Tobacco Documents Online

Services of Mead Data Centrat, Itm 3'RDi STORY of Level 1 pirinted in FULL format. The A'ssoci'ate6 Press PAGE 6 The materials iin the AP file weire compiled by The Associated Press. These materials may not be republished without the express wr'itten consent of The Associated Press. July Z6, 1991, Friday, PM cycle SECTI'©N:' Blusiness News . LENGTH: 663 word!s HEADLINE: Second-Hand Smoke Report Moves Closer To Final Approval BYLINE: By PAUL RAEBURN DATELI'NE:' NEW' YORK KEYWORD: EPA-Tobacco Industry BODY: A government report concluding that ci~garette smoke kills 53,000 n'on-smoke'r's annually moved closer to finall approval as Enviironmental Protection Agency science advisers decided6 not to review, it. The decision was a rebuff' to the tobacco industry,, which had demanded the review. EPA Adminilstrator William K. Reilly had promised that the advisers would be offered an opiportunilty to review the report, but he did not guarantee that they would' accept the offer. Robert Axelradl, the director of the EPA's indloo'r air division, said offi'lci'ass would meet soon "to determine the appropriate next steps in the publication process." Axelrad said Thursday he did not know when the report would be released. "I'm pleased that they stood up, to the tobacco i!ndustry, and made the right decision,"' sai'di Stanton Giantz of the University of California,, San Francisco, one of the' report"s authors. "I hope that the document will be released as soon as possible," tie said Thursday. The'report, sponsored by the EPA and the U.S. Public Health Service, is not an offici~al EPA policy document. It is a broad summary of research on the d'anger's of smoking, written by scientists chosen by the EPA. The report"s many conclusions include the fi'ndlinig that tobacco smoke is a substantial contributo~r to indoor, air pollution„ that it causes disease even att very low levels of exposure and that ventilation cannot adequately control it. The findi'ng that has attracted'the most attention, however, is the determination that cigarette smoke causes 53,000 deaths in non-smokers each year, 37,000 of them from heart disease. That chapter was written by Glantz and' Dr. William Parmley, a cardiologiist at the University of Californiia,,,Sani Francisco. LEX1S'NEXIS'LEXIS'IVEXAS'

Services of Mead Data Centrai, Inc. PAGE 7' The Associated!Press, July 26, 1991 Those numbers are far higher than the estimates of lung cancer deaths, associated with second-handl smoke, which range from 3,000, to 5,000 per year. A copy of the report was leakedito The Associatedi Press in May, and has been released under the Freedom of Information Act. But the report has not meen made generally available. Brennan Dawson, a spokeswoman for the Tobacco Institute in, Washington, D,C., had urgedi the EPA to submit the document to its advisers. She said the advisers" decision not to review it was: understandable., because the document's find!ings would, not be endorsed by the agency. She said Axielrad told the advisers that the figure of 53,;000 deaths was "gratuitous" andlnot supported by data in the report. "1 said' ilt was somewhat gratuitous in that it was, not arrived at in that paper but was simply referenced from another paper," Axelrad said., He emphasized that the number was not an official EPA estimate. Gl.antz said the figure of 53,000 deaths has not been questioned ini earlier scientific reviews of the report. '°Gi'veni that none of the scientists who reviewed' the report questioned that, I am~ frankly, puzzled as to why Mr. Axelrad, who is not a scientist, is making the statements he"s making now," Glantz said. Last year, the tobacco indlustry demandedithat the report, a so-called tec.hni'lcal compendium of inf©rmationi orr second-hand cigarette smoke, be reviewed by the EPA''s Science Advisory Board, a group of outside experts who review EPA. dbcuments for scientifi'c accuracy. The demand was repeatedlin letters to the EPA by Rep. Thomas J. Bliley Jr., R-Va., whose positions parallel many, industry positions on the EPA's studies of second-hand~ cigarette smoke. In a letter to Bliley, in June, Reilly said the EPA would ask its SCience Advisory Boar& to revi'ew the report,, despite assertions by Donald Barrnes, the, staff director, of the Science Advisory Bioard,, that such a review! was, inappropriate. In its meeti% this week, the board's executfve commiittee considered the request andd declinedl to review the report, said Barnes. "In the jPdgment of the board, it did not look like ai high priority activity, given what the agency was sayi!ng, that they weren "t going toi use: it in any policy they were developing," Barnes saidl. ryt LEXIS''NEXIS'LEXIS'NEJICIS'