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The 130th Annual Meeting of APHA |
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The 130th Annual Meeting of APHA |
Stella Aguinaga Bialous, RN, DrPH, Cardiovascular Research Institute, UCSF, 676 Funston Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94118, 415-876-2990, stella@bialous.com and Stanton A Glantz, PhD, Institute for Health Policy Studies, University of California, San Francisco, 3333 California Street, Suite 265, San Francisco, CA 94118.
This paper describes how in the past 20 years the tobacco industry influenced the standard setting process of the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) while health advocates largely ignored the issue. ASHRAE is responsible for developing ventilation standards for indoor air quality (Standard 62), a key issue when discussing smoke free ordinances and the inadequacy of any existing ventilation technology to address the health effects of passive smoking.
Despite this fact, the tobacco industry continues to promote and misrepresent its “ventilation solution” and has worked openly and covertly within ASHRAE to ensure that the standard didn’t state that smoking was incompatible with good indoor air quality. Data was gathered through interviews, review of publicly available records, and review of tobacco industry documents available on the Internet.
Standard 62-1981 would have made the cost of ventilation when smoking allowed prohibitive and was rightly perceived by the industry as an incentive for smoke free indoors. The industry blocked its approval and worked towards developing standard 62-1989, which allowed for moderate amounts of smoking and ignored health effects of passive smoking. In 1997 the industry blocked the revision of the 1989 standard, which again excluded smoking. Currently, Standard 62-1999 assumes no smoking indoors and doesn’t set ventilation parameters for allowing smoking. The industry is fighting to change this standard.
We conclude that unless public health groups become involved, standard 62-1999 will be hijacked by the industry and changed back into a standard that allows smoking and ignores public health.
Learning Objectives: At the conclusion of this session, the participant will be able to
Keywords: Tobacco Industry, Tobacco Policy
Presenting author's disclosure statement:
I do not have any significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.