Find industry stories and more by digging in tobacco library documents

A graphic detailing flame retardants by the Chicago Tribune, which ran with the papers's four-part series.

Patricia Callahan and Sam Roe of the Chicago Tribune churned out a great four-part series exploring flame retardant chemical safety and effectiveness, and its ties to the tobacco industry.

Part one of the series says the chemicals are “linked to cancer, neurological deficits, developmental problems and impaired fertility,” and that they don’t work as promised.

An author who penned the study supposedly proving the necessity of the chemicals says the amount of retardants used in household furniture doesn’t work, the story says. “’The fire just laughs at it,’ he said.”

Part two details how the tobacco industry created a campaign to push flame retardant chemicals. Patricia and Sam write:

“The tobacco industry’s biggest prize? The National Association of State Fire Marshals, which represented the No. 1 fire officials in each state.

A former tobacco executive, Peter Sparber, helped organize the group, then steered its national agenda. He shaped its requests for federal rules requiring flame retardant furniture and fed the marshals tobacco’s arguments for why altering furniture was a more effective way to prevent fires than altering cigarettes.

For years, the tobacco industry paid Sparber for what the marshals mistakenly thought was volunteer work.”

Today’s Tip: Use tobacco libraries to gather information.

Patricia recommends using tobacco libraries, which are depositories of information compiled during lawsuits against the industry. Files include internal memos, speeches and strategic plans.

“You’d be surprised what you can come across that’s buried in those documents,” Patricia says. “It’s so rare that you have access to this level of detail. It’s like being invited into executives’ offices and have them open their files and say, ‘Here, have a look.’”

She says the documents aren’t limited to the tobacco industry because of its connection to so many other areas.

She recommends two libraries: Tobacco Documents Online (TDO) and Legacy Tobacco Documents Library (LTDL).

The TDO site notes the organization spent more than a year standardizing trial documents to allow uniform searching. Patricia suggests choosing “industry collections” for the search.

The LTDL site says it has more than 13 million documents “created by major tobacco companies related to their advertising, manufacturing, marketing, sales, and scientific research activities.” Patricia says reporters should search the names of experts to see if they’ve consulted in the industry. A few tips:

• Use the date field with year first to narrow date ranges. “It lets you limit the search to people who were in know at that time,” she says.
• Use the “Bates” line in search results to find documents within the same proximity. Clicking the arrow takes you to the next document that was near it in file, she says.