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Guilt-Tripping for the Public Good Often Achieves Its Intended Result

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Tuesday, April 16, 2024

In 2016 Merck launched an advertising campaign for its HPV vaccine that aroused a storm of protest and headlines. The Washington Post published an article entitled “Do the new Merck HPV ads guilt-trip parents or tell hard truths? Both.” One of Merck’s TV ads showed an adult woman diagnosed with cervical cancer and flashed back to her as a child, asking, “Did you know [there was a vaccine for HPV]—Mom, Dad?”“I thought, ‘This is the thing that's going to make parents say I would feel horrible if my kid got cervical cancer later, and I could have vaccinated them,’” says Monique Turner, a communication scientist at Michigan State University (MSU). ”So, from a research perspective, I was like, ‘Thumbs-up, Merck.’ But they took a lot of heat for it.”Guilt is a powerful tool. Research has shown that, wielded effectively, it can persuade people to do the right thing. In a recent analysis of 26 studies of guilt appeals, Washington State University communication scientist Wei Peng found that guilt works—if people hearing the pitch are not made to feel responsible for a bad situation. Picture asking them to help with an environmental catastrophe.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.The most straightforward pitches involve what researchers call “existential guilt,” Peng says. They rely on our internal moral code that, as a human being, we have an obligation to relieve the suffering of others if we can. “What I found is that people feel guilty about people’s suffering even if they don’t have a direct personal relationship,” Peng says, “even if they are on the other side of the world.”It’s hard for most people to see photographs of starving children. Doing so hurts. Taking action to help them offers some relief. That’s what advocates are counting on when they ask you for donations to feed orphans or build shelters for earthquake survivors. Knowing guilt’s potential for good, social scientists are seeking the optimal formula to craft pitches for everything from promoting health behaviors and road safety to safeguarding the planet.But getting the formula right is tricky. “We have a hardwired negativity bias to instantly pay attention to anything that arouses a negative emotion,” says Pennsylvania State University media psychologist Jessica Myrick. That’s why inflicting guilt often works. But the downside of arousing this intensely uncomfortable feeling is that people can employ a battery of defenses against it: getting angry, rationalizing or distancing from the issue.That is the important takeaway from Peng’s research: guilt works when it doesn’t trigger resistance. In other words, don’t make listeners feel they’ve done something bad. “If you say we need to do something different versus you,” says persuasion scholar Robin Nabi of the University of California, Santa Barbara, “now you’re not the bad guy. We all have responsibility.”There are many ways to get this wrong. For example, if messengers arouse shame rather than guilt, MSU’s Turner found, people resist more. In her research, participants were asked to read an ad urging testing for sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) that evoked either guilt or shame and then to give their reactions. A headline in the guilt and shame appeals respectively asked what or who would give one’s partner an STD,” followed by multiple-choice answers. In both, the correct answer—“all of the above”—was circled at the bottom. The second-to-last option seen by both groups was objective: it referred to a person who hadn’t been tested for an STD The other multiple-choice answers were designed to evoke either guilt or shame. Those in the guilt appeal group were presented with choices such as, “someone with uninformed behavior”and “someone with forgetful behavior.” The group reading the shame appeal saw choices such as, “a selfish person” and “an irresponsible person.” Subjects in the latter group were likelier to feel angry and manipulated.As Turner explains, pointing out problematic behavior induces guilt, but focusing on someone’s inherent character traits—selfishness, for example—can induce shame. In most contexts, making people feel ashamed is not a good persuader.The key to making a guilt pitch succeed is to offer people relief from the guilt they’re feeling. In humanitarian appeals, people are usually offered easy-to-accomplish solutions: save the puppies from being euthanized by donating or volunteering, for instance. For health or safety messages, taking action may be harder, making messaging more challenging.If you’re asking parents to shield their kids from asthma risk from secondhand smoke, for example, saying, “Just quit” may be too hard for them. It is more effective, Nabi says, if you give people options: “Just smoke outside or not around your kids” or “Cut down how much you smoke.” “The idea is that when you evoke this emotion and then you give people a sense of efficacy,” she says, “it’s actually hope evoking.”That’s what scientists are finding in the lab. Adding a feel-good emotion to a guilt appeal—hope or pride, for example—works better. For one thing, it reduces people’s defensiveness, and that’s the first step: make sure they don’t shut you out. One recent study tested the effect of building hope into guilt appeals in a campaign to reduce texting while driving, which is an urgent safety issue because laws and enforcement have done little to reduce crashes tied to texting.In the online experiment, about 400 people were randomly placed in four groups. The first two groups viewed identical posters except that one added a hopeful message. The headline in both read, “You are never alone on the road.”The posters acknowledged how tempting it was to answer a text but noted that texting while driving was a factor in 20 percent of crashes. The “hope” message added recommendations to “turn on drive mode or silence your phone” and noted that doing so “can save lives.” In two other groups, people read what were essentially the same guilt-invoking or hopeful messages except that the language was more intense. The top headline, for example, read, “What you don’t see is a long and lovely life.” Adding the hopeful message reduced targets’ defensive responses in both language intensity groups. It also increased their stated intentions to avoid texting while driving.One new preprint study on guilt messaging tested the effect of inducing empathy alongside guilt in a hypothetical public-service campaign to reduce plastic bag pollution in oceans. In this online experiment, 257 college students were randomly assigned to read one of four messages from a fictional Facebook page, “Save the Marine Animals Foundation,” asking them to reduce their plastic bag use. In half the groups the undergraduates were asked to take the perspective of an animal suffering from ingesting a plastic bag. Researchers found that adopting the animals’ viewpoint created empathy. More empathy was associated with more guilt, which was, in turn, correlated with an increase in participants’ intentions to cut down on plastic bag use.In some appeals to protect the environment, inducing pride along with guilt proves to be the winning recipe for persuading people to change their behavior. In a meta-analysis of 30 years of research, data scientist Nathan Shipley, then at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, zeroed in on campaigns that induce people to imagine they’ll feel guilty or proud of themselves depending on their future behavior. He found that both emotions correlated with subjects’ intended and reported pro-environmental behavior, but the pride relationship was stronger.The success of these efforts depends at least partly on how well a message is tailored to a specific audience. Undergraduates in these studies, for example, are typically more environmentally conscious than their parents. The results in a new study showed that for Generation Z restaurant diners, both anticipated guilt for eating less environmentally sustainable food and an anticipated pride for eating more environmentally friendly, plant-based foods influenced their intentions to eat at chain restaurants that offered nonmeat options.Another study tested whether mothers of young children were more susceptible than others to guilt appeals to switch to buying organic food. The researchers found that they were. That’s not surprising, says Myrick, who is a mother of three kids under the age of five. Myrick is bombarded with guilt appeals. She’s had to triage the things she feels guilty about, such as using disposable diapers and paper plates, because, she says, “I’d feel even more guilty if I didn’t feed my kids something even when I don’t have time to prepare food.”Another study measured neither pride nor guilt, but both may have been implicitly invoked, says Elizabeth Hewitt, a social scientist at Stony Brook University and lead author of the paper. Over 12 weeks in two next-door apartment buildings in New York City, experimenters posted signs in the trash rooms every week announcing how well each building had done in recycling efforts. The sign in one building compared the amount of much of plastic, metal and glass its residents had recycled during the previous week with how much they had recycled the week before. The sign in the other building compared the amount its residents recycled in the previous week with how much their neighbors recycled during the same period. Both buildings increased their recycling by bag weight, but the feedback that compared residents with their neighbors resulted in more recycled material. Although the mechanism operated through peer pressure, guilt can play a role if a person feels they are not doing as much as they should, Hewitt says. Surpassing your neighbors can trigger pride.This swell of research is both timely and necessary, scientists say. Left to our own devices, we are not always our best selves—or our own best friends. Persuasive public service messaging will need to be crafted for new generations. Take the campaigns for the HPV vaccine. Over 20 years, they were a factor in reducing HPV infections in teenage girls by 88 percent and in young adult women by 81 percent. Yet vaccination rates in the U.S. remain lower than in other countries, and rates are uneven across the U.S., leaving many vulnerable to preventable cancers. To address such problems, it remains urgent to find effective tools of persuasion. Guilt, massaged in the right ways, can be a powerful tool.

