Fossil Gas Used Tobacco Tactics to Cover Health Data

Because of course they did.
Campaign “confused consumers and muddied the science.” That’s the MO.

What we see now, 50 years later, is that the confluence of all these powerful campaigns to “confuse” and “muddy” – eroding Americans confidence in science and fact, have lead to the kind of chaotic, conspiracy-driven, ungovernable madness we see today – the perfect breeding ground for fascism.

NPR:

In the late 1960s, natural gas utilities launched “Operation Attack,” a bold marketing campaign to bring lots more gas stoves into people’s kitchens.

The gas utilities called Operation Attack their “most ambitious advertising and merchandising program ever.” But as it got underway, concerns were becoming public about indoor pollution from gas stoves, including household levels of nitrogen dioxide.

Around the same time, Dr. Carl Shy, a federal public health researcher, was looking into the health effects of nitrogen dioxide. In 1970, Shy published a study showing that families exposed to greater levels of the air pollutant nitrogen dioxide outdoors had higher rates of respiratory illness than families in less-polluted areas. The research caught the attention of the gas utility industry, and they asked Shy for a meeting.

When they met, Shy heard from the gas industry something Americans are now learning about, more than 50 years later: the potential health risks from cooking with gas stoves. “They are the ones who told me that the gas stoves produce nitrogen dioxide because of their high temperature,” says Shy, now 91, at his home near Durham, N.C. “They said the hoods above gas stoves were really not powerful enough to pull out the nitrogen dioxide.”

But in the following decades, the gas industry argued the opposite, asserting that range hoods could clear up this pollution. And it has contended that fumes from cooking food are more of a problem than the fossil fuel pollution of nitrogen dioxide.

The narrative was part of a lengthy campaign by the gas utility industry to popularize gas stoves. Yet as it advertised the appliance, the industry also financed its own research into the potential harms from cooking with gas. Those industry-backed reports confused consumers and muddied the science that regulators relied on about the potential dangers of cooking with gas, according to an investigation by NPR and documents uncovered in a new report from the Climate Investigations Center (CIC), a research and watchdog group.

Along with material collected through its own reporting, NPR reviewed hundreds of pages of publicly available documents gathered by CIC that include scientific studies, trade journal articles and papers from the University of California, San Francisco’s tobacco industry archives.

The documents show that natural gas utilities and their powerful trade group, the American Gas Association (AGA), focused on convincing consumers and regulators that cooking with gas is as risk-free as cooking with electricity. As the scientific evidence grew over time about the health effects from gas stoves, the industry used a playbook echoing the one that tobacco companies employed for decades to fend off regulation. The gas utility industry relied on some of the same strategies, researchers and public relations firms.

The documents show that AGA and utility companies funded studies that countered the emerging research on health risks, sometimes without disclosing their financial support. The industry-backed studies focused on uncertainties in the health research and magnified them, leaving the impression that the science is not clear, even as evidence has accumulated about a link between using gas stoves at home and greater risk of respiratory illnesses.

Research backed by the gas industry generated doubt and controversy over the health effects of stoves that affected policymaking around protecting people’s health. It helped stop efforts to more stringently regulate gas stoves in at least one instance under the Reagan administration. And documents show the research may have helped thwart efforts to strengthen federal nitrogen dioxide pollution standards outdoors, which affects millions of Americans.

Those successful tactics are still relevant today, as state and federal regulators once again examine the health risks that come from cooking with gas, and as natural gas use becomes a flashpoint in the effort to reduce planet-heating emissions.

“I think it’s way past the time that we were doing something about gas stoves,” says Dr. Bernard Goldstein, professor emeritus at the University of Pittsburgh School of Public Health. He researched gas stoves, nitrogen dioxide and indoor air quality in the 1970s. “It has taken almost 50 years since the discovery of negative effects on children of nitrogen dioxide from gas stoves to begin preventive action. We should not wait any longer,” Goldstein says.
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As gas utilities faced increasing scientific and regulatory pushback on the health effects of gas stoves, they’ve found themselves fighting on a new front. Natural gas is chiefly made up of methane, a potent planet-heating gas. From the wellhead where gas is produced, through pipelines and to the burner where gas is combusted, the infrastructure leaks methane and worsens climate change. Across the United States, towns are passing laws to limit new construction of natural gas pipelines to homes and buildings, and in places like Ithaca, N.Y., tearing out gas systems completely. Public concern about the health and climate effects of gas stoves now threatens to gut the gas industry.

The AGA maintains that gas stoves are a “minor source” of nitrogen dioxide and it points out that no federal agencies have chosen to regulate the appliances for indoor air emissions. It downplays widely accepted research showing an increased risk of asthma in children who live in homes with gas stoves. And the group promotes research it funded that finds no evidence of health problems.
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Presented with findings from NPR and CIC’s reporting, AGA Chief Executive Karen Harbert did not directly deny them. “The natural gas industry has collaborated with subject matter experts and research to develop analysis and scientific studies to inform and educate regulators about the safety of gas cooking appliances,” Harbert wrote in an email to NPR. “The available body of scientific research, including high-quality research and consensus health reviews conducted independently of industry, does not provide sufficient or consistent evidence demonstrating chronic health hazards from natural gas ranges,” Harbert writes.

The gas stove plays an outsized role in the gas utility business. It doesn’t use much natural gas, but house builders and real estate agents say many buyers demand a gas stove. That requires gas utility service to a home, which makes it more likely customers will also use appliances that consume more gas, such as a furnace, water heater and clothes dryer. That’s why some in the industry consider the stove a “gateway appliance.”