Deadly Deception: The Tobacco Industry's Secondhand Smoke Cover Up

by Anne Landman — January 7, 2009 - 4:46pm
  • Topics: International, Public Relations, Tobacco
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    Many of the of the tobacco industry's underhanded strategies and tactics have been exposed, thanks to landmark legal cases and the hard work of public health advocates. But we are still uncovering the shocking lengths to which the industry has gone to protect itself from public health measures like smoking bans. Now we can thank the city of Pueblo, Colorado, for an opportunity to look a little bit deeper into how the industry managed the deadly deceptions around secondhand smoke.

    A new study, now the ninth of its type and the most comprehensive one yet, has shown a major reduction in hospital admissions for heart attacks after a smoke-free law was put into effect.

    On July 1, 2003, the relatively isolated city of Pueblo, Colorado enacted an ordinance that prohibited smoking in workplaces and indoor public areas, including bars and restaurants. For the study, researchers reviewed hospital admissions for heart attacks among area residents for one year prior to, and three years after the ban, and compared the data to two other nearby areas that didn't have bans (the part of Pueblo County outside city limits, and El Paso County, which includes Colorado Springs). Researchers found that during the three years after the ban, hospital admissions for heart attacks dropped 41 percent inside the city of Pueblo, but found no significant change in admissions for heart attacks in the other two control areas.

    Eight studies done prior to this one in other locales used similar techniques and yielded similar results, but covered shorter periods of time -- usually about one year after the smoking ban went into effect. The results of this longer, more comprehensive study support the view that not only does secondhand smoke have a significant short-term impact on heart function, but that lives, and money, are probably being saved by new laws proliferating around the world in recent years that minimize public exposure to secondhand smoke.

    Tobacco Smoke and the Heart

    When most people think "cigarette smoke," they immediately think "lung cancer," but far less public attention has been paid to how secondhand smoke effects heart function. In a memo dated 1980 that I first discovered in 1999, a Philip Morris scientist points out that nicotine lowers the heart's threshold to ventricular fibrillation -- an inefficient heart pumping pattern -- which increases people's susceptibility to heart attacks.

    A 1991 report sponsored by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimated that secondhand smoke kills approximately 53,000 Americans year, mostly from heart disease. A public health study published in 2001 showed that exposure to secondhand smoke for even short periods of time, as little as 30 minutes, causes changes in platelets and cardiac epithelium. Lung cancer takes many years to develop, but heart function is impacted more rapidly upon exposure to secondhand smoke.

    Tobacco Companies Have Long Been Aware of Secondhand Smoke Hazards

    Tobacco companies knew much more about the health hazards of secondhand smoke, and knew it longer ago, than most people realize.

    Recognizing the need to do more biological research on its own products, but also understanding the need to distance itself from this research for legal reasons, in 1971 Philip Morris purchased a biological lab in Germany called Institut Fur Biologische Forschung ("INBIFO"), or Institute for Biological Research. PM then created a complex routing system to ensure that work done at INBIFO could not be linked back to Philip Morris. INBIFO routed its study results through a PM research and development facility in Switzerland called Fabriques de Tabac Reunies, and documents created at INBIFO were often in French or German language.

    Between 1981 and 1989, Philip Morris (PM) conducted at least 115 different inhalation studies on secondhand smoke at INBIFO in which they compared the toxicity of mainstream smoke (the smoke the smoker himself inhales) to that of secondhand smoke. PM discovered that secondhand smoke is 2-6 times more toxic and carcinogenic per gram than mainstream smoke. The company never published the results of these in-house studies or alerted public health authorities to their findings. Rather, they kept this information strictly to themselves -- even most Philip Morris employees were unaware of these studies.

    Strategies to Deceive the Public

    But Philip Morris did much worse than hide this crucial information from the public. Spurred by a 1993 EPA Risk Assessment that declared secondhand smoke a known human carcinogen, and recognizing the danger the secondhand smoke issue held for the cigarette industry, Philip Morris masterminded a massive global effort to confuse and deceive the public about the health hazards of secondhand smoke and to delay laws restricting smoking in indoor public places.

