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WARNING: This site deals only with the corporate corruption of science, and makes no inference about the motives or activities of individuals involved.
    There are many reasons why individuals become embroiled in corporate corruption activities - from political zealotry to over-enthusiastic activism; from gullibility to greed.
    Please read the OVERVIEW carefully, and make up your own mind.

OPINION ONLY

Dr Roger Jenkins is a chemist in the Chemical and Analytical Sciences Division of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Although the ORNL is part of the U.S. Department of Energy, the lab and its researchers are available for private consulting work.

Jenkins' working relationship with American tobacco companies dates back to the 1970s. A simple search on his name ("jenkins r") on the Legacy Library web site produces over 4,000 industry document hits. Jenkins' specialty is conducting research for the industry that shows little or no exposure to second-hand smoke in indoor places.

Sponsors for his research have also included the Council for Tobacco Research and the Centre for Indoor Air Research (CIAR), a tobacco industry-sponsored research centre that was dismantled as a result of the 1998 Master Settlement Agreement.

Jenkins was a principal investigator for a 1994 CIAR project costing $1.2 million that was designed to show that second-hand smoke exposure in non-smokers was significantly lower than estimates used by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and that "there are no good, existing data to determine 'real-life' personal exposures to ETS [environmental tobacco smoke] in non-smokers, particularly in the workplace."

In another example, Jenkins received an $855,000 grant from the U.S. Tobacco Industry ETS Advisory Group.

Over the years, Jenkins has been asked to appear in hearings that oppose smoke-free measures. In 1997, Jenkins was called by the tobacco industry as an expert witness to give testimony to dispute the link between cancer and second-hand smoke during the Florida flight attendants lawsuit (also known as the Mildred Wiley lawsuit) brought against the industry. Judge Robert P. Kaye of the Dade County District Court Judge barred Jenkins from testifying because RJ Reynolds' assistance with fieldwork and lab analysis made his second-hand smoke research suspect, thus giving him a pro-industry bias.

In Canada, Jenkins has provided assistance to the pro-ventilation opposition and the tobacco industry. During the City of Toronto's smoke-free bylaw campaign in 1999, Jenkins conducted a ventilation pilot project study at the Black Dog Pub in Scarborough, Ontario, designed to provide the Ontario Restaurant Association with evidence for their pro-ventilation stance. Later, the study, "Environmental Tobacco Smoke in the Non-smoking Section of a Restaurant: A Case Study", was published in the December 2001 issue of Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology.

The opposition argued that since the results were published in a peer-reviewed journal, they would have to be taken seriously. Subsequent reviews of the published study agreed that there were flaws in methodology, misrepresentation of findings, and that many aspects of the findings had no relevance to the conclusions. In addition, funding for the research came from the Canadian Tobacco Manufacturers' Council funneled through the Hotel Association of Canada. (Please refer to the "Ventilation Solution" in Ontario for a more detailed explanation of the Black Dog Pub study and the tobacco industry's connections to it).

Jenkins and the ORNL continue to do research for Big Tobacco. In 2003, Jenkins received $750,000 from Philip Morris to conduct a study of indoor air pollution levels, including second-hand smoke. Jenkins is on the public record insisting that Philip Morris funding the project would not influence the study or its results (Munger F, "Oak Ridge lab to do smoke study," Knoxville News-Sentinel, February 13, 2003).

Jenkins has also been called as an expert witness on second-hand smoke for hospitality plaintiffs before the Ontario Health Services Appeal and Review Board.

Some key documents

• with the Chemical & Analytical Sciences Division (C&ASD) of Oak Ridge National Labatories (ORNL) in Tennessee. [2502215714] [2063650341]

• Doing ETS risk assessment [2063604091]

1976 /E: PhD from University of Wisconsin, Madison in analytical chemistry Joined the ORNL. He testifies later that:

I've worked in the general area of characterization of tobacco smoke and methodology for the definition of animal inhalation exposures and the definition of them since 1976.

1978 May: Attendee at the tobacco industry consultants workshop [2010048789]
    grant [2023527028]

1981: Science International Planning to use his data [83203717]

1983 Mar: Bio/Organic Analysis Section, Analytic Chemistry Division [TI01071831/1855]

1983 Mar: — ENVIRONMENTAL TOBACCO SMOKE WORKSHOPS

1983–19: 84 March - Appears to be a follow up to McGill — Participant at Rylander's workshop in Uni of Geneva [TI01071831/1855]

1984: A draft report on "ETS Workshops 1983 - 1984" which was in the early editing stages at the Tobacco Institute gives details of Rylander's Geneva University workshop (March 15 -17 1983) "A Workshop on Effects and Exposure Levels":

The conclusion of this major international symposium was that available evidence does not confirm that tobacco smoke in the air causes chronic health problems,

    Further problems were detailed in measuring the smoke itself. "Tobacco smoke is a highly complex mixture of thousands of compounds," wrote two Oak Ridge (Tenn.) National Laboratory researchers.

