Tobacco Firms Find Ally in Pollution Consultant

Silver-haired and elegantly dressed, Gray Robertson has been called the “Building Doctor.”

The 52-year old British-born chemist and indoor pollution consultant is a much-quoted authority on “sick-building syndrome”--the problem of dust, gases and bacteria in weatherproof buildings that make occupants sick.

In a message he has delivered to audiences coast-to-coast, Robertson on Monday told a press briefing at Universal City that one indoor pollutant--tobacco smoke--is overrated and is no problem in well-ventilated buildings. A little whiff of smoke may even be useful, he said, as an indicator that ventilation is not up to par and that odorless poisons could be lurking.

Although anathema to many health experts and anti-smoking activists, Robertson’s views reflect those of the tobacco industry, which has long employed him as a consultant.

But Robertson, in town Monday to drum up business for Healthy Business International, his Fairfax, Va.-based consulting firm, denied he was a tobacco-industry consultant.

Robertson said a recent survey of West Coast office workers commissioned by his firm showed that 31% of Los Angeles respondents reported missing at least a day of work a year because of nausea or headaches blamed on the air at work. Yet Los Angeles, he noted, has a relatively low rate of smoking, and most workers did not associate their problems with tobacco smoke.

Robertson said his firm had inspected more than 800 major buildings worldwide and found the main culprits in “sick” buildings to be air ducts closed to save energy, and filthy air filters. Several types of pollutants--ranging from allergenic fungi and viruses to fibrous glass and chemical vapors--usually are more significant than tobacco smoke, he said.

The tobacco industry for years has sought to call attention to “sick-building syndrome.” And Robertson has long been part of that strategy, according to documents obtained by The Times.

For example, an internal memo of the Tobacco Institute, the industry lobby group, in 1987 listed Robertson as one “of the consultants and allies we use to refer reporters to.”

During that year, the institute sent Robertson on media tours to more than a dozen cities in at least eight states, according to itineraries prepared by the institute. Typically, his audiences never knew who the sponsor was, said a former tobacco industry official who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

The arrangement worked out well for the institute, the official said. “Out of all the arguments they have going, this is probably the best one. . . . There are real problems in sealed buildings.”

In a draft report, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has called secondhand smoke a proven cause of human cancer. Mark Pertschuk, executive director of Americans for Nonsmokers’ Rights, said tobacco smoke is “the most serious toxin in the workplace by far, and the only remedy is its complete elimination.”

Pertschuk said he has run into Robertson a few times, and he is usually “identified as an indoor air expert who just appeared miraculously.”

Asked at the end of his briefing if he had received tobacco-industry funding, Robertson initially said he had merely inspected a few tobacco company buildings as he had for dozens of clients.

He denied being a tobacco industry consultant, but when shown the Tobacco Institute documents, he said: “If I’ve made appearances for people, . . . I don’t necessarily say I’m their consultant.”

Asked why he was reluctant to acknowledge the ties, Robertson said his involvement with the industry “has been misconstrued. . . . The vast bulk of our work has nothing to do with them,” he said.

“I think we’re one of many clients that Gray has,” Brennan Dawson, spokeswoman for the Tobacco Institute, said in a telephone interview. Dawson said she considered Robertson a consultant. “If you’re not an employee and you’re paid to do something, I don’t know what else you’d call it,” she said.

But Robertson said the Tobacco Institute had no involvement in his current West Coast tour.

His seminars are sponsored by Envirosense, a coalition of a dozen businesses, including the world’s biggest tobacco firm, Philip Morris.