Lawrence C. Holcomb

Lawrence C. Holcomb is a toxicologist who accepted money from the tobacco industry and wrote papers and gave presentations supporting the industry's position that environmental tobacco smoke is not harmful.

= Biography =

Larry C. Holcomb was a toxicologist who wrote a research paper that was published in the Journal Environment International. The paper served as a basis for R.J. Reynolds's ads in May 1994 asserting that in one month, a nonsmoker living with a smoker would be exposed to passive smoke equal to approximately one and a half cigarettes. About half of the funding for Holcomb's study came from the Tobacco Institute. Holcomb served as an air quality consultant to the Tobacco Institute. The Institute used Holcomb as a spokeperson to criticize the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration when the agencies proposed regulating smoking in the workplace. Holcomb also proposed individuals who could act as additional consultants for the industry to comment on Federal OSHA proposals on workplace smoking.

Holcomb was also funded by the Tobacco Institute to write letters (and hired subcontracted consultants W. Decker and J. Pedelty) to write letters criticizing a 1990 article by Stanton Glantz and William Parmely in the journal Circulation that quantified the number of cardiac deaths that occur annually from secondhand smoke in the U.S.

To view Mr. Holcomb’s interview in one of the tobacco industry sponsored videos “Air Quality in Air Travel” click here.