    Even with the most sophisticated analytical chemical measurement, "results must always be assessed for the potential influence of confounding factors from other, non–tobacco smoke sources," they wrote. Analytic chemist Roger A Jenkins presented the paper for himself and Oak Ridge colleague Michael R Guerin.

1988 Jan: Guy Oldaker's quarterly report on the airline smoking program and the operations of the RJR PASS IAQ metering system. He also reports on the CIAR, serving as Interim Executive Director.

1. Project at Tulane Medical School Department of Medicine on smoke sensitive asthmatics. Paper published "most asthmatics claiming sensitivity to ETS exhibited no pulmonary response when exposed to unusually high concentrations of ETS, when deprived of their normal medications. They provided "comments to the authors on their abstract."
2. Review of DiNardi project; DiNardis paper titled "Measurement of ETS" was reviewed and comments were communcated to the author (later given at Tokyo conference Nov 1987) On the recommendation of counsel a letter addressing deficiencies and recommended changes was sent to Dr DiNardi.
3. Project with Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) - first paper presented at Tobacco Chejists conference. "Technical direction was provided to ORNL in connection with their survey of nicotine concentrations in restaurants in the Oak Ridge Knoxville metropolitian area. A draft paper addressing the survey's results and titled "A Thermal Desorption [sic] Method for the Determination of Ambient Nicotine Concentration" was received from Dr R Jenkins, the project's director, for review and comment. (publication in Perry's Environmental Science and Technology)

1989 Nov: of US on McGill speakers list 2025827639,
    McGill Closed conference in Montreal was Nov 1989.

1990 Mar 19: Discussion Points of the ETS committee
    Dr. Roger Jenkins, within next three-four weeks [ie meeting arrangement]
    - Monograph on indoor air pollution, CIAR project

1990 Nov: [2058272915] Osdene diary page 27

1994 March 16: In later (1995) testimony he says:

Along with Dr. Michael R. Guerin, I am the co-principal investigator for what, is to my knowledge the largest study ever conducted in the United States of personal exposure to environmental tobacco smoke.

On the 16th of March last year, I privately briefed OSHA and EPA representatives on the initial status of this study and since that time, the field and laboratory analyses of the samples have been complete. This study has been sponsored by the Center for Indoor Air Research.

    Now, what we were trying to do in this study was to determine personal exposure.to,ETS. We recruited subjects from 16 cities around the United States, about 100 subjects in each of those 16 cities. We asked the participants to wear sampling pumps at their workplace and then at their away from work location and that includes anything that they did away from work, sleeping, eating, dining, shopping, whatever.

    We collected both particle and gas phase constituents and we assessed the smoking status through the use of salivary cotinine. We began the field operations in the city of Knoxville, Tennessee in May of 1993 and we finished up 15 cities later in New Orleans, Louisiana in the middle of June of this past year (1994).

How we did the recruiting and the inclusion of the individuals is that a marketing research firm [Which one?] was contracted in each of the 16 cities to randomly recruit the subjects. The recruiting began a minimum of three weeks before the testing was to take place. Telephone numbers in each metropolitan area were dialed at random.

[Bellomy Research Inc. has 3,989 strikes in the tobacco archives. They were a major focus-group, polling, product testing, and market research firm working for Reynolds and others in the tobacco industry from about 1980 to 2000.]

1994 Oct: Oak Ridge Nat'l Labs
    (handled by TI) [2045690096] Oct 1994 - at Congressional Hearing
    See http://www.ocat.org/opposition/consultants.html

1995 Jan 17: Roger Jenkins of ORNL has sent a two-page document to "Michael Ogden - Guest" (actually a lawyer at RJ Reynolds Tobacco). It contains a chart update.

[ However this bundle of 1077 pages includes:
    • Jenkins testimony, given before Judge John Vittone,
    • a set of his slide-show with details of the research
    • copies of the CIAR studies
    • Bellomy's interview procedures, questionaire and instructions (magnetic tape to be sent to RJ Reynolds R&D)
    • Mike Ogden of RJR's study on Misclassification of female non-smokers, *1992 at nine sites)... with a lot of notes and corrections.

1077 page bundle

See also a 381 page OSHA Hearing transcript at

CONTRIBUTORS:qdr2 in22 srs2