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.
Why not move to cuba…
I love that you seem to think that it’s just as simple as pick up and move to the country you like. As if the red carpet in all other countries was always rolled out just for you. Let me guess, American? Can anyone just pick up and move to the US? Or the EU? Heard of all the crap around ‘migrants’? You don’t think you’d be considered a migrant if you wanted to move to Cuba, with all the restrictions that would entail? Or do you just assume that the whole world is just dying to welcome you to settle in their countries?
But changing to entire modus operandi of a country is just a walk in the park?
Ergo decedo. Why don’t you learn why that’s a bad argument?
If that place is a pinnacle of the ideaology you purport, then maybe leaving for that place is a natural progression of thought.
If you dont want to live there, but rather in your current country but you want it to mimic the desired country, that makes no sense. You have one available, and one that seems nigh immpossible, which one makes more sense to achieve?
It makes perfect sense if you like the policies of another country. By that logic, 8 billion people would be living in Finland because it was ranked the happiest place on Earth. There’s a reason many are disillusioned with capitalism. A curious person might ask - why?
Why don’t you move to Somalia?