Firm's history raises concern

An air quality inspection company accused by Congress in the late 1990s of engaging in "scientific fraud" on behalf of the tobacco industry has been hired by Cal State Long Beach.

Healthy Buildings International will be spending the next month conducting tests in the Social Science/Public Affairs Building to determine whether the air is safe to breathe. The building is home to several departments including economics, journalism and criminal justice.

The Virginia-based firm came under fire in 1993 when a whistle-blower accused HBI of being in the hip pocket of tobacco manufacturers. The subsequent U.S. Department of Justice investigation sparked a heated debate on the validity of HBI test results.

"The Justice Department spent a year looking into our company," said Simon Turner, the director of HBI's western region office in Irvine. "After a year they turned around and said, 'You're exonerated. We can't find anything you've done wrong.' " The Justice Department dropped its investigation in 1996.

The civil case brought by the whistle-blower, a former HBI senior executive, was settled out of court in 1998. The former executive accused HBI of being the industry's secret front company when tobacco manufacturers scrambled to convince the public that second-hand smoke in commercial buildings was not as hazardous as the Environmental Protection Agency had claimed.

HBI has testified before Congress, government agencies and in personal injury suits debunking the EPA's classification of secondhand smoke as a health risk, according to several press reports.

"Nobody paid us to say something we didn't believe and nor will they ever," Turner said Friday. "That's what having integrity is all about."

HBI has always been adamant about the honesty of its work, said Turner, whose father is a retired senior executive of Britain's Tobacco Manufacturers' Association. Although Turner acknowledged that HBI has worked for the tobacco industry, he insists that there is no longer a connection.

Even still, one CSULB administrator expressed concern about the company's past.

"What you have is a shadow of doubt hanging over them," said Barbara George, interim dean of the College of Business Administration. "I think you have to be careful of hiring a company like that. It doesn't mean that they won't do good work, but I would do much more of a background check on them."

The CSULB officials in charge of hiring HBI said they were unaware of the company's checkered history. HBI is being paid $5,900 for its services.

"We don't do FBI checks on everyone we hire," said Scott Charmack, associate vice-president of Physical Planning. It was Charmack who hired HBI when students and faculty demanded an independent contractor be brought in to test the SSPA Building. Strange smells, a broken elevator and uncomfortable temperatures, drew complaints about building conditions.

Although the university performed its own air quality tests in early February, CSULB hired HBI because "of its good reputation in the field," Charmack said.

"We're one of the most experienced air quality companies in the world," Turner said. "We've tested more than 2,300 buildings." HBI has tested buildings on four other CSU campuses: Fullerton, Chico, Northridge and San Francisco.

HBI will be testing for, among other things, commonly found gases, dust microbes and volatile organic compounds, Turner said. It will take roughly four weeks before HBI's findings are released.

"I have no reason to believe that they can't do the job they were hired to do," Charmack said.

But George said: "Preferably, you would get somebody who is squeaky clean."

Some professors working in the building wondered whether HBI was under any pressure to produce biased results. "Are they truly independent?" one journalism professor asked.

"From an ethical standpoint, it raises enormous questions to whether or not these will be the pure results you want," George said of HBI's upcoming report.

President Robert Maxson was surprised by HBI's past. "If we find there is a conflict of interest, we will absolutely get someone else to do air monitoring in the building."

-- Marten Lewerth contributed to this article.