Highlights: A study this summer found that using a single gas stove burner on high can raise levels of cancer-causing benzene above what’s been observed from secondhand smoke.
A new investigation by NPR and the Climate Investigations Center found that the gas industry tried to downplay the health risks of gas stoves for decades, turning to many of the same public-relations tactics the tobacco industry used to cover up the risks of smoking. Gas utilities even hired some of the same PR firms and scientists that Big Tobacco did.
Earlier this year, an investigation from DeSmog showed that the industry understood the hazards of gas appliances as far back as the 1970s and concealed what they knew from the public.
It’s a strategy that goes back as far back as 1972, according to the most recent investigation. That year, the gas industry got advice from Richard Darrow, who helped manufacture controversy around the health effects of smoking as the lead for tobacco accounts at the public relations firm Hill + Knowlton. At an American Gas Association conference, Darrow told utilities they needed to respond to claims that gas appliances were polluting homes and shape the narrative around the issue before critics got the chance. Scientists were starting to discover that exposure to nitrogen dioxide—a pollutant emitted by gas stoves—was linked to respiratory illnesses. So Darrow advised utilities to “mount the massive, consistent, long-range public relations programs necessary to cope with the problems.”
These studies didn’t just confuse the public, but also the federal government. When the Environmental Protection Agency assessed the health effects of nitrogen dioxide pollution in 1982, its review included five studies finding no evidence of problems—four of which were funded by the gas industry, the Climate Investigations Center recently uncovered.
Karen Harbert, the American Gas Association’s CEO, acknowledged that the gas industry has “collaborated” with researchers to “inform and educate regulators about the safety of gas cooking appliances.” Harbert claimed that the available science “does not provide sufficient or consistent evidence demonstrating chronic health hazards from natural gas ranges”—a line that should sound familiar by now.
I don’t know what the autism industry is. I agree that lots of industries use these tactics, while actively poisoning/exposing their customers to toxins. There is a big problem with the baby formula industry using big tobacco tactics to obfuscate facts about premature infants being killed by their products. Johnson and Johnson has also done this with talcum powder.
The thing with talcum powder was that it contained a certain portion of asbestos from the talc deposits it was mined from, which was determined to not be financially viable to separate out. So Johnson and Johnson just didn’t. Some of their baby powder was found to contain asbestos and they recalled a bunch of it. Then J&J claimed at the time they stopped selling talc based baby powder that this was due to “misinformation” surrounding its product.
Yeah, okay, sure.
The stuff you buy as baby powder now is corn starch based. This was news to me because I used to use the stuff to help mount inner tubes in motorcycle tires. The corn starch based stuff doesn’t work for that. Like, at all. I use soap or Windex now instead. No idea how well it works as actual baby powder.
J&J hid the fact that there was asbestos in their talc products and even continued to advertise it for use by women in their ‘sensitive areas.’
https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/johnsonandjohnson-cancer/
"In 1976, as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) was weighing limits on asbestos in cosmetic talc products, J&J assured the regulator that no asbestos was “detected in any sample” of talc produced between December 1972 and October 1973. It didn’t tell the agency that at least three tests by three different labs from 1972 to 1975 had found asbestos in its talc – in one case at levels reported as “rather high.” "