Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming

Chapter Five states that “[b]y the mid-1980s, nearly every American knew that smoking caused cancer, but still tobacco industry executives successfully promoted and sustained doubt” (136). In 1986, a new Surgeon General’s report concluded that secondhand smoke could be dangerous to nonsmokers, and so the EPA worked to limit indoor smoking. Fred Singer worked with the Tobacco Institute to challenge secondhand smoke’s health risks, claiming that the EPA was conducting so-called bad science.

“A Brief History of Secondhand Smoke”

In the same way that “the tobacco industry knew that smoking could cause cancer before the rest of us did, they knew that secondhand smoke could cause cancer, too. In fact, they knew it well before more independent scientists did” (137).

In the 1970s, industry-hired researchers learned that secondhand smoke was more toxic than firsthand smoke, and so they created different filters to make smoke less visible. Many states moved directly against tobacco, and most of them to limit active smoking, although some legislatures also targeted indoor smoking as well. In 1980, a study emerged that showed people who regularly inhaled secondhand smoke had the same decreased lung capacity as light smokers themselves. Although harshly criticized—as it was difficult to tell how much passive smoke secondhand smokers had been exposed to—most of the critics were unveiled as being connected to the tobacco industry.