THE LEDGER-STAR
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, December 21, 1994 TAG: 9412210483
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY PHILIP J. HILTS, NEW YORK TIMES
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium: 72 lines
Data cited by the tobacco industry to show that second-hand smoke is not a significant hazard in workplaces was faked, say three workers who helped make the measurements.
The workers' statements were cited Tuesday in a report by the staff of Rep. Henry Waxman, chairman of the House health and environment subcommittee. He said the panel's staff had found ``significant alterations occurred in over 25 percent'' of the measurements of environmental tobacco smoke in a survey of 585 buildings by Healthy Buildings International, a private concern in Fairfax County, Va.
The study is a significant element in the tobacco industry's current argument against control of smoking in workplaces, and has been cited often in hearings being held by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration on whether to ban smoking in the workplace. The data were gathered mostly in 1989 and were published in 1992 in a peer-reviewed journal, Environment International.
Waxman, D-Calif., who will soon lose his position as chairman of the panel when a pro-tobacco Republican, Rep. Thomas Bliley of Virginia, becomes head of the panel's parent committee, said the panel's conclusion was based on statements by three former employees of Healthy Buildings International, and reviews of the data by his staff and an independent analyst, Alfred H. Lowrey, a research chemist at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington.
One of the company's technicians, Reginald B. Simmons of Virginia, said in an interview: ``I felt what they were doing was wrong at the time, and is still wrong. Why were we out there in the field for long hours to produce data, if they were going to change all the data when we got back?''
Gray Robertson, president of Health Buildings International, said in a telephone interview that the methods he used in collecting and altering the data were common in the indoor-air quality industry, and were not fraudulent.
The tobacco industry has paid Healthy Buildings International millions of dollars over the last decade to carry out tests of indoor air quality and to testify on behalf of the industry in many forums.
But reviewing the raw data for the company's field survey of 585 buildings, which were submitted as testimony to the Waxman subcommittee this year, Waxman said his staff and Lowrey found that measurements taken by technicians in the field were altered before being reported by the company.
The alterations consistently undercounted the amount of cigarette smoke, as measured by particles suspended in the air that are small enough to be inhaled, according to the staff report, and were only defined as significant when the actual measurements were altered by 50 percent or more.
These were some examples of questionable data listed in the staff report:
An inspection of the Imperial Bank Building in San Diego in 1989 showed that one room, with two persons smoking in it, registered 150 micrograms of such particles per cubic meter of air, three times what Waxman says the federal standard should allow.
Gregory Wulchin, the field technician who carried out the measurements for Healthy Buildings International, told Waxman's staff, ``After I submitted my field notes to H.B.I., Gray Robertson, the H.B.I. president, changed the particular measurement I recorded for the sample. In his own handwriting, he struck out the number `150' in the field notes and inserted the number `75.' ''
In response, Robertson said in the interview that he had changed the reading because he guessed that it was too high, considering that other measurements in the building were lower.
KEYWORDS: TOBACCO SMOKING SECOND HAND SMOKE STUDY by CNB