Juan Carlos Bermudez
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Dr Juan Carlos Bermudez was a Spaniard with some sort of doctor qualification who was enlisted by the law firm Covington & Burling to assist a small group of Latin American academics and medical specialist who were willing to act under cover for the tobacco industry in their own countries. They were called "ETS Consultants" but they were actually enlisted as lobbyists -- they had no consulting role with the tobacco companies whatsoever. [2]
His doctorate was from the University of Madrid and he was associated with fake airline cabin pollution studies, and with Gray Robertson and his pseudo-IAQ testing company Healthy Buildings International (HBI-IBERIA). Carlos obviously worked for Robertson in running the sham indoor air testing business in Spain and possibly also in South America. He was used by Philip Morris and British-American Tobacco to help them set up a WhiteCoats and fake air-testing systems in the Spanish speaking countries of South America.
He also established himself on various organisations in Europe which set air-conditioning standard. (His initials are JCB) -- See
| LATIN AMERICAN CONSULTANTS |
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| Latin American ETS Consultants Program |
| Latin American ETS (Doc Index) |
| Bariloche Conference |
Documents & Timeline
A few dozen of these "ETS Consultants were recruited in the 1991-1995 period. The details are in the Latin American ETS (Doc Index) entry.
1991 Mar 27 The decision had been made by Philip Morris and British American Tobacco to recruit 14 medical ETS/IAQ Experts in Latin America. The lawyers Covington & Burling were given the job of interviewing the prospective recruits. At this stage they only had names -- the prospective recruits had not been approached. [3]
1991 Apr 9 Sharon Boyse, the Issues Manager at British-American Tobacco in the UK (later B&W in the USA) has written to tobacco lawyer John Rupp at Covington & Burling in New York. She says that the Chilean tobacco staff have difficulty in coming up with constructive comments or suggestions on the list of proposed ETS Consultants for Latin America. She also wanted to know what they intended to do with Dr Tezano-Pinto who had already been identified in the media as a tobacco tout. [4]
On the same day she writes to her company representative in Chile saying that she has asked C&B to add Tezanos-Pinto to their list … but that C&B "prefer to contact people themselves in an attempt to maintain independence of consultants from individual companies." [5]
- Obviously the self-delusionary aspects of this operation were important for the lawyers self-respect.
| 1991Background to the ETS Consultants recruitment program The American tobacco industry lobby was primarily directed by a group of corporate executives at Philip Morris, using the services of the Washington tobacco law firm Covington & Burling (C&B), to protect itself from legal 'discovery'. By the 1990s, the Tobacco Institute had re-asserted its role (under Philip Morris and RJ Reynolds) as the primary channel for lobbying in the USA, and had begun to extend its influence to involve both North and South America. It was also running the WhiteCoats (recruitment of scientific 'consultant' in Europe and Asia). Philip Morris called these recruited academics and medical specialists 'WhiteCoats' while the lawyers knew them as 'IAQ/ETS Consultants.' Potential recruits were approached through the lawyers, usually on the advice of other recruits. The lawyer would then conduct an interview where the scientist or academic would be ensured that their involvement would be kept secret, and so they could maintain the ethical position of an 'independent' and deny any direction from the tobacco industry since they would always be dealing through a lawyer or a third-party scientific society (like IAPAG or ARIA). Payment for services could also be channelled through these third-parties. Since most recruits had no knowledge of the engineering, medical or health problems of second-hand smoke (ETS) they were to be put through a brief training program developed and run at the Tobacco Institute under the name "College of Tobacco Knowledge". To provide them with a semblance of credentials in this new area of 'expertise', they would probably also be given speaking engagements at one of the many closed or controlled (by the industry) conferences on held around the world on the indoor air environment -- which always sought to point the finger for second-hand smoke problems at outside air pollution, carpet exudates, formaldehyde, radon, CO2. Free travel and luxury accommodation for closed conferences held in exotic locations was also a major factor in the benefits of working for tobacco. They also got to socialize with a group of like-minded mercenary contemporaries who would be available to "peer review" any research papers they might later submit (on a 'you-scratch-my-back' principle) to one of the industry's compliant journals. |
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1991 July 14 A training session for a group of Latin American ETS/IAQ Consultants was to be held in Rio de Janeiro in August. The lawyer Patrick S Davies (C&B) has checked out a list of medical/scientific consultants and is providing the Tobacco Institute with reasons to invite his suggested list to an initial training session on ETS. [7]
- The real interest in these notes is that they demonstrate that the lawyers idea of an ETS/IAQ Consultant has nothing to do with 'consulting' -- but everything to do with their potential as media promoters and their willingness to claim that ETS was a safe and at most a minor irritation, and that smoking as an individual's enjoyable pastime and possibly a basic human right. The recruit's academic qualifications and expertise had only one value to the tobacco industry -- and that was to establish them as 'independent public minded experts' when attacking the weight of accumulated evidence against cigarettes on health and environmental grounds.
1991 Aug 8 Healthy Buildings International is billing C&B lawyer John Rupp for costs incurred for Philip Morris by Juan Bermudez - on a time basis in Brussels and Paris. He has been conducting some EEC building inspection and had a meeting with the French Defense. He charges at $1000 a day - total with expenses is $5,910 ... all billed to the tobacco industry in the USA. [8]
1991 Nov 14 HBI is billing Philip Morris once again via John Rupp and C&B for Bermudez's services in France. He has been setting up new studies and having meetings at $1000 per day. Total $6,151. [9]
1995 July 21 A memo on Juan Carlos Bermudez (JCB) activities and impressions of the European IAQ Community (the standards-setting organisations) lists all the ones where he has membership and influence:
According to JCB, there are two different schools in the IAQ community : the theoreticians and the practicians; or the scientists (academia) and the building professionals (engineers and architects). Currently, CEN 156 WG 6 is too much influenced by the theoreticians, who have developed a health-based design standard, without specifying how HVAC systems should operate or be maintained. It is not sufficient to just specify some outdoor air rates, based on "shaky" scientific evidence.
In addition, in order to draw up the design specifications, input from the operation and maintenance fields is needed. Therefore, if one really wants to improve IAQ, one needs to consider design, operation and maintenance simultaneously in a standard. In both operation and maintenance, engineers are the most experienced.
According to JCB, there is not a single study in Southern Europe, which assesses the real-world situation in the buildings. Nobody knows what's in the air (indoors), and therefore one does not know which ventilation rate would be best for these countries .
- SODEAN (JCB is IAQ advisor to SODEAN) and the University of Sevilla are planning to undertake such a study. Funding is thought to come from the EU (60%), the governments of these countries(20%), and yet unknown sources (20%).
JCB expressed interest in participating at this conference. He said that he could participate as a "practician" in some workshops, such as "Quality Assurance and Certification of Healthy Buildings" and "Policies, Public Information and Regulations". He wants to stress the need that the building professionals should be more often included in the standard-writing process. [10]
1995 Aug 10 Gray Robertson of Healthy Buildings International has written to Mary Pottorff, one of the top-level disinformation executives at Philip Morris International, Corporate Affairs, to ask her to expedite payment for Juan Carlos Bermudez. [11]
