1993 U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Report on ETS

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In 1993, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) published a report, Respiratory Health Effects of Passive Smoking: Lung Cancer and Other Disorders, which deemed environmental tobacco smoke to be a known human carcinogen. The Report was challenged in the U.S. courts on a variety of grounds, including the arbitrariness of its conclusion and the Agency's illegal disregard of industry views.

A U.S. district court ruled in favor of the challenge. According to the court, the EPA had ignored legal requirements to appoint industry representatives to the scientific advisory group that collaborated with the Agency on the Report. The Report's reasoning was so transparently flawed and politically motivated, the court further concluded, that industry consultation would likely have resulted in a more balanced -- and thus different -- conclusion. The court entered a judgment in effect erasing key chapters of the Report.

The EPA appealed this ruling. The court of appeals vacated the district court's judgment on the purely technical ground that the district court lacked jurisdiction to review the Report.