News analysis

USA: continuing battles over "acceptable" air quality standards

David Simpson, Stella Aguinaga Bialous

Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education, University of California San Francisco, USA

Correspondence to:
stella@bialous.com

Keywords: news analysis

The American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) is an international organisation of more than 55 000 members with chapters throughout the world. ASHRAE develops standards that "set uniform methods of testing and rating equipment and establish accepted practices for the HVAC&R (Heating, Ventilation, Air Conditioning and Refrigeration) industry worldwide, such as the design of energy efficient buildings" (www.ashrae.org). ASHRAE then submits its standards to the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) for endorsement as an American standard. Furthermore, ASHRAE standards are also adopted by several other international standards setting organisations as their own national standards, giving ASHRAE a reach well beyond the USA.

The tobacco industry, for the past 20 years, has been heavily involved with ASHRAE in an attempt to influence the development of Standard 62—Ventilation for Acceptable Indoor Air Quality. The industry was successful until recently—Standard 62 determined ventilation rates to accommodate a "moderate" . . . [Full text of this article]

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