The emerging science of laying guilt through public messaging can help safeguard the planet and improve health behaviors

In 2016 Merck launched an advertising campaign for its HPV vaccine that aroused a storm of protest and headlines. The Washington Post published an article entitled “Do the new Merck HPV ads guilt-trip parents or tell hard truths? Both.” One of Merck’s TV ads showed an adult woman diagnosed with cervical cancer and flashed back to her as a child, asking, “Did you know [there was a vaccine for HPV]—Mom, Dad?”

“I thought, ‘This is the thing that's going to make parents say I would feel horrible if my kid got cervical cancer later, and I could have vaccinated them,’” says Monique Turner, a communication scientist at Michigan State University (MSU). ”So, from a research perspective, I was like, ‘Thumbs-up, Merck.’ But they took a lot of heat for it.”

Guilt is a powerful tool. Research has shown that, wielded effectively, it can persuade people to do the right thing. In a recent analysis of 26 studies of guilt appeals, Washington State University communication scientist Wei Peng found that guilt works—if people hearing the pitch are not made to feel responsible for a bad situation. Picture asking them to help with an environmental catastrophe.

On supporting science journalism

If you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.

The most straightforward pitches involve what researchers call “existential guilt,” Peng says. They rely on our internal moral code that, as a human being, we have an obligation to relieve the suffering of others if we can. “What I found is that people feel guilty about people’s suffering even if they don’t have a direct personal relationship,” Peng says, “even if they are on the other side of the world.”

It’s hard for most people to see photographs of starving children. Doing so hurts. Taking action to help them offers some relief. That’s what advocates are counting on when they ask you for donations to feed orphans or build shelters for earthquake survivors. Knowing guilt’s potential for good, social scientists are seeking the optimal formula to craft pitches for everything from promoting health behaviors and road safety to safeguarding the planet.

But getting the formula right is tricky. “We have a hardwired negativity bias to instantly pay attention to anything that arouses a negative emotion,” says Pennsylvania State University media psychologist Jessica Myrick. That’s why inflicting guilt often works. But the downside of arousing this intensely uncomfortable feeling is that people can employ a battery of defenses against it: getting angry, rationalizing or distancing from the issue.

