10th World Congress on Gynecology and Obstetrics. RESEARCHERS FROM Harvard Univ. and Australia reported in The New England Journal of Medicine (10/21) that female smokers tested "had substantially and significantly lower levels of all three major estrogens" compared with nonsmokers and ex-smokers. This might, they said, shed a light on why "smoking is associated with early menopause and with a reduction in~ the risk of breast cancer." RESEARCHERS SAY they have developed a synthetic flavoring to "improve" the taste of low-yield cigarettes, the Chicago Sun- Times reported. It said researchers at International Flavor & Fragrances in New Jersey identified and then synthesized the compounds responsible for tobacco aroma and flavor.