A. Judson Wells

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

A. Judson Wells was a consultant for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, and an American Lung Association Volunteer). A. Judson Wells conducted a study of passive smoke and heart disease, published 8/94 in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology (AP 8/1/94). The study estimated that secondhand smoke will cause 47,000 deaths and 150,000 nonfatal heart attacks in U.S. nonsmokers in 1994--as much as 50% higher than previous estimates.(AP 8/1/94).

Biography

A. Judson Wells holds a Ph.D. in physical chemistry from Harvard University. He was employed in the chemical industry, specifically by E.I Dupont de Namours and Company, from 1941 until 1980 in chemical research, research management and general management. From 1969 to 1980 he was director of a business division with revenues of $125,000,000 per year.

Starting in 1981, Wells served as a volunteer consultant in the smoking and health area for the American Lung Association. From 1989 to 1993 he was an unpaid consultant to Kenneth G. Brown, Inc., a subcontractor to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in their work leading up to the publication of their report, Respiratory Health Effects of Passive Smoking: Lung Cancer and other Disorders . He was a co-author of that report. More recently he consulted, unpaid, for the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) on the health effects of passive smoking.[1]

Mr. Wells is a consultant to the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) (1994) (AP 8/1/94). He was a volunteer with the American Lung Association in 1994 (AP 8/1/94). A. Judson Wells conducted a study of passive smoke and heart disease, published 8/94 in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology (AP 8/1/94). The study estimated that secondhand smoke will cause 47,000 deaths and 150,000 nonfatal heart attacks in U.S. nonsmokers in 1994--as much as 50% higher than previous estimates (AP 8/1/94). The study concludes that "heart disease appears to be by far the major mortality risk from passive smoking" (AP 8/1/94). According to Stanton Glantz, "This is a much sophisticated analysis than anybody's ever done before" (AP 8/1/94). The study noted that breathing cigarette smoke for as little as 20 minutes to 8 hours can produce immediate changes in a nonsmoker's cardiovascular system (AP 8/1/94). Earlier estimates, including one by Wells himself, had estimated that secondhand smoke was responsible for 32,000 to 37,000 heart disease deaths a year in nonsmokers (AP 8/1/94).

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