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big tobacco
To Defend Gas Stoves, Industry Calls in the Tobacco Propagandists
The issue of polluting gas stoves is currently raging in the U.S. and represents a growing public relations crisis for the industry.
Feb 08, 2023
We have known for decades that both the tobacco and fossil fuel industry have used scientists to defend their products and spread doubt and confusion over the health and environmental impact of smoking or burning oil and gas.
Both industries peddle a deadly product. Both have used the same playbook to conjure uncertainty and, in the words of the ground-breaking book written by Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway, be the merchants of doubt.
A central tenet of this strategy has been the so-called “third party technique,” where a distrusted or discredited industry buys credibility by using someone to speak on their behalf. It is no surprise that the fossil fuel and tobacco puppet masters have used scientists as one group of third parties to spin science on their behalf.
One now infamous project by tobacco giant Philip Morris was the “Whitecoat Project”, where scientists would help “resist and roll back smoking restrictions” but also “restore the social acceptability of smoking.” Hence paid-for scientists have been named white-coats.
One white-coat who has worked for both the oil and gas industry and the tobacco industry is Dr. Julie Goodman, an epidemiologist and board-certified toxicologist, from the consultancy Gradient (see picture).
Gradient says it is a U.S.-based risk consultancy science firm “committed to excellence in scientific analysis on complex environmental, health, and safety issues.” Goodman’s clients have included the American Petroleum Institute, American Chemistry Council, and Philip Morris, among many others.
Dr. Goodman is the subject of a recent highly revealing New York Times expose by Hiroko Tabuchi outlining how the scientist is helping front the gas industry’s pushback against the growing evidence of how harmful gas stoves can be to health.
\u201cThe campaign to ban gas stoves is a calculated and well-funded effort driven by climate activist groups hoping to scare consumers and give government officials a reason to ban #natgas. @KimStrassel with @WSJopinion connects the dots in her latest piece: https://t.co/ihL0p5DyBk.\u201d— AGA (@AGA) 1675110198
The issue of polluting gas stoves is currently raging in the U.S. and represents a growing public relations crisis for the industry. Hardly a day now goes by without another story showing how polluting gas stoves can affect health.
For example, yesterday, the results of a study from the Bronx were released where households with electric ovens showed a 35% decrease in daily concentrations of the pollutant nitrogen dioxide and a nearly 43% difference in daily concentrations of carbon monoxide, compared to gas stoves.
The issue also became more prevalent after a peer-reviewed article in the international journal of Environmental Research and Public Health was published last December. This concluded, “12.7% of current childhood asthma nationwide is attributed to gas stove use, which is similar to the childhood asthma burden attributed to secondhand smoke.”
Responding to this, the gas industry spin doctors, the American Gas Association, (AGA) issued a press release trying to argue that the research was “not substantiated by sound science.”
Walking into this polarized debate has been Dr. Goodman. As she has done before, her job appears to be to downplay the health risks for her clients. To spread the doubt. To create uncertainty.
As Tabuchi reports: “When Multnomah County in Oregon convened a recent public hearing on the health hazards posed by pollution from gas stoves, a toxicologist named Julie Goodman was the first to testify.”
Dr Goodman said that “studies linking gas stoves to childhood asthma, which have prompted talk of gas-stove bans in recent weeks and months, were ‘missing important context.’”
However, the New York Times reports that “what Dr. Goodman didn’t tell the crowd was that she was paid to testify by a local gas provider.” The Times added that in recent months, Dr. Goodman had also been working with the spin doctors at the American Gas Association, to help it “counter health concerns linked to gas.”
Indeed, back in August 2022, Dr. Goodman wrote a letter that the current evidence did not “provide a reliable scientific basis…to make causal inferences regarding the relationship between the use of gas-fired residential cooking appliances and childhood asthma.”
Sentences like this should set the alarm bells going. Years ago, I wrote a report on the tobacco industry’s decades of denial. Having studied thousands of documents, I wrote that the industry statements are peppered with fudging comments such as “no clinical evidence,” “no substantial evidence,” “no laboratory proof,” “unresolved,” and “still open.” Nothing has been “statistically proven,” “scientifically proven,” “or “scientifically established.” There is no “scientific causality,” “conclusive proof,” or “scientific proof.”
