Kent Cigarettes: The Danger of Weak Corrective Actions
From 1952 to 1957, the P. Lorillard Company manufactured a new kind of filtered cigarette, advertising it as a “healthier alternative” to every other cigarette. The difference? A filter made out of a material “so safe, so effective it has been selected to help filter the air in hospital operating rooms, and to purify the air in atomic energy plants of microscopic impurities.”
Advertisements would tout the Kent cigarette’s “Micronite” filter as the “first cigarette filter that really works, the best protection from tars and nicotine” in a world becoming newly aware of the dangers of smoking. The Micronite filters were famously tested using the “cup test,” where multiple different cigarettes are left to smoke under a cup on a piece of paper (pictured here). This was intended to show the significantly lessened effect that Kent’s cigarette’s could have on the smoker’s lungs: but these cigarettes held a dark secret.
The magic “material” that Kent so proudly utilized in their filters was blue asbestos, and millions of people were unknowingly breathing it straight into their lungs.
The Asbestos Filter
Crocidolite or blue asbestos is considered the most hazardous type of asbestos because of its extremely thin, fine fibers. According to the Mesothelioma Center, “Because crocidolite fibers are so fine, they were useful for certain specialized industrial filters, but this quality also makes them even more toxic than common chrysotile asbestos fibers. Indeed, many experts consider crocidolite the most hazardous of the six recognized commercial types of asbestos material.” These can lodge easily within lung tissue, making a smoker about 50-80% more likely to develop lung cancer than the average person.
Asbestos use in the United States during the 1950s was at an all time high, with the U.S. accounting for up to 83% of asbestos consumption. It was considered a “magic mineral” because of its strength and resistance to heat, making it seemingly perfect for insulation material. From firefighters’ coats and gloves to electrical wiring, asbestos was used wherever heat was a threat.
Thirty years earlier, however, a 1918 U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics report noted the high risk of early death among workers who worked with asbestos. This research was available to the makers of the Kent cigarette, but the asbestos industry had expanded so greatly in the years since that the evidence of its danger was easily overlooked.
From overlooked research to false advertising, the Micronite filter was a corrective action perfectly set up to fail: but beyond this, the filter failed to do the very thing it was chosen for its ability to do.
“Filter Fraud” and Violated Safeguards
“Filter fraud” refers to the trend of putting filters on cigarettes, a practice which does nothing to protect the smoker besides giving them a misleading peace of mind. They put a barrier between the smoke and the lungs, but smokers, as a result, breathe in more deeply to inhale the smoke. This results in the same amount of smoke entering the lungs as they would receive without the filter.
“Filtered” cigarettes put a placebo label on a real threat to human life, much like an arbitrary sign or handrail in a high-risk workplace. Neither the threat of the cigarette’s smoke and ingredients nor the smoker themselves are removed from the situation.
The goal of the Micronite filter was to create a filter that worked more effectively than the standard filter, but the problem remained that cigarette filters were safeguards built to be violated. Even without the added dangers of asbestos, the filters still serve to put people at risk by allowing them to think they are adequately protected when they are not.
The question posed by the Kent cigarette’s disaster is this: how do we make sure that the corrective actions we are taking actually work?
Crafting Corrective Actions that Protect
The goal of TapRooT® RCA is to make successful corrective actions, and the strategies necessary to implement them, available to high-risk workplaces.
In the instance of the P. Lorillard Company, better access to resources like the 1918 asbestos report could have protected not only their consumers, but the employees working to construct the Kent cigarettes from the greatly increased danger of mesothelioma.
With our corrective action hierarchy, problems like the rampant “filter fraud” become clear. The goal of TapRooT® RCA is to help companies craft corrective actions that work, and the best way to do that is to aim for a solution that either removes the hazard or removes the target from the situation, as described in our Best Practices for Corrective Actions article.
In order to learn the TapRooT® System, and begin to implement best practices at your company, check out our TapRooT® Courses.
Read more at these sources:
Cancer History Project Article
