air pollution

Published in the New York Times November 22, 2007

At a Cigar Show, an Air-Quality Scientist Under Deep, Smoky Cover

By SARAH KERSHAW

The agitators met a few blocks from the target at a secret location, so as not to call attention to the devices in their bags.

They synchronized their watches. They reviewed the well-rehearsed game plan: If their bags were searched, the first operative, known as “Researcher 1 (female),” would say the device was for an asthma condition. If she was not allowed into the event with the device, she would activate Plan B: go to the ladies’ room and strap it to her body.

The man behind the subterfuge (Researcher 2, male) was Ryan David Kennedy, 34, a scrappy Canadian graduate student with crooked glasses who is studying the impact of tobacco on air quality.

He crossed the border at Buffalo on Monday morning and on Tuesday crashed the giant cigar party and trade show sponsored by the publisher of Cigar Aficionado magazine at the Marriott Marquis in Times Square.

A nonsmoking vegetarian posing as a cigar lover, Mr. Kennedy was nervous. Canadians are, for the most part, known to be earnest, demure and very law-abiding.

“I think I’m being watched,” he said before the event, known as the Big Smoke, which drew hundreds of cigar lovers and peddlers into a ballroom on the hotel’s sixth floor. He said he strongly believed his room at the Marriott had been searched.

Mr. Kennedy, who holds a master’s degree in environmental science from the University of Waterloo in Ontario and is working on a doctorate in psychology there, soon found himself in the belly of decadence. The ballroom was swarming with stogies — Bolivar, Ashton, Don Tomas and a dozen other brands — whiskey, tequila and exotic dancers.

Mr. Kennedy, who has also researched the level of particulate matter produced by smoking tobacco on outdoor patios, and Kerri Ryan (Researcher 1), a friend from college who lives in New York, sneaked their devices in the door. (Mr. Kennedy’s professor used a discretionary fund to cover the costs of the event tickets — $400 each — and other expenses.)

A tiny white plastic tube protruding from each of their bags like a hidden microphone took in the air, which was then measured for particles by the device, known as a Sidepak. The device can log 516 minutes of air sampling before the battery runs out, and is a well-established method for detecting dust and smoke.

Mr. Kennedy measured the particles in the air on Monday to obtain a baseline before the cigar smokers descended. Then on Tuesday he tested the air inside the ballroom and in various places outside the cigar party — at the elevators, in guest rooms and in the lobby. To log enough data on the air, he would need to stand in one place for 5 or 10 minutes and look busy.

If Mr. Kennedy and Ms. Ryan were lurking in one place for too long, perhaps seeming suspicious to security guards, they would say loudly, “We’re waiting for Sally.”

It was easy for Mr. Kennedy to prove his thesis: that plumes of cigar smoke lead to high levels of particulate matter in the air.

Marriott Hotels announced in July that it was making all of its hotels 100 percent smoke-free, but it has made an exception for the Big Smoke.

Opponents of smoking working with Mr. Kennedy said the exception was a glaring violation of the hotel’s own policy.

“The event is really a flagrant contradiction to their commitment to their guests and employees,” said Louise Vetter, president of the American Lung Association of the City of New York and a spokeswoman for the New York City Coalition for a Smoke-Free City. “The dangers of secondhand smoke are indisputable, and in New York City it is law to protect workers from secondhand smoke. We applauded Marriott, but to have this event in New York City and to create an exception — there’s no exception for public health.”

Under the state law, smoking is banned in most indoor places, including the Marriott ballroom (though there is no legal ban on smoking in guest rooms). But the law allows an exception for tobacco promotional events “where the public is invited for the primary purpose of promoting and sampling tobacco products.”

Cigar bars that were open in the city before Dec. 31, 2002, and can prove that they generated at least 10 percent of their gross income from the sale of tobacco products are also exempt; they can extend their registration each year if they continue to meet those criteria and do not expand or change location.

Kathleen Duffy, a spokeswoman for Marriott Hotels, said the company was honoring a longstanding contract with the publisher of Cigar Aficionado, Marvin R. Shanken, and had been the host of the Big Smoke at the Marriott Marquis for at least 10 years.

“We are not going out and booking smoking events at any of our hotels,” she said. “We did announce we would be smoke-free, but with this client we had an obligation.”

She said “we tripled our efforts” to keep the smoke contained, banning smoking outside the ballroom and increasing the filtration in the room, so that the smoke was funneled outside the hotel through air vents.

Under Environmental Protection Agency guidelines, air with fewer than 15 micrograms per cubic meter is considered good quality; air with more than 251 micrograms per cubic meter is hazardous.

Mr. Kennedy’s preliminary findings showed that the average level of particulate matter in the hotel the day before the event was 8 micrograms per cubic meter, 40 micrograms where he was waiting to get in line for the event and 1,193 micrograms inside the ballroom.

About 10 p.m., after one last measurement — “Elevators, 9:44!” Mr. Kennedy said to his assistant — he was bloodshot and stinky, but he declared the experiment a success.

State of California – technical report citing Tobacco Smoke as a Toxic Air Contaminant

Proposed Identification of Environmental Tobacco Smoke as a Toxic Air Contaminant

Download the full report on the Proposed Identification of Environmental Tobacco Smoke as a Toxic Air Contaminant here.

This report, prepared by the staff of the Air Resources Board (ARB), contains an evaluation of exposures to environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) in California. This report is referred to as Part A, “Proposed Identification of Environmental Tobacco Smoke as a Toxic Air Contaminant.” The Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA) has developed a comprehensive health evaluation on exposures to environmental tobacco smoke, referred to as Part B. Together, these evaluations serve as the basis for ARB’s proposal to identify ETS by regulation as a toxic air contaminant (TAC).

Under the provisions of Assembly Bill 1807 (Health and Safety Code sections 39650-39662), the ARB is mandated to administer California’s TAC Program. The ARB’s exposure assessment is based, to the extent available, upon research and monitoring data, emissions inventory data, and information on exposures from data on ambient and indoor air environments, as well as, an assessment of children’s exposures (Health and Safety Code Sections 39650 et seq.). The Health and Safety Code, section 39655, also requires that each candidate TAC must meet the definition of a TAC, defined as “an air pollutant which may cause or contribute to an increase in mortality or in serious illness, or which may pose a present or potential hazard to human health.”

ETS entered the identification program in June 2001. Some of the information in this report is based upon data presented in the Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment’s (OEHHA) 1997 report: “Health Effects of Exposure to Environmental Tobacco Smoke” (OEHHA, 1997). Specifically, Chapter 2 (Exposure Measurement and Prevalence) of the OEHHA report was updated to include ETS exposure information developed subsequent to the data presented in the report (after 1995). The National Cancer Institute (NCI), acting for the U.S. Public Health Service, recognized the importance of the 1997 OEHHA report and incorporated it as part of their Smoking and Tobacco Control Monograph series (NCI, 1999).

This is the revised Scientific Review Panel (SRP) version of the report which includes the Executive Summary, Part A (exposure assessment), Part B (health effects), and Part C (responses to public comments) documents. This version of the report, along with the comments received on the public review version, will be considered by the SRP on Toxic Air Contaminants at a noticed public meeting.

The ARB’s consideration of ETS as a TAC will occur following review by the SRP. If the SRP approves the report, it will be presented to the ARB at a duly noticed public hearing, after a 45-day public comment period. If the ARB approves the report at a hearing and identifies ETS as a TAC, the information contained in the report will be used in the assessment of the need for control measures. Any consideration of control measures to reduce exposures to ETS, if identified as a TAC, will follow a separate rulemaking process, which allows for a thorough public process including workshops, and a public hearing.