Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, January 7, 1993 TAG: 9301070058
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: NEW YORK LENGTH: Medium
EPA KILLED STUDY OF NON-SMOKERS
The Environmental Protection Agency has quietly dropped tobacco from its studies of indoor air pollutants, a move critics said was made after pressure from the tobacco industry.EPA officials denied doing so because of industry pressure.
Separately, Peter Guerrero, associate director of the Congressional General Accounting Office, said his office had launched investigations of EPA secondhand-smoke studies.
The termination of tobacco research occurred two years ago, just as the EPA was completing the first draft of a report on secondhand smoke and lung cancer that is being released with great fanfare today.
The decision to halt the program was not widely known.
Until the end of 1990, the agency conducted basic research on cigarette smoke as part of its indoor-air research program.
The program was not directly connected to the EPA division that prepares risk assessments, such as the one being released today. That division was not affected by the change in the indoor-air program.
"I can tell you categorically that there was no industry pressure that I knew of," said Erich Bretthauer, EPA assistant administrator for research and development.
The tobacco research studied the effects of secondhand smoke in children. "All of that work has been killed," said an EPA scientist who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The EPA's Peter Preuss said the research was dropped because the agency had completed its central aims and wanted to move to other pollutants.
"It's outrageous that the EPA has terminated funding of the most important indoor air pollutant," said Stanton Glantz of the University of California, San Francisco. "The EPA had one of the best research programs in the world."
The decision to drop studies of tobacco smoke could hamper work on other pollutants, said Dr. Albert Collier, a pediatrician at the University of North Carolina.
The General Accounting office will investigate the killing of a report on heart disease that found secondhand smoke also causes 37,000 heart-disease deaths in U.S. non-smokers each year.
The EPA dropped that report because it was out of date, said Robert Axelrad, head of the EPA's indoor-air division. The report was completed and given to Axelrad in April 1991. It had been intended to accompany the lung-cancer report.
"The reason it's out of date is because he has been sitting on it," said Glantz, one of the report's authors. "I think it's unfortunate Mr. Axelrad caved into political pressure from the industry."