Of course, they knew
The DeSmog revelations regarding the American Gas Association (AGA)
came as the gas industry is pushing back against climate and public health
advocates' efforts to ban new gas stoves amid mounting scientific evidence that
the appliances threaten the warming planet and people's health.
Recent studies—which, among other things, showed that nitrogen
dioxide, carbon monoxide, and ultrafine particles produced by gas stoves cause
a range of health problems, including 1 in 8 U.S. cases of childhood asthma—sparked fast and furious backlash
from the gas industry and its congressional boosters.
"It's less widely known that the gas industry has long sponsored its own research into
the problem of indoor air pollution from gas stoves," wrote DeSmog's
Rebecca John. "Now, newly discovered documents reveal that the American
Gas Association was studying the health and indoor
pollution risks from gas stoves as
far back as the early 1970s—that they knew much more, at a far earlier date,
than has been previously documented."
According to John:
More than 50 years ago, in 1972, AGA authored a draft report highlighting
indoor air pollution concerns similar to those being raised by health experts
and regulators today. In particular, this draft report examined what to do
about problems related to the emission of carbon monoxide and nitrogen oxides
(collectively referred to as NOx) from domestic gas appliances. This draft,
recently discovered in the U.S. National Archives, would eventually become an official report published
by the National Industrial Pollution Control Council (NIPCC), a long-forgotten
government advisory council composed of the nation's most powerful
industrialists.
However, an entire section detailing those concerns, entitled "Indoor Air
Quality Control," vanished from the final report. With it went all the
important evidence that the gas industry was not only conducting research into
what the NIPCC called the "NOx problem" but also that it was actively
testing technological solutions "for the purposes of limiting the levels
of carbon monoxide and nitrogen oxides in household air."
"Instead," John wrote, "the final report argued
gas' sole drawback was its limited availability, 'not its environmental
impact.' It also lobbied for a massive expansion of U.S. domestic gas reserves
and the rapid rollout of gas-based infrastructure, under the banner of
replacing coal with gas to stem air pollution."
Reacting to the DeSmog report, U.S. Sen.
Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) sardonically tweeted: "What? They
knew? Next you're going to tell me that ExxonMobil knew about
climate change and that the tobacco companies knew cigarettes caused
cancer."