The industry was buying time, as thousands died from their deadly product. As one tobacco scientist conceded: “a demand for scientific proof is always a formula for inaction and delay and usually the first reaction of the guilty.”
But Gradient and Goodman have a history of controversial research and of playing down the health risks. As Tabuchi outlined: “Gradient has a track record of working on behalf of its clients to push back against research on health risks associated with a range of products.”
Goodman has, for example, acted as an expert witness for Philip Morris, when Judge Edward Leibensperger from the Massachusetts Superior Court said Gradient’s analysis “was shown to be inconsistent and contrary to the consensus of the scientific community.”
Documents from the tobacco archive also show Dr. Goodman co-authored an article sponsored by the now-defunct American Plastics Council, criticizing dozens of academic studies that had raised concerns over the controversial chemical Bisphenol-A , or BPA, which is an endocrine disruptor and linked to reduced fertility, and behavioral problems in children as well as diabetes, cancer, and heart disease.
The New York Times article is not the first time Goodman and Gradient have been under the spotlight either. In 2016, the Centre for Public Integrity published a series entitled: “Science for Sale,” outlining how “industry-backed research has exploded — often with the aim of obscuring the truth — as government-funded science dwindles”.
Some of the “white-coats” in the article were employed by Gradient, including Dr. Goodman. The Centre outlined how one “group of academic researchers were so outraged by an article on BPA written by Gradient’s Julie Goodman and Lorenz Rhomberg that they wrote a lengthy response with a table listing all the “false statements” in it.
Frederick vom Saal, a University of Missouri professor who has investigated BPA for more than two decades, told the Centre that “In this article, there is nothing that is true. It’s ridiculous. And that’s how they operate.”
Goodman’s colleague, Peter Valberg, was also exposed for promoting the idea from a lawyer who defended asbestos claims that maybe tobacco smoke was the cause of higher rates of mesothelioma, not asbestos, despite decades of evidence to the contrary. He went on to testify in a court proceeding to that effect too. The Tobacco document archives also show that Valberg appeared as an expert witness for Philip Morris using research from Goodman.
Scientist after scientist approached by the Centre criticized Goodman and Gradient. One scientist, Bert Brunekreef, director of the Institute for Risk Assessment Sciences at Universiteit Utrecht in the Netherlands, said that “Mrs. Goodman and the company she works for have a reputation of misrepresenting the science consistently.” Another, Bruce Lanphear, a Simon Fraser University Professor, added “They truly are the epitome of rented white coats”.
Undeterred, Goodman and Gradient will carry on representing their corporate clients. Yesterday, Goodman was due to testify before California’s Bay Area Air Quality Management District, appearing on behalf of the Western States Petroleum Association, a fossil fuel industry lobby group.
Meanwhile the AGA is trying to argue that concern about gas stoves is all one conspiracy by green groups and has nothing to do with peer-reviewed science. The diversionary messaging could have come straight from a spin doctor for the tobacco industry:
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Big Oil Used Big Tobacco's Denial Playbook--But Will They Pay Same Price?
The U.S. Justice Department has "discussed" taking civil legal action—as it did against tobacco products industry—against the fossil fuel industry
Mar 11, 2016
Will the fossil fuel industry, which misled the public for decades about the risks of climate change, eventually pay the steep price that Big Tobacco did after lying for decades about the health hazards of smoking?
U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch this week acknowledged that the U.S. Justice Department has "discussed" taking civil legal action--as it did against tobacco companies--against the fossil fuel industry for its decades-long intentional suppression of climate science.
"It's high time that the Department of Justice investigate how these companies may have lied to the American people, their shareholders, and the federal government."
--Jamie Henn, 350.org
Lynch's comments came Wednesday, in testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee.
"Madam Attorney General, the similarities between the mischief of the tobacco industry pretending that the science of tobacco's dangers was unsettled and the fossil fuel industry pretending that the science of carbon emissions' danger is unsettled has been remarked on widely, particularly by those who study the climate denial apparatus that the fossil fuel industry has erected," said Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) during the hearing.
