To the editor:

Since my lawsuit and organization, Action on Smoking and Health (ASH), were cited in an article on Lawrence’s proposed smoking ban (Journal-World, Dec. 13), I write to correct several important misstatements.

OSHA, far from declining to regulate workplace smoking because of lack of evidence, estimated that more than 100,000 workers may be killed by it each year. It chose not to regulate in order to encourage states and local governments to act themselves — a strategy which has worked.

Contrary to the article, the fact that tobacco smoke pollution kills nonsmokers has been acknowledged not only by every governmental and scientific body which has studied it, but also by the major cigarette companies — in court, as well as in their ads and on their Web sites. Recently the government warned that inhaling drifting tobacco smoke in a restaurant for as little as 30 minutes could trigger a deadly heart attack.

A proposal to regulate the level of tobacco smoke by measuring the concentration of only one constituent — nicotine — is fatally flawed. Tobacco smoke pollution contains thousands of different toxic chemicals, many of which remain in the air far longer than nicotine (which naturally decays), and different people are susceptible to different chemicals. That’s why many agencies have reported that there is no safe level of drifting tobacco smoke, and so many states and localities have banned — rather than simply restricted — smoking.

John F. Banzhaf III,

executive director and chief counsel, Action on Smoking and Health,

Washington, D.C.