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| S P E C I A L | Tobacco Under Attack |
Tobacco exec: No consensus about cigarette smoke
September 29, 1997
Web posted at: 11:27 p.m. EDT (0327 GMT)MIAMI (CNN) -- Scientists cannot agree on which specific ingredients of cigarette smoke are harmful, a tobacco industry executive testified Monday at the secondhand smoke trial initiated by flight attendants.
"It's my opinion that there's never been scientific consensus about what's in cigarette smoke -- if anything should be reduced or removed," said Dr. David Townsend, vice president for product development for the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co.
Under questioning by a tobacco industry attorney, Townsend testified that levels of benzopyrene, a known carcinogen found in tobacco, was present in minute levels, at about 50 billionths per gram.
Townsend said that higher levels of the carcinogen could be found in some food and water, and that an 8-ounce charcoal-broiled steak may contain "somewhere in the neighborhood of 600 cigarettes worth."
The plaintiffs are 60,000 non-smoking flight attendants who claim that breathing secondhand smoke while they worked aboard jetliners gave them smoking-related cancer and other illnesses. They are suing for $5 billion.
The defense is in the second week of presenting its case. The trial is expected to last another three weeks.
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