    A 1993 internal Philip Morris (PM) strategy paper titled "ETS (Environmental Tobacco Smoke) World Conference" shows PM organizing a wide range of strategies to shape public views on secondhand smoke and fight smoking restrictions worldwide. PM pursued tactics to "shift concern over ETS to slippery slope argumentation and/or tolerance"; liken secondhand smoke to perceived risks from other items of public concern, such as cellular phones and chlorinated water; "shift concern over ETS in the workplace from the health issue to one of annoyance;" "shift the concern over ETS in restaurants from bans to accommodation where bans are imminent;" "develop an 'ETS Task Force,' with global PM representation to develop strategies to combat smoking restrictions;" "... package comprehensive improvements in ventilation to forestall tobacco specific bans and ... shift the debate from ETS to IAQ [indoor air quality]." Another strategy was the "development of a global coalition against "junk science" to complement a similar coalition PM was already forming in the United States.

    At the same time, PM implemented Project Brass, a secret action plan conceived by the Leo Burnett Company, to create a "controversy" over secondhand smoke where there really was none. Project Brass strove to "forestall further public smoking restrictions/bans," "create a decided change in public opinion," and "develop an atmosphere more conducive to smokers" in the general public.

    Project Brass was just the tip of the iceberg. The tobacco industry implemented many projects over the decades to shape public perception about secondhand smoke and to delay laws regulating it. Many of these projects are listed under TobaccoWiki's "Projects and Operations" page: Project Mayfly, the INFOTAB ETS Project, PM and British American Tobacco's Latin American ETS Consultants Program, PM's ETS (Environmental tobacco smoke) Media Strategy, Philip Morris' Science Action Plan, and PM's ICD-9 Project to impede the creation of a medical billing code that would indicate illnesses that are attributable to secondhand tobacco smoke exposure.

    These are just some of the projects we've learned of by combing through industry documents. Any one of these projects taken individually would be stunning in scope and ambition in its own right, but all of them taken together -- and the as-yet undiscovered efforts -- probably constitute the single most coordinated, widespread, expensive, under-the-radar PR campaign ever waged.

    These extensive, expensive and hidden deceptions significantly undermined public understanding of the hazards of secondhand smoke and killed thousands and thousands of non-smokers and smokers alike.

    The Final Chapter?

    The Pueblo study was only made possible because the people of Pueblo courageously enacted a smoke-free law before the rest of the state did. Pueblo's law predated Colorado's statewide smoking law by three years. This is how it usually happens: a slew of cities and towns enact their own smoking bans until finally a measure is passed at the state level. Attaining smoke-free places has been a true grassroots activity. Once people experience air clean of cigarette smoke in bars, restaurants and other public places, they love it and don't want to go back to allowing smoking. There are many people alive today who could never conceive of encountering cigarette smoke on buses or airplanes, in hospitals, theaters or universities or other places where once smoking was the norm. Once upon a time, most people believed it was impossible to get bars to go smoke-free, but today this commonsense life-saving law that is the norm in many states and countries.

    Time and society are marching on, and as more people are protected from secondhand smoke, we are only starting to learn the true scope of its health effects -- from studies like the one done in Pueblo.

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    A little late to the party

    Submitted by Iro (not verified) on May 6, 2012 - 11:13pm.

    Since some people (person) is still referring to this website, let me add my comment here. The second hand smoke science is bogus : http://www.fightingback.homestead.com

    Repeating ad nauseam that only the tobacco industry is refuting the science is getting very stale and has lost all credibility. Of all the documentation in the above link that refutes the harm of SHS, please point out to your readers here which ones are tied to the tobacco industry and how. Bets are you won't find very many if any at all!

    But I agree that people do not have to put up with second hand smoke if they dislike the smell or if it irritates their eyes and nose, they can go somewhere it's not allowed or stay home. They can even start their own smoke-free business if they can't find one to their liking. What they don't have the right to do is to dictate to private owners what legal activity they allow in their businesses just because they don't happen to approve or like it. If we were to ban any and every activity on such flimsy evidence (manufactured evidence is more like it) as the one the SHS science is based, we would have to eliminate an awful lot of activities before we even start thinking about eliminating second hand smoke.

