Heating Ventilation Air Conditioning

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Heating Ventilation Air Conditioning (HVAC) was just one of a cluster of terms and names used for essentially the same tobacco industry problem -- and for some of their proposed solutions.

• HVAC just referred to the general industry sector. It involved both the installation, upgrading and maintenance of air-conditionin equipment on large buildings -- offices, factories, and public places. Many of these involved water-cooling systems which required constant attention in order not to allow substantial contamination with the Legionella bacteria.

• Sick Building Syndrome was the term applied by the tobacco industry (with the help of some chemical companies) to building where occupants were having problems with the accumulation of second hand tobacco smoke and chemical pollutants from cheap synthetic carpets, plywood formaldehyde, and volatile photocopy chemicals. Of these ETS (Environmental Tobacco Smoke) was the most common and most potent problem.

• Ventilation Companies were companies which were paid to (1) test the Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) in offices and buildings with pollution problems, (2) analyse the air to discover the cause of the problem, and (3) propose solutions. Healthy Buildings International (HBI/ACVA) was the most active and the most notorious of these HVAC/ventilation companies. It operated on a global scale and made millions of dollars. The tobacco industry paid HBI and its many imitators to discover that second hand smoke (ETS) was only ever a minor component of the problem -- so smoking bans weren't the answer -- so the only solution was a costly upgrade to the HVAC system with greatly increased air-flow rates.

This, of course, cost the operators of the building much increased costs in summer and winter for heating and cooling.

• This scam became known as IAQ testing

• When volatile chemicals disappeared from photocopiers, and formaldehyde was removed from wall-panelling and insulation, and cheap plastic carpets were superseded by better synthetics, the IAQ testers ended up with tobacco smoke as the last obvious source of the problem -- something that non-smokers had known for decades. But now ETS couldn't be dismissed by the 'experts'. The simple alternate solution was source control -- which was to ban smoking in offices.