That is the important takeaway from Peng’s research: guilt works when it doesn’t trigger resistance. In other words, don’t make listeners feel they’ve done something bad. “If you say we need to do something different versus you,” says persuasion scholar Robin Nabi of the University of California, Santa Barbara, “now you’re not the bad guy. We all have responsibility.”

There are many ways to get this wrong. For example, if messengers arouse shame rather than guilt, MSU’s Turner found, people resist more. In her research, participants were asked to read an ad urging testing for sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) that evoked either guilt or shame and then to give their reactions. A headline in the guilt and shame appeals respectively asked what or who would give one’s partner an STD,” followed by multiple-choice answers. In both, the correct answer—“all of the above”—was circled at the bottom. The second-to-last option seen by both groups was objective: it referred to a person who hadn’t been tested for an STD The other multiple-choice answers were designed to evoke either guilt or shame. Those in the guilt appeal group were presented with choices such as, “someone with uninformed behavior”and “someone with forgetful behavior.” The group reading the shame appeal saw choices such as, “a selfish person” and “an irresponsible person.” Subjects in the latter group were likelier to feel angry and manipulated.

As Turner explains, pointing out problematic behavior induces guilt, but focusing on someone’s inherent character traits—selfishness, for example—can induce shame. In most contexts, making people feel ashamed is not a good persuader.

The key to making a guilt pitch succeed is to offer people relief from the guilt they’re feeling. In humanitarian appeals, people are usually offered easy-to-accomplish solutions: save the puppies from being euthanized by donating or volunteering, for instance. For health or safety messages, taking action may be harder, making messaging more challenging.

If you’re asking parents to shield their kids from asthma risk from secondhand smoke, for example, saying, “Just quit” may be too hard for them. It is more effective, Nabi says, if you give people options: “Just smoke outside or not around your kids” or “Cut down how much you smoke.” “The idea is that when you evoke this emotion and then you give people a sense of efficacy,” she says, “it’s actually hope evoking.”

That’s what scientists are finding in the lab. Adding a feel-good emotion to a guilt appeal—hope or pride, for example—works better. For one thing, it reduces people’s defensiveness, and that’s the first step: make sure they don’t shut you out. One recent study tested the effect of building hope into guilt appeals in a campaign to reduce texting while driving, which is an urgent safety issue because laws and enforcement have done little to reduce crashes tied to texting.

In the online experiment, about 400 people were randomly placed in four groups. The first two groups viewed identical posters except that one added a hopeful message. The headline in both read, “You are never alone on the road.”The posters acknowledged how tempting it was to answer a text but noted that texting while driving was a factor in 20 percent of crashes. The “hope” message added recommendations to “turn on drive mode or silence your phone” and noted that doing so “can save lives.” In two other groups, people read what were essentially the same guilt-invoking or hopeful messages except that the language was more intense. The top headline, for example, read, “What you don’t see is a long and lovely life.” Adding the hopeful message reduced targets’ defensive responses in both language intensity groups. It also increased their stated intentions to avoid texting while driving.

One new preprint study on guilt messaging tested the effect of inducing empathy alongside guilt in a hypothetical public-service campaign to reduce plastic bag pollution in oceans. In this online experiment, 257 college students were randomly assigned to read one of four messages from a fictional Facebook page, “Save the Marine Animals Foundation,” asking them to reduce their plastic bag use. In half the groups the undergraduates were asked to take the perspective of an animal suffering from ingesting a plastic bag. Researchers found that adopting the animals’ viewpoint created empathy. More empathy was associated with more guilt, which was, in turn, correlated with an increase in participants’ intentions to cut down on plastic bag use.

In some appeals to protect the environment, inducing pride along with guilt proves to be the winning recipe for persuading people to change their behavior. In a meta-analysis of 30 years of research, data scientist Nathan Shipley, then at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, zeroed in on campaigns that induce people to imagine they’ll feel guilty or proud of themselves depending on their future behavior. He found that both emotions correlated with subjects’ intended and reported pro-environmental behavior, but the pride relationship was stronger.

The success of these efforts depends at least partly on how well a message is tailored to a specific audience. Undergraduates in these studies, for example, are typically more environmentally conscious than their parents. The results in a new study showed that for Generation Z restaurant diners, both anticipated guilt for eating less environmentally sustainable food and an anticipated pride for eating more environmentally friendly, plant-based foods influenced their intentions to eat at chain restaurants that offered nonmeat options.

Another study tested whether mothers of young children were more susceptible than others to guilt appeals to switch to buying organic food. The researchers found that they were. That’s not surprising, says Myrick, who is a mother of three kids under the age of five. Myrick is bombarded with guilt appeals. She’s had to triage the things she feels guilty about, such as using disposable diapers and paper plates, because, she says, “I’d feel even more guilty if I didn’t feed my kids something even when I don’t have time to prepare food.”