    Get over yourselves and ''the second hand smoke is harmful and only the tobacco industry denies it'' mantra! You have lost all credibility the day the surgeon general Carmona iirc declared that there was no safe level of SHS and the day some buffoon invented the third hand smoke danger. That's what happens when we don't know when to call it quits.

    The evidence is overwhelming

    Submitted by GDWilliams (not verified) on November 29, 2012 - 11:15pm.

    The connections between Heartland and Philip-Morris are many and well documented. Roy E. Marden is a former member of Heartland's board of directors, and was until May 2003 the manager of industry affairs for the Philip Morris (PM) tobacco company. His responsibilities included "managing company responses to key public policy issues," which he accomplished by "directing corporate involvement with public policy organizations to determine philanthropic support thereto." Or in other words, which public relations orgs. industry (read as "Philip-Morris" et al) will send money to so they can produce the garbage you depend on for your own sad attempts at corporate propaganda.

    Change welcome

    Submitted by Oto (not verified) on August 7, 2009 - 7:11am.
    I think tobacco industry did a lot of mistakes an half-illegal things in the past. Nevertheless every individual should decide to smoke or to smoke not. Government should not enclose personal freedom. Just my 5 cent. kind regards

    'Just because the public is invited...'

    Submitted by Mutternich on May 27, 2009 - 11:18am.
    Private property ownership has always come with various constraints, which owners accept in return for legal validation and protection of their ownership and of those rights not specifically constrained. Court decisions concerning those rights come and go, and "consent of the governed" means you get to vote on who makes your laws and appoints your judges. The public has the right not to be "invited" into unhealthful environments. Your perfume experience was unusual, which makes it easy for you to be so tolerant. I'll bet you'd sing a different tune if so many people used perfume in that way, all the time, in so many places you either liked or needed to frequent that it significantly cramped your freedom live your life. And if those people took your attitude, they'd just say, "Tough luck, Woodstock! We're libertarians, so too bad if you don't like it," and Big Perfume would spend millions funding think tanks and marketing campaigns to encourage that attitude. As for transportation, the better the service, the less significant the question of "herding," and electric trolleys would mitigate the problems of buses. Transportation and manufacturing are necessities of modern life; smoking is not a necessity of ANY life, and that makes any risks associated with it, great or small, unnecessary as well.
    "Oh, and the smoking community is a small enough minority..."
    Didn't used to be. Progress does happen.
    ...and so like your parent they (big-mommy-state) can take them away.."
    So it's not just "nanny" but "mommy." Hmm. But yes, the neener-neener-nyah-nyah society may be in decline -- or growing up a bit, to put it more positively.

    Interpreting sarcasm..

    Submitted by WoodstockLibertarian (not verified) on June 2, 2009 - 6:51am.
    Actually, my PERFUME comment was meant to show you the that the problem you "antis" have with smoking can be turned on to ANY item. Before SMOKING bans existed, we all had a choice. When the BANS came, only some of us did... Freedom means that you get to do what you want, so long as it does not interfere with the rights of others. It does NOT mean you get to prevent others from doing things you have some sort of personal, religious, or other problem with. And, a business owner running a BAR that permits smoking does NOT infringe on anyone else's rights. Period.

    So now it's down to bars?

    Submitted by Mutternich on June 2, 2009 - 10:17am.
    I suppose I should defend the rights of non-smoking drinkers, but it's too nice outside right now. Wherever you are, inhale and enjoy. :-)

