Jeff Seckler

Jeff Seckler was a regional manager for Healthy Buildings International (HBI), a company that contracted with the tobacco industry to help persuade the public that secondhand tobacco smoke pollution was a minimal problem in buildings. The contact person to reach Jeff Seckler is the attorney Alexander Pyrese. Jeff Seckler has blown the whistle on an alleged front organization set up by the Tobacco Institute to confuse the issue of office management and environmental tobacco smoke. However, in a subsequent legal settlement with HBI, Seckler admitted that he knew of no wrong doing by HBI.

Biography
Jeffrey Seckler graduated from Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut with a degree in Economics. His formal education also included training as a U.S. Air Force jet pilot. Seckler entered the field of indoor air quality in 1986, after 15 years of sales management and marketing experience. After heading a company involved in the distribution of air purification equipment, Seckler joined Air Conditioning and Ventilation Associates Atlantic (ACVA Atlantic) in 1988. ACVA Atlantic became Healthy Buildings International in 1989.

Tobacco industry involvement
In an April, 1993 court filing made jointly with the U.S. government in the District of Columbia under the False Claims Act (the "whistle-blower" statute), Seckler complained that during the period of 1989 to 1992, his employer, Healthy Buildings International, Inc. (HBI), entered into contracts with the United States federal government to inspect the interiors of federal buildings under "fraudulent and false pretenses." Seckler further claimed that HBI maintained a secret contractual relationship with the Tobacco Institute, R. J. Reynolds and Philip Morris to provide building inspections that would not focus on the harms caused by cigarette smoke, and to testify at public hearings against smoking bans in return for which the Institute, and later RJR, paid HBI a fee for each inspection completed. Philip Morris, through the Tobacco Institute, paid HBI, in the form of grants, hundreds of thousands of dollars to publish a magazine, called Healthy Buildings International Magazine, which the Institute and Philip Morris used in the United States and around the world to combat the tobacco control (anti-smoking) movement. Seckler also claimed that the Tobacco Institute secretly subsidized HBI's office in Danvers, Massachusetts and other expenses of HBI, and that the Institute, whenever it needed an inspection, would secretly pay for the cost of an HBI inspection. According to Seckler's court complaint, "as a further part of this fraudulent scheme and conspiracy, TI, inter alia ["among other things"], paid to have HBI employees attend media training classes to learn how to speak against smoking bans, paid for part of HBI employees' salaries, [and] told HBI employees to lie about their motivation for testifying at various hearings, [and] paid HBI to spy on anti-smoking individuals and groups."

Accordingly, while representing HBI in the early 1990s, Seckler gave media interviews in which he minimized discussion of secondhand smoke as a point-source of indoor air pollution and instead portrayed it solely as an indicator of poor overall building ventilation.

In July, 1998, Seckler settled his suit out of court for $100,000. The funds, paid by tobacco companies, were split between Seckler and the U.S. government, which had filed as a co-complainant in Seckler's case. A July 2, 1998 article about the settlement in the Los Angeles Times stated that the tobacco industry was paying HBI's legal costs in the lawsuit. The article further stated that, "in an unusual clause in the agreement, filed in U.S. District Court in Washington, the former executive, Jeffrey R. Seckler, admitted that HBI 'to his knowledge' had not defrauded or filed false reports with its federal clients."

HBI has since been sold, and in 1999 severed all ties with the tobacco industry.

Related Sourcewatch resources

 * Healthy Buildings International
 * Philip Morris' Project Brass
 * Philip Morris' Whitecoat Project
 * Secondhand smoke
 * Tobacco industry IAQ ploys
 * Indoor Air Quality
 * Philip Morris' Latin Project