Brazil will have a research lab for monitoring activities related to tobacco consumption.
The lab will be built in the city of Rio de Janeiro, and is supposed to become a reference of its kind for Latin America.
According to the Director of the National Sanitary Protection Agency (Anvisa), Franklin Rubinstein, both Anvisa and the National Cancer Institute (Inca) are responsible for the elaboration of the project, which may begin still this year. The project already counts with US$ 607 thousand (1.5 million reais) for this initial phase.
He said that the new lab will test cigarettes, stogies, and cigars to verify ingredients information provided by the tobacco industry. Today, these tests are performed by international laboratories and are very expensive.
Franklin Rubinstein also informed that the International Standardization Organization (ISO) is responsible for establishing standards for this industry, which are being questioned by the World Health Organization (WHO).
According to INCA’s Prevention Coordinator, Gulnar Azevedo, most part of the lab’s funding may come from the liberation of the money tobacco industries have been depositing, due to their judicial dispute over the legality of Anvisa’s charging for registration and annual reregistration fees.
The Director of the Department “For a tobacco-free world” of the WHO, Vera Luiza da Costa Silva, said that Brazil will be one of the six countries, along with India and the Ivory Coast, to build this kind of lab, as was recommended by the WHO.
Agência Brasil