The tobacco industry has been accused of distorting the results of research into the effect of sharing space with smokers.

  Now the Tobacco Advisory Council, the industry's trade association, has cancelled national newspaper advertisements, a video and a booklet, intended to show that tobacco smoke at work is not a problem.

  The material was to be based on research by Roger Perry, Professor of Public Health at Imperial College, London, which the council had part-funded.

  The study shows that indoor pollution levels from three of the components of tobacco smoke is well below official safety limits for workplace exposure.

  Imperial College said the advertisements—based on a letter from Professor Perry and to be run under the banner "If you're worried about other people's tobacco smoke, this should clear the air"—purported to draw conclusions "which were not in the research".

  The presentation of the research was misleading, carrying a message "considerably more conclusive than the results justify" and would have been "potentially damaging to the college".

  Iain More, the college's director of public relations, said yesterday that negotiations had been "amicable but pretty tough. We had quite a battle over this. It does raise issues about controlling the way results from sponsored research are interpreted and used when universities are under increasing pressure to get funds from industry and outside sources."

  Professor Perry said yesterday that the council had been "a little naughty, to put it mildly".

  His study involved sampling air quality in 3,000 locations throughout Britain covering work, travel, home and leisure locations, measuring carbon monoxide, nicotine and particulate matter release by burning cigarettes.

  The results showed average carbon monoxide levels less than 5 per cent the permitted level for workplace exposure, nicotine levels, even in smoking areas, only 4 per cent on average of accepted exposure levels, and that even in smoke-filled rooms where a tobacco haze could be seen, the level of inhalable particles was on average less than 2 per cent of the permitted workplace level.

  The professor told the council that the findings "put into some perspective" the relative contribution of tobacco smoke to indoor air quality.

  Yesterday he said that "the results do show that concentrations of these three components of tobacco smoke are at relatively low levels. But we only measured three components. There are another 200 down the line and they include ones which cause irritation and distress to non-smokers". There was, he added, still a very big gap between understanding the components of environmental tobacco smoke in the atmosphere and understanding their health related effects.

  Mr More said: "We don't believe that Professor Perry's work, while an important contribution to measurement of indoor air quality, said anything directly about the health effects of environmental tobacco smoke. The tobacco advisory council wanted to give the misleading impression that it did, and we were very concerned about that.

  "Imperial does a lot of work with industry, and it is vital with increasing amounts of sponsored research, that scientists retain control over how their results are presented and interpreted and that the college's name and authority is not misused."

  Professor Perry is to continue his studies, but funded by Philip Morris, the American-owned tobacco company, rather than by the tobacco advisory council.

  A spokesman for the council said: "We had a perfect right to promote the findings so long as Professor Perry and Imperial College were happy with what we were doing. At the end they seemed not to want too close association with the industry. That is something that is a pity but in the present climate I suppose it's understandable. . . "We still think the research is sound."