EPA Withholds Report On Smoke -- Study: 53,000 Die Each Year From Passive Smoking

NEW YORK - An Environmental Protection Agency official has delayed indefinitely the release of a report saying secondhand cigarette smoke kills 53,000 nonsmokers a year, including 37,000 from heart disease.

"It has not been approved by the EPA. It may never be approved by EPA," Robert Axelrad, director of the federal agency's indoor air division, said yesterday. "We are reluctant to put it out with an EPA name on it any time in the near future."

The report, which has been the focus of criticism by the tobacco industry, is one of three EPA reports on the dangers of secondhand cigarette smoke. Two have been released in draft form.

The report was intended to be an informational document for use by professionals in the field of indoor air pollution and passive smoking, Axelrad said. It is a broad review of existing research on passive smoking and disease.

Each chapter was reviewed for scientific accuracy by at least two experts outside the EPA, he said.

Donald Shopland, coordinator of the smoking and tobacco-control program at the National Cancer Institute and a contributor to the report, said that if Axelrad refused to release the document he would propose that the cancer institute make it available.

Rep. Thomas Bliley, R-Va., said two EPA officials in recent congressional testimony did not mention the existence of the report until he inquired about it.

When the EPA sent out an earlier draft of the report, the tobacco industry sent the EPA "boxloads of scientific documents and commentary from independent scientists from around the world, pointing out the weaknesses, the unsubstantiated claims," said Brennan Dawson, a spokeswoman for the Tobacco Institute in Washington.

The section that estimates 37,000 heart disease deaths are caused by secondhand smoke was written by Stanton Glantz and Dr. William Parmley of the University of California, San Francisco.

"Thirty-seven thousand may be a figment of Stan Glantz's imagination and William Parmley's imagination, or it may be a real estimate," Axelrad said.

Glantz defended the estimate.

"The work in question was very thoroughly reviewed by the EPA and a large number of outside reviewers," he said. "And the only reviewers who raised any serious criticism of the work were the Tobacco Institute."

Other findings in the report:

-- Secondhand tobacco smoke contributes substantially to indoor air pollution, elevating levels of pollutant particles and such dangerous substances as benzene, acrolein, N-nitrosamine, pyrene and carbon monoxide.

-- The link between lung cancer and secondhand smoke is supported by enough evidence "to provide a compelling rationale for reducing involuntary exposure to environmental tobacco smoke."

-- Tobacco smoke causes disease even at the lowest levels.

-- Constituents of tobacco smoke can be found in the blood, saliva and urine of nonsmokers.

-- Exposure to smoke is not adequately controlled by ventilation, air cleaning or separation within a space.