Indoor Air International

In early 1990, John Rupp the lawyer lobbyist working for the tobacco industry through Washington lawfirm Covington & Burling wrote a memo from Europe to keep his masters at Philip Morris in New York informed. His focus at this time was in recruiting so-called "consultants" ... however they didn't consult with the tobacco company, but rather acted as undercover lobbyists, disinformation experts, and scientific influence peddlers for the industry in scientific meetings, conferences, media briefings, etc.

One section of this report dealt with the creation of the Indoor Air International (IAI), supposedly a society of scientists working in the area of indoor air quality, while another section mentions the closely-related group known as Associates for Research in Indoor Air (ARIA). This was a cut-out organisation which allowed academics working for the tobacco industry to be paid through an intermediate 'consulting group', which would then pass on the payment in some untraceable way (often to Swiss bank accounts).

This section of the report also mentions a matching consulting group being formed in Asia which later acquired the name Asian Regional Tobacco Industry Science Team or ARTIST. And there was already a third in Scandanavia, known as ERIC.

Rupp wrote:

'''4. Learned Society ''' Our consultants have created the world's only learned scientific society addressing questions of indoor air quality. The society (Indoor Air International) is seeking memberships from all those interested in IAQ [Indoor Air Quality] issues throughout the world. It will soon have its own periodic newsletter, in which ETS [Environmental Tobacco Smoke] and other IAQ issues will be discussed in a balanced fashion to an audience of regulators, scientists, building operators, etc. It will also have its own scientific journal, published by a major European publishing house, in which IAQ issues will again be addressed.

The society will be self-supporting from its own dues. it already exists under the laws of Switzerland, and has its own executive director based in Brussels. The society will sponsor meetings and conferences, such as the one scheduled for Switzerland in 1991, and thus can serve as an independent and accepted source of ideas and research regarding IAQ to the public and the scientific community. it should be a major vehicle for reaching a variety of different audiences on IAQ issues.

We are of course including Asian and American consultants in the society, so as to provide worldwide coverage of IAQ issues.

5. Consulting group

Our EC consultanve formed a consulting group called ARIA (Associates for Research in Indoor Air) that has its own brochure and is offering consulting services to companies and governments on IAQ issues. The ARIA model has been followed on a smaller scale by Asian consultants. We hope both groups will extend the reach and effectiveness of our consultants' advice on IAQ matters.  

See ARIA for more details.