    Scientific Evidence Shows

    Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on April 29, 2009 - 7:44pm.
    Scientific Evidence Shows Secondhand Smoke Is No Danger Written By: Jerome Arnett, Jr., M.D. Published In: Environment & Climate News Publication Date: July 1, 2008 Publisher: The Heartland Institute Exposure to secondhand smoke (SHS) is an unpleasant experience for many nonsmokers, and for decades was considered a nuisance. But the idea that it might actually cause disease in nonsmokers has been around only since the 1970s. Recent surveys show more than 80 percent of Americans now believe secondhand smoke is harmful to nonsmokers. Federal Government Reports A 1972 U.S. surgeon general's report first addressed passive smoking as a possible threat to nonsmokers and called for an anti-smoking movement. The issue was addressed again in surgeon generals' reports in 1979, 1982, and 1984. A 1986 surgeon general's report concluded involuntary smoking caused lung cancer, but it offered only weak epidemiological evidence to support the claim. In 1989 the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was charged with further evaluating the evidence for health effects of SHS. In 1992 EPA published its report, "Respiratory Health Effects of Passive Smoking," claiming SHS is a serious public health problem, that it kills approximately 3,000 nonsmoking Americans each year from lung cancer, and that it is a Group A carcinogen (like benzene, asbestos, and radon). The report has been used by the tobacco-control movement and government agencies, including public health departments, to justify the imposition of thousands of indoor smoking bans in public places. Flawed Assumptions EPA's 1992 conclusions are not supported by reliable scientific evidence. The report has been largely discredited and, in 1998, was legally vacated by a federal judge. Even so, the EPA report was cited in the surgeon general's 2006 report on SHS, where then-Surgeon General Richard Carmona made the absurd claim that there is no risk-free level of exposure to SHS. For its 1992 report, EPA arbitrarily chose to equate SHS with mainstream (or firsthand) smoke. One of the agency's stated assumptions was that because there is an association between active smoking and lung cancer, there also must be a similar association between SHS and lung cancer. But the problem posed by SHS is entirely different from that found with mainstream smoke. A well-recognized toxicological principle states, "The dose makes the poison." Accordingly, we physicians record direct exposure to cigarette smoke by smokers in the medical record as "pack-years smoked" (packs smoked per day times the number of years smoked). A smoking history of around 10 pack-years alerts the physician to search for cigarette-caused illness. But even those nonsmokers with the greatest exposure to SHS probably inhale the equivalent of only a small fraction (around 0.03) of one cigarette per day, which is equivalent to smoking around 10 cigarettes per year. Low Statistical Association Another major problem is that the epidemiological studies on which the EPA report is based are statistical studies that can show only correlation and cannot prove causation. One statistical method used to compare the rates of a disease in two populations is relative risk (RR). It is the rate of disease found in the exposed population divided by the rate found in the unexposed population. An RR of 1.0 represents zero increased risk. Because confounding and other factors can obscure a weak association, in order even to suggest causation a very strong association must be found, on the order of at least 300 percent to 400 percent, which is an RR of 3.0 to 4.0. For example, the studies linking direct cigarette smoking with lung cancer found an incidence in smokers of 20 to around 40 times that in nonsmokers, an association of 2000 percent to 4000 percent, or an RR of 20.0 to 40.0. Scientific Principles Ignored An even greater problem is the agency's lowering of the confidence interval (CI) used in its report. Epidemiologists calculate confidence intervals to express the likelihood a result could happen just by chance. A CI of 95 percent allows a 5 percent possibility that the results occurred only by chance. Before its 1992 report, EPA had always used epidemiology's gold standard CI of 95 percent to measure statistical significance. But because the U.S. studies chosen for the report were not statistically significant within a 95 percent CI, for the first time in its history EPA changed the rules and used a 90 percent CI, which doubled the chance of being wrong. This allowed it to report a statistically significant 19 percent increase of lung cancer cases in the nonsmoking spouses of smokers over those cases found in nonsmoking spouses of nonsmokers. Even though the RR was only 1.19--an amount far short of what is normally required to demonstrate correlation or causality--the agency concluded this was proof SHS increased the risk of U.S. nonsmokers developing lung cancer by 19 percent. EPA Study Soundly Rejected In November 1995 after a 20-month study, the Congressional Research Service released a detailed analysis of the EPA report that was highly critical of EPA's methods and conclusions. In 1998, in a devastating 92-page opinion, Federal Judge William Osteen vacated the EPA study, declaring it null and void. He found a culture of arrogance, deception, and cover-up at the agency. Osteen noted, "First, there is evidence in the record supporting the accusation that EPA 'cherry picked' its data. ... In order to confirm its hypothesis, EPA maintained its standard significance level but lowered the confidence interval to 90 percent. This allowed EPA to confirm its hypothesis by finding a relative risk of 1.19, albeit a very weak association. ... EPA cannot show a statistically significant association between [SHS] and lung cancer." In 2003 a definitive paper on SHS and lung cancer mortality was published in the British Medical Journal. It is the largest and most detailed study ever reported. The authors studied more than 35,000 California never-smokers over a 39-year period and found no statistically significant association between exposure to SHS and lung cancer mortality. Propaganda Trumps Science The 1992 EPA report is an example of the use of epidemiology to promote belief in an epidemic instead of to investigate one. It has damaged the credibility of EPA and has tainted the fields of epidemiology and public health. In addition, influential anti-tobacco activists, including prominent academics, have unethically attacked the research of eminent scientists in order to further their ideological and political agendas. The abuse of scientific integrity and the generation of faulty "scientific" outcomes (through the use of pseudoscience) have led to the deception of the American public on a grand scale and to draconian government overregulation and the squandering of public money. Millions of dollars have been spent promoting belief in SHS as a killer, and more millions of dollars have been spent by businesses in order to comply with thousands of highly restrictive bans, while personal choice and freedom have been denied to millions of smokers. Finally, and perhaps most tragically, all this has diverted resources away from discovering the true cause(s) of lung cancer in nonsmokers. Dr. Jerome Arnett Jr. (jerry.arnett@gmail.com) is a pulmonologist who lives in Helvetia, West Virginia.