Another study measured neither pride nor guilt, but both may have been implicitly invoked, says Elizabeth Hewitt, a social scientist at Stony Brook University and lead author of the paper. Over 12 weeks in two next-door apartment buildings in New York City, experimenters posted signs in the trash rooms every week announcing how well each building had done in recycling efforts. The sign in one building compared the amount of much of plastic, metal and glass its residents had recycled during the previous week with how much they had recycled the week before. The sign in the other building compared the amount its residents recycled in the previous week with how much their neighbors recycled during the same period. Both buildings increased their recycling by bag weight, but the feedback that compared residents with their neighbors resulted in more recycled material. Although the mechanism operated through peer pressure, guilt can play a role if a person feels they are not doing as much as they should, Hewitt says. Surpassing your neighbors can trigger pride.

This swell of research is both timely and necessary, scientists say. Left to our own devices, we are not always our best selves—or our own best friends. Persuasive public service messaging will need to be crafted for new generations. Take the campaigns for the HPV vaccine. Over 20 years, they were a factor in reducing HPV infections in teenage girls by 88 percent and in young adult women by 81 percent. Yet vaccination rates in the U.S. remain lower than in other countries, and rates are uneven across the U.S., leaving many vulnerable to preventable cancers. To address such problems, it remains urgent to find effective tools of persuasion. Guilt, massaged in the right ways, can be a powerful tool.

Read the full story here.

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Gas Stove Pollution Lingers in Homes for Hours Even outside the Kitchen

Gas stoves spew nitrogen dioxide at levels that frequently exceed those that are deemed safe by health organizations

Gas Stove Pollution Lingers in Homes for Hours Even outside the KitchenGas stoves spew nitrogen dioxide at levels that frequently exceed those that are deemed safe by health organizationsBy Allison ParshallNearly 40 percent of U.S. homes have gas stoves, which spew a host of compounds that are harmful to breathe, such as carbon monoxide, particulate matter, benzenes and high quantities of nitrogen dioxide.Decades of well-established research have linked nitrogen dioxide, or NO2, to respiratory conditions such as asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, which especially affect children and older adults. This harmful link is so well established that some states have begun banning gas appliances in new construction. And now a new study has shown in stark detail just how long and far this gas spreads and lingers in a home. By sampling homes across the U.S., the researchers found that in many, levels of exposure to NO2 can soar above the World Health Organization’s one-hour exposure limit for multiple hours—even in the bedroom that is farthest from the kitchen."The concentrations [of NO2] we measured from stoves led to dangerous levels down the hall in bedrooms ... and they stayed elevated for hours at a time. That was the biggest surprise for me," says Rob Jackson, a sustainability researcher at Stanford University and senior author of the study, which was published on May 3 in Science Advances.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.The researchers collected real-world data on NO2 concentrations before, during and for several hours after the use of gas and propane stoves in houses and apartments in California, Colorado, Texas, New York State and Washington, D.C. In six homes, they tested the levels of NO2 in the bedroom farthest from the kitchen for a basic “bread baking” scenario: they set the gas or propane oven to 475 degrees Fahrenheit (245 degrees Celsius) and left it on for an hour and a half. The team continued sampling the air for up to six hours after the oven was turned off.In all six homes, the NO2 concentration in the bedroom quickly exceeded the WHO’s chronic exposure guideline of about five parts per billion by volume. And in three of the bedrooms, the levels soared even above the Environmental Protection Agency’s and the WHO’s respective one-hour exposure guidelines, which both set the limit at about 100 parts per billion by volume. (The EPA’s guidelines are intended for outdoor air exposure because the agency does not regulate indoor air pollution.)The bedroom exposure data from the new study can be seen in the graph above. “Think about that graph happening two times a day," Jackson says. “You cook at lunch, and then you cook again at dinner. Maybe you cook breakfast. It’s over and over again, hundreds of days a year.”Jackson and his colleagues next wanted to find out which factors had the greatest impact on the level of NO2 exposure from gas stoves. So they used a computer model to estimate airflow and contaminant concentration in indoor spaces. They validated the model by comparing its estimates with directly measured concentrations of NO2 from 18 homes of differing sizes and layouts before, during and after using a gas stove. The researchers tested this with the range hood on and off and with the kitchen windows open and closed, airing out the residences between each trial.After confirming that their real-world observations matched the model’s predictions, the team could then use the program to estimate how much NO2 someone might be exposed to depending on many different factors, such as their home’s size and layout, the amount of time they spend with the windows open and how often they use the stove’s range hood.The researchers found that those living in homes smaller than 800 square feet or making under $35,000 a year were being regularly exposed to levels of NO2 at or far exceeding the WHO’s threshold for chronic exposure. Finally, by combining these data with previous research on the link between long-term gas and propane stove exposure and pediatric asthma, the researchers calculated that such exposure could account for 200,000 current cases of childhood asthma, with 50,000 of those attributable to NO2 alone."I think that this modeled data is valuable because it gives you very clear numbers” to see how much NO2 we’re being exposed to at different time points during and following gas stove use, says pulmonologist Laura Paulin, who studies indoor air pollution at the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth. “We are blowing past these outdoor air regulations [and] recommendations” with indoor NO2 exposure alone, she says.In a 2014 study, Paulin and her colleagues showed how people can decrease concentrations of this pollutant in their home. The best way is to swap out a gas or propane stove for an electric one. But for some people, especially renters, this may not be a feasible option.If you’re stuck with a gas stove, Paulin suggests turning on your range hood every time you cook with gas, even if the fan is loud and annoying. Still, these aren’t always very effective: Jackson and his colleagues found that the hoods in the homes they surveyed were anywhere between 10 and 70 percent effective. Those numbers applied only to hoods that vented outside. Some hoods instead spew air right back into your living space and do little more than disperse the pollutants throughout it.Another way to improve ventilation is to open your windows while you cook—if weather permits and if the outside air is not polluted as well.And if all else fails, high-efficiency particulate air (HEPA) air purifiers can help filter out some of these indoor pollutants. If the purifier has a carbon prefilter, it can remove some NO2 from the air. In Paulin’s 2014 study, she found that placing such filters in the kitchen could reduce NO2 levels by 20 percent.As we spend more of our lives indoors, it becomes increasingly important to pay attention to the quality of the indoor air we breathe. “Our outdoor air is getting cleaner. But we have ignored indoor air pollution in considering risk for people in this country,” Jackson says.

