Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, June 23, 1993                   TAG: 9306230181
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: The Washington Post
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

TOBACCO INDUSTRY SUES EPA SECONDHAND-SMOKE ALLEGATIONS CHALLENGED

The lawsuit alleges that the EPA manipulated scientific studies and ignored accepted scientific and statistical practices in making its risk assessment.

The suit, filed in U.S. District Court in Greensboro, N.C., by tobacco industry giants R.J. Reynolds and Philip Morris and four other groups representing growers, distributors and marketers, also alleges that EPA exceeded its authority in declaring secondhand smoke a known cause of cancer.

Tacco company spokesmen said the EPA action has provoked hundreds of government and private efforts to ban or restrict indoor smoking that have resulted in economic harm to the industry.

"PA, when it could not reach its predetermined conclusion with the changed generally accepted statistical practices to achieve its findings," said Dan Donahue, an R.J. Reynolds vice president and counsel.

In response to the filing of the lawsuit against an action instituted by her Republican predecessor, EPA Administrator Carol Browner said: "The agency's view is that secondhand tobacco smoke can cause cancer. This assessment is based on scientific evidence that has been thoroughly peer-reviewed and we stand by it."

EPA's placement Jan. 7 of secondhand smoke in the same category as radon and asbestos, and declaration that it causes hundreds of thousands of respiratory illnesses in children, has had a powerful impact on the movement to create smoke-free workplaces.

Just last week, a House committee approved legislation that would ban smoking in most federally owned or leased buildings. The bill's sponsor cited the EPA study. Donahue said that 145 local governments have instituted smoking bans since the EPA announcement.

Donahue and other spokesmen had no figures to back up their claim that the EPA action has economically harmed the tobacco industry.

"There is no loss from it as it stands now," said John Maxwell, a tobacco industry analyst with the Richmond, Va., firm of Wheat First Butcher and Singer. The decline in smoking this year, said Maxwell, is about 2 percent, consistent with the annual slide observed over the past few years.

Bill Wordham, an official with The Tobacco Institute, said the fear is that the future financial impact could be huge. "I'm not sure you could show a clearly demonstrated financial loss or job loss . . . but I don't think there's any doubt about the potential," he said.

Anti-smoking activists derided the suit as the desperate act of an industry fighting against scientific evidence fearful of its economic future.

"What the industry is doing is pitting their paid scientists' opinions of the research against the opinions of the people who really did the research," said Fran Du Melle, deputy managing director of the American Lung Association.