    The title of that article is misleading.

    Submitted by Mutternich on May 1, 2009 - 1:59pm.
    Arnett has presented no evidence that secondhand smoke is not harmful; he has done no more than challenge evidence presented for the claim that it is harmful. Even the 2003 "definitive paper on SHS and lung cancer mortality...published in the British Medical Journal" that "found no statistically significant association between exposure to SHS and lung cancer mortality" didn't "show secondhand smoke is no danger"; that is not the same thing as not finding an association. Arnett says,
    "Millions of dollars have been spent promoting belief in SHS as a killer, and more millions of dollars have been spent by businesses in order to comply with thousands of highly restrictive bans, while personal choice and freedom have been denied to millions of smokers."
    He doesn't mention that the Heartland Institute, on whose website this article appears, gets funding from the tobacco industry, as does the Competitive Enterprise Institute, with which he is affiliated. Arnett deserves a booby prize for sticking that title on that article, and you, Mr./Ms. Anonymous, deserve one for uncritical cutting and pasting. Are you by any chance trying to convince yourself that your own secondhand smoke isn't hurting anyone?

    the anti smokers delusion.

    Submitted by WoodstockLibertarian (not verified) on May 21, 2009 - 12:24pm.
    So Mutternich, just because something that says 2nd hand smoking is not so bad is linked to a website that takes money from the tobacco industry, it can't be right? How flawed is that logic? If that's true, then, none of the supposed science listed on the ANTI smokers websites can be believed in either, because they obviously only want to promote one goal, and that is total control over human lives and what we can and cannot do... The evidence of the BMJ study indicates that 2nd hand smoke CANNOT be shown to have a causal effect on illness. On the other hand, the EPA study and the WHO study have also been shown to have been "crafted to arrive at a pre-determined conclusion". The EPA study was invalidated and thrown out by a high court, yet it's still the standard by which you ANTI's rally....

    ???

    Submitted by GDWilliams (not verified) on November 30, 2012 - 12:37am.

    When a researcher actually takes money from the very industry he then is expected to do objective science for, he creates a circumstance legally recognized as being one wherein there are reasonable grounds to expect bias due the clear conflict of interest he has created by accepting funding from that source.

    Yet you announce that "if this is so", then that means we should also doubt any science produced by those whose findings conflict with the findings of that first, legally biased, researcher! Why? Because those scientists must "obviously" be engaged in a conspiracy to "take total control over human lives"!!!
    This is a bizarre claim, and is one which you (obviously) fail to offer any evidence for. That failure stands in complete contrast to the overwhelming documentary proof and actual admissions made by Arnett et al that they are in receipt of funding from Big Tobacco.
    What your claim does provide evidence of however, is the paranoia, the cognitive-intellectual immaturity and pathological gullibility that is characteristics of the group whom Dr. Arnett has thrown his lot in with.

    Oh..How far can a man sink in pursuit of the almighty dollar? Dr. Arnett?