Consumers Union

This article is part of the Tobacco portal on Sourcewatch funded from 2006 - 2009 by the American Legacy Foundation.

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Consumers Union is the nonprofit consumer advocacy group and the publisher of Consumer Reports.

• Rhoda Karpatkin is President Emeritus

Tobacco issues

Consumer Reports has published a number of articles on tobacco issues which typically do not favor tobacco industry interests. Among them are

• February, 1985: "The Murky Hazards of Secondhand Smoke: Everyone knows that tobacco smoke annoys nonsmokers. The Question is: is it a hazard?" The article discussed studies about the health effects of passive smoking, the effect of secondhand tobacco smoke on children, infants, cardiac function, lung disease and fears of cancer.[1]

• May, 1994: Self-Serving Surveys: The 30% Myth". This report exposes the faulty anecdotal survey techniques used to produce the "statistic" most often cited by restarateurs fearing a clean indoor air law, specifically that such a law will stand to reduce their business by 30%.

• January, 1995: An article titled "Secondhand Smoke: Is it a Hazard?" appeared in the January, 1995 issue of Consumer Reports with the byline, "The tobacco merchants claim there's still a controversy: We don't buy it." The article explains tobacco industry's attempt "to construct the type of credible medical its pollsters recommended" and its efforts to influence the body of science around the issue to bolster its sagging arguments that secondhand smoke is not a hazard. [2]

Board

Accessed February 2013:

• Walter D. Bristol, Chair
• Thomas A. Wathen, Vice chair
• Steven R. Hill, Treasurer
• Diane Archer, Secretary
• Marcia Aronoff
• Robert E. Baensch
• Barbara S. Friedman
• Anthony Iton
• Carol Izumi
• Annette LoVoi
• Heather McGhee
• Ed Mierzwinski
• Craig Newmark
• Willard P. Ogburn
• Martin Schneider
• Micah Sifry
• Thomas C. Voice

Contact details

Consumers Union
1666 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 310
Washington, DC 20009-1039
Phone: (202) 462-6262
Fax: (202) 265-9548
Web: http://www.consumersunion.org

Projects

• http://hearusnow.org/ (advocacy site for Internet and media freedom)
• http://eco-labels.org/ (SourceWatch for organic food labels)
• http://consumerwebwatch.org/ (Consumer Reports WebWatch Internet integrity project)

Resources and articles

Related Sourcewatch

• Diane J. Salvatore

References

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