Noting that under President Bill Clinton, the Justice Department brought and won a multi-billion-dollar civil case against the tobacco industry, Whitehouse continued: "My question to you is, other than civil forfeitures and matters attendant to a criminal case, are there other circumstances in which a civil matter under the authority of the Department of Justice has been referred to the FBI?"
After thanking him for "raising the issue," Lynch responded: "This matter has been discussed. We have received information about it and have referred it to the FBI to consider whether or not it meets the criteria for which we could take action on. I'm not aware of a civil referral at this time."
As Common Dreams reported last week, the DOJ has already forwarded a request from two congressmen seeking a federal probe of ExxonMobil to the FBI's criminal division.
Since reporting last year revealed ExxonMobil's efforts to hide from the public the dangers of global warming and the role of carbon and other greenhouse gas emissions in climate change--and since subsequent investigations have shown the strategy to be widespread throughout the industry--climate activists have compared the tactics to those employed by the tobacco industry.
"The fossil fuel industry has used Big Tobacco's playbook to block action on climate change for years," 350.org strategy and communications director Jamie Henn told Common Dreams in an email on Friday. "It's high time that the Department of Justice investigate how these companies may have lied to the American people, their shareholders, and the federal government."
Lynch's admission this week, combined with last week's announcement of the criminal referral, show that the case against fossil fuel producers is going mainstream, Henn said.
"#ExxonKnew may be the greatest corporate scandal in history," Henn said. "With multiple state attorneys general and the FBI now investigating the company, the case is clearly picking up momentum. Exxon will do everything it can to dodge these allegations. It's our job to make sure the spotlight stays pointed their way."
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BBC Profile: Big Tobacco Lawyers Target Big Food
Attorney Don Barrett demands mislabelled food be "taken off the shelves"
Oct 16, 2012
More than a dozen lawyers who took on big tobacco in the 1990's have turned their attention to the food industry and the criminal mislabeling of food products. BBC Newsnight spoke with Don Barrett, one of the attorney's who's career capstone was the decade-long battle that forced tobacco companies to admit they knew cigarettes were addictive.
"Nobody's trying to tell the American people what they have to eat or what they cannot eat, the American people can make those decisions for themselves," the Mississippi attorney told BBC. "It's all about free choice. To have free choice you have to have accurate information. That means Big Food, the food companies, have to start telling the truth about what's in their product. The law requires it."
The tobacco attorneys are taking an aggressive tack, claiming that companies are "misrepresenting their products, promoting them as 'natural' or 'healthy', when [...] they are no such thing."
Barrett's team is focusing on the mislabeling of food and the prevailing practice of ingredient euphemisms. "It's a crime--and that makes it a crime to sell it," Barrett toldThe New York Times. "That means these products should be taken off the shelves."
One example he gives is hidden sugars in processed food. Barrett cites the example of greek yogurt maker, Chobani Inc--one of their targets--which lists "evaporated cane juice" as an ingredient in their pomegranate-flavored yogurt, rather than sugar. According to the suit filed earlier this year, the FDA has repeatedly warned companies not to use the term because it is "false and misleading." In total, the attorneys filed 25 cases against food industry players that also include ConAgra Foods, PepsiCo, Heinz and General Mills.
Barrett draws a parallel between his infamous tobacco lawsuits and this latest round:
"The American people assume that if a product is legal to sell, then these people are telling the truth about this product. If it's legal to sell, it must be ok, otherwise the government would have done something about it. And that's what they thought about cigarettes."
Another similarity is the money at stake. Big Tobacco ended up settling for more than $200 billion in 1998. The suits against Big Food are class actions, where the class is defined as every person who purchased one of the misbranded products in the previous four years. For most of the food companies targeted, that could also amount to billions.
"I'm 68 years old, frankly I don't need the cash, the law's been good to me." According to BBC, what gets Barrett fired up is the epidemic of obesity among young people; the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) reports around two thirds of Americans over the age of 20 are now obese or overweight.
"This is my job, but here we have an opportunity to really help people."
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