Health

Pollution

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Gas stoves increase nitrogen dioxide exposure above WHO standards – study

Science Advances report also finds people of color and low-income residents in US disproportionately affectedUsing a gas stove increases nitrogen dioxide exposure to levels that exceed public health recommendations, a new study shows. The report, published Friday in Science Advances, found that people of color and low-income residents in the US were disproportionately affected.Indoor gas and propane appliances raise average concentrations of the harmful pollutant, also known as NO2, to 75% of the World Health Organization’s standard for indoor and outdoor exposure. Continue reading...

Using a gas stove increases nitrogen dioxide exposure to levels that exceed public health recommendations, a new study shows. The report, published Friday in Science Advances, found that people of color and low-income residents in the US were disproportionately affected.Indoor gas and propane appliances raise average concentrations of the harmful pollutant, also known as NO2, to 75% of the World Health Organization’s standard for indoor and outdoor exposure.That means even if a person avoids exposure to nitrogen dioxide from traffic exhaust, power plants, or other sources, by cooking with a gas stove they will have already breathed in three quarters of what is considered a safe limit.“When you’re using a gas stove, you are burning fossil fuel directly in the home,” said Yannai Kashtan, lead author of the study and a PhD candidate at Stanford University. “Ventilation does help but it’s an imperfect solution and ultimately the best way is to reduce pollution at the source.”Nitrogen dioxide irritates the airways and can exacerbate respiratory illnesses such as asthma. The Stanford study estimates that chronic stove-based nitrogen dioxide exposure is linked to at least 50,000 cases of pediatric asthma in the United States each year. The research, which measured NO2 in more than 100 homes before, during, and after gas stove use, found that pollution migrates to bedrooms within an hour of the stove turning on, and stays above dangerous levels for hours after use.“It’s moving throughout our whole home much faster than we expected,” said Rob Jackson, professor of Earth system science at Stanford and co-author of the study. “You have to think about the effects of this not just in one cooking event, but multiple times a day, for lunch and dinner, across weeks and months.”Roughly 38% of households in the US use gas stoves, according to the Energy Information Administration, but not all of them are exposed to NO2 equally. The study suggests that size of the home is an important factor, with people living in residences less than 800 sq ft showing chronic exposure four times the rate of people living in homes with 3,000 sq ft.“Older homes are more likely to be smaller, and more often have gas stoves which reflects the nature of our housing stock,” said Jon Samet, professor of environmental and occupational health at the Colorado School of Public Health, who was not involved in the study. “It’s good to see this work focusing attention on indoor air, particularly in our homes, because that’s where we spend most of our time.”The results also highlight the unequal racial and socioeconomic burden of exposure. The study found that American Indians and Alaska Natives are exposed to 60% more NO2 from gas and propane stoves than the national average. Black and Latino or Hispanic households breathe in 20% more NO2 from their stoves.People in households making less than $10,000 a year are breathing NO2 at rates more than twice that of people in households making over $150,000.“People in poorer communities are more at risk because their outdoor air is bad and and in many ways their indoor air is worse,” said Jackson. Low-income communities and communities of color are more likely to live near highways, ports, industrial sites and other polluting zones.While this study looked at stovetop pollution from cooking, which is a relatively short period of exposure, some people who struggle to afford utility bills rely on stoves and ovens for heat during colder months.“There’s an underlying assumption that people are only using their stove or oven to cook and to prepare meals,” said Diana Hernandez, sociologist at Columbia University who was not involved in the Stanford study. A recent survey conducted by Hernandez and her team found that over 20% of New Yorkers used stoves or ovens to heat their homes.“That’s a less efficient and much more toxic way of providing heat, and more costly,” Hernandez said. “You’re talking about heating an entire home, or apartment, probably for hours on end, with a device and appliance that wasn’t meant for that.”Gas stoves also emit methane, a potent greenhouse gas, and cities across the US are adopting building electrification measures that would phase out gas stoves in new homes.Dorris Bishop, a resident of River Terrace neighborhood in Washington DC, said she recently joined a waitlist to trade her gas stove in for an electric appliance after a local advocacy group tested her home for NO2 and found elevated levels.“I’m hopeful that this report will push for all of the new homes to put electric stoves in,” she said.

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How Gas Stoves Are Silently Polluting Our Homes

People with gas and propane stoves breathe more unhealthy nitrogen dioxide. Households with gas or propane stoves regularly breathe unhealthy levels of nitrogen dioxide, a...

A study has revealed that households using gas or propane stoves face significant exposure to nitrogen dioxide (NO2), which can lead to health issues like asthma and even premature death. The study conducted by researchers from various institutions, including Stanford, showed that NO2 levels in homes can remain elevated for hours after stove use, affecting even those not directly in the kitchen.People with gas and propane stoves breathe more unhealthy nitrogen dioxide.Households with gas or propane stoves regularly breathe unhealthy levels of nitrogen dioxide, a study of air pollution in U.S. homes found.“I didn’t expect to see pollutant concentrations breach health benchmarks in bedrooms within an hour of gas stove use, and stay there for hours after the stove is turned off,” said Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability Professor Rob Jackson, senior author of the May 3 study in Science Advances. Pollution from gas and propane stoves isn’t just an issue for cooks or people in the kitchen, he said. “It’s the whole family’s problem.”Among other negative health effects, breathing high levels of nitrogen dioxide, or NO2, over time can intensify asthma attacks and has been linked to decreased lung development in children and early deaths. Although most exposure to NO2 is caused by cars and trucks burning fossil fuels, the researchers estimate that the mix of pollutants coming from gas and propane stoves overall may be responsible for as many as 200,000 current childhood asthma cases. One quarter of these can be attributed to nitrogen dioxide alone, according to the paper’s authors, who include scientists from Central California Asthma Collaborative, PSE Healthy Energy, and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.“We found that just how much gas you burn in your stove is by far the biggest factor affecting how much you’re exposed. And then, after that, do you have an effective range hood – and do you use it?” said lead study author Yannai Kashtan, a PhD student in Earth system science.Stanford PhD student Metta Nicholson observes a gas burner in a home where scientists measured air pollution as part of their data collection in California, Texas, Colorado, New York, and Washington, D.C.. Credit: Rob Jackson, Stanford Doerr School of SustainabilityLittle Room for Additional ExposureBeyond asthma cases, the long-term exposure to NO2 in American households with gas stoves is high enough to cause thousands of deaths each year – possibly as many as 19,000 or 40% of the number of deaths linked annually to secondhand smoke. This estimate is based on the researchers’ new measurements and calculations of how much nitrogen dioxide people breathe at home because of gas stoves and the best available data on deaths from long-term exposure to outdoor NO2, which is regulated by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.The death toll estimate is approximate in part because it does not factor in the harmful effects of repeated exposure to extremely high levels of nitrogen dioxide in short bursts, as occurs in homes with gas stoves. It also relies on past studies of health impacts from nitrogen dioxide encountered outdoors, where additional pollutants from vehicles and power plants are present.Colin Finnegan of the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability checks a simmering pot on a gas stove that does not have a range hood. Using a range hood that vents air to the outdoors can dramatically influence how much nitrogen dioxide fills the air in a home. Credit: Rob Jackson, Stanford Doerr School of SustainabilityThe researchers used sensors to measure concentrations of NO2 throughout more than 100 homes of various sizes, layouts, and ventilation methods, before, during, and after stove use. They incorporated these measurements and other data into a model powered by National Institutes for Standards and Technology (NIST) software known as CONTAM for simulating airflow, contaminant transport, and room-by-room occupant exposure in buildings. This allowed them to estimate nationwide averages and short-term exposures under a range of realistic conditions and behaviors, and cross-check model outputs against their home measurements.The results show that nationwide, typical use of a gas or propane stove increases exposure to nitrogen dioxide by an estimated 4 parts per billion, averaged over a year. That’s three quarters of the way to the nitrogen dioxide exposure level that the World Health Organization recognizes as unsafe in outdoor air. “That’s excluding all outdoor sources combined, so it makes it much more likely you’re going to exceed the limit,” said Kashtan.Understanding How Gas Stoves Affect HealthThe study is the latest in a series from Jackson’s group at Stanford looking at indoor air pollution from gas stoves. Earlier studies documented the rate at which gas stoves emit other pollutants, including the greenhouse gas methane and the carcinogen benzene. But to understand the implications of stove emissions for human health, the researchers needed to find out how much pollutants spread through a home, build up, and eventually dissipate. “We’re moving from measuring how much pollution comes from stoves to how much pollution people actually breathe,” said Jackson, who is the Michelle and Kevin Douglas Provostial Professor in Earth System Science.With any fuel source, particle pollution can rise from food cooking in a hot pan. The new research confirms that food emits little or no nitrogen dioxide as it cooks, however, and electric stoves produce no NO2. “It’s the fuel, not the food,” said Jackson. “Electric stoves emit no nitrogen dioxide or benzene. If you own a gas or propane stove, you need to reduce pollutant exposures using ventilation.”Home Size MattersEven in larger homes, concentrations of nitrogen dioxide routinely spiked to unhealthy levels during and after cooking even if a range hood was on and venting air outdoors. But people who live in homes smaller than 800 square feet – about the size of a small two-bedroom apartment – are exposed to twice as much nitrogen dioxide over the course of a year compared to the national average, and four times more compared to those living in the largest homes, upwards of 3,000 square feet.Because home size makes such a difference, there are also differences in exposure across racial, ethnic, and income groups. Compared to the national average, the researchers found long-term NO2 exposure is 60% higher among American Indian and Alaska Native households, and 20% higher among Black and Hispanic or Latino households. This exposure to indoor air pollution from gas stoves compounds the fact that exposure to outdoor sources of nitrogen dioxide pollution, such as vehicle exhaust, is also typically higher among people in poorer, often minority, communities.“People in poorer communities can’t always afford to change their appliances, or perhaps they rent and can’t replace appliances because they don’t own them,” Jackson said. “People in smaller homes are also breathing more pollution for the same stove use.”Reference: “Nitrogen dioxide exposure, health outcomes, and associated demographic disparities 3 due to gas and propane combustion by U.S. stoves” 3 May 2024, Science Advances.Jackson is also a senior fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment and Precourt Institute for Energy. Additional Stanford co-authors include Metta Nicholson, a PhD student in the Emmett Interdisciplinary Program in Environment and Resources (E-IPER); Colin Finnegan, a laboratory manager in the Department of Earth System Science; and Earth system science postdoctoral scholars Zutao Ouyang and Anchal Garg.This research was supported by HT, LLC.

Health

Energy

Pollution

Office Productivity Takes a Hit in the Afternoon, Particularly on Fridays

An innovative study from the Texas A&M School of Public Health offers objective insight into employee behavior and the potential benefits of flexible work arrangements....

A Texas A&M study shows productivity dips in the afternoon and on Fridays among office workers, advocating for flexible work to boost efficiency and well-being.An innovative study from the Texas A&M School of Public Health offers objective insight into employee behavior and the potential benefits of flexible work arrangements.If there’s one thing most office workers can agree on, it’s that they tend to feel less productive toward the end of the day and the end of each work week. Now, a team of researchers at Texas A&M University has found objective evidence of this phenomenon in action.A recent interdisciplinary study at the Texas A&M School of Public Health used a novel method of data collection to show that employees really are less active and more prone to mistakes on afternoons and Fridays, with Friday afternoon representing the lowest point of worker productivity. The study, published in the journal PLOS ONE, was authored by Drs. Taehyun Roh and Nishat Tasnim Hasan from the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, along with Drs. Chukwuemeka Esomonu, Joseph Hendricks, and Mark Benden from the Department of Environmental and Occupational Health, and graduate student Anisha Aggarwal from the Department of Health Behavior.Novel Data Collection MethodsThe researchers looked at the computer usage metrics of 789 in-office employees at a large energy company in Texas over a two-year period — January 1, 2017, to December 31, 2018.“Most studies of worker productivity use employee self-reports, supervisory evaluations, or wearable technology, but these can be subjective and invasive,” said Benden, professor and head of the Department of Environmental and Occupational Health. “Instead, we used computer usage metrics — things like typing speed, typing errors and mouse activity — to get objective, noninvasive data on computer work patterns.”The team then compared computer usage patterns across different days of the week and times of the day to see what kinds of patterns emerged.“We found that computer use increased during the week, then dropped significantly on Fridays,” said Roh, assistant professor in the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics. “People typed more words and had more mouse movement, mouse clicks and scrolls every day from Monday through Thursday, then less of this activity on Friday.”In addition, Roh said, computer use decreased every afternoon, and especially on Friday afternoons.“Employees were less active in the afternoons and made more typos in the afternoons—especially on Fridays,” he said. “This aligns with similar findings that the number of tasks workers complete increases steadily from Monday through Wednesday, then decreases on Thursday and Friday.”Implications for Workplace FlexibilityWhat is the takeaway for employers? To start, flexible work arrangements, such as hybrid work or a four-day work week, may lead to happier and more productive employees.As of May 2023, about 60 percent of full-time, paid workers in the United States worked entirely on-site. The remainder either worked remotely or had a hybrid arrangement that involved a combination of remote and on-site work. In addition, many employees have a compressed workweek in which they work longer hours, but on fewer days.“Other studies have found that those who work from home or work fewer days have less stress from commuting, workplace politics and other factors, and thus have more job satisfaction,” Benden said. “These arrangements give workers more time with their families and thus reduce work-family conflicts, and also give them more time for exercise and leisure activities, which have been shown to improve both physical and mental health.”Not only that, but flexible work arrangements could boost the bottom line in other ways, such as reductions in electricity use, carbon footprint, and carbon dioxide emissions.“And now,” Benden said, “the findings from our study can further help business leaders as they identify strategies to optimize work performance and workplace sustainability.”Reference: “Examining workweek variations in computer usage patterns: An application of ergonomic monitoring software” by Taehyun Roh, Chukwuemeka Esomonu, Joseph Hendricks, Anisha Aggarwal, Nishat Tasnim Hasan and Mark Benden, 6 July 2023, PLOS ONE.DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0287976

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Business

Energy

Across Farm Country, Fertilizer Pollution Impacts Not Just Health, but Water Costs, Too

In the late 1990s, Broberg decided it was time to source from elsewhere. He began hauling eight one-gallon jugs and two five-gallon jugs from his friend Mike’s house. That was his drinking water for the week. Six years ago, Broberg said, he was “getting too old to haul that water in the middle of the […] The post Across Farm Country, Fertilizer Pollution Impacts Not Just Health, but Water Costs, Too appeared first on Civil Eats.

When Jeff Broberg and his wife, Erica, moved to their 170-acre bean and grain farm in Winona, Minnesota in 1986, their well water measured at 8.6 ppm for nitrates. These nitrogen-based compounds, common in agricultural runoff, are linked to multiple cancers and health issues for those exposed. Each year, the measurement in their water kept creeping up. In the late 1990s, Broberg decided it was time to source from elsewhere. He began hauling eight one-gallon jugs and two five-gallon jugs from his friend Mike’s house. That was his drinking water for the week. Six years ago, Broberg said, he was “getting too old to haul that water in the middle of the winter.” So, he installed his own reverse-osmosis water filtration system. The measurement of nitrates in his well has now reached up to 22 ppm. Post-filtration, the levels are almost nonexistent. Broberg, a retired geologist, has committed what he calls his “encore career” to advocating for clean water in Minnesota. He only leases out around 40 percent of his tillable land and has retired much of the rest due to groundwater pollution concerns. Almost one year ago, a group he co-founded, the Minnesota Well Owners Organization, joined other groups to petition the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to address groundwater contamination in southeast Minnesota. The EPA agreed, stating that “further action is needed to protect public health” and requested that the state create a plan for testing, education and supplying alternative drinking water to those most affected. Advocates in Wisconsin filed a petition, too. Last month, 13 separate groups in Iowa did the same. This advocacy comes in light of increased regional attention on nitrate pollution and its health effects. In Nebraska, researchers have connected high birth defect rates with exposure to water contaminated with nitrates. In Wisconsin, experts warn that exposure to nitrates can increase the risk of colon cancer. Access to clean water, as defined by the United Nations, is a human right. And yet many currently don’t have that right, even in a country where potable water is taken for granted. What’s more, the cost of clean water falls more heavily on less populated areas, where fewer residents shoulder the bill. A report by the Union of Concerned Scientists concluded that the cost for rural Iowa residents—who often live in areas with smaller, more expensive water systems—could be as much as $4,960 more per person per year to filter out nitrates from their water than their counterparts in cities like Des Moines. Nitrates are affecting water utilities from California to D.C., and the reason comes down to one major source: Agricultural runoff. Where The Trouble Begins: ‘A Leaky System’ The root of water-quality issues in the Midwest starts with its cropland drainage system, a network of underground, cylindrical tiles that drain excess water and nutrients from the land and funnel it downstream. Those tiles, which were first installed in the mid-1800s and have now largely been replaced with plastic pipes, ultimately allowed farmers to grow crops on land that was once too wet to farm. Lee Tesdell is the fifth generation to own his family’s 80-acre farm in Polk County, Iowa. Tesdell explained that when his European ancestors settled in the Midwest, they plowed the prairie and switched from deeply rooted perennial plants to shallow-rooted annual crops like wheat, oats, and corn instead. “Then we had more exposed soil and less water infiltration because the roots weren’t as deep,” he said. “The annual crops and drainage tile started to create this leaky system.” This “leaky system” refers to what is not absorbed by the crops on the field, most dangerously, in this case, fertilizer. “It’s a leaky system because it’s not in sync,” said Iowa water quality expert Chris Jones, author of The Swine Republic book (and blog). “And farmers know they’re going to lose some fertilizer. As a consequence, they apply extra as insurance.” Fertilizer as Poison The U.S. is the top corn-producing country in the world, with states like Iowa, Illinois, Nebraska, and Minnesota supplying 32 percent of corn globally. Corn produces lower yields if it is nitrogen deficient, so farmers apply nitrogen-heavy fertilizer to the crop. In fact, they must use fertilizer in order to qualify for crop insurance. The ammonia in the fertilizer oxidizes existing nitrogen in the soil, turning it into highly water-soluble nitrates that aren’t fully absorbed by the corn. Those nitrates leak into aquifers. In 1960, farmers used approximately 3 million tons of nitrogen fertilizer a year. In 2021, that number was closer to 19 million. Farmers can use a nitrogen calculator to determine how much nitrogen they need—but nearly 70 percent of farmers use more than the recommended amount. “Other people also have an American dream, and they want to be able to turn on their faucet and have clean water, or know that if they put their baby in a bath, they’re not going to end up in the hospital with major organs shutting down because they have been poisoned.” As Jones explains in his blog, even with “insurance” fertilizer use, yields can often turn out the same: “What happened to that extra 56 pounds of nitrogen that you bought? Well, some might’ve ended up sequestered in the soil, but a lot of it ran off into lakes and streams or leached down into the aquifer (hmm, do you reckon that’s why the neighbor’s well is contaminated?), and some off-gassed to the atmosphere as nitrous oxide, a substance that has 300 times more warming potential than carbon dioxide.” Commercial fertilizer is just one contributor to high nitrate levels in groundwater. The other main factor, manure, is also increasing as CAFOs become more prevalent. Nancy Utesch and her husband, Lynn, live on 150 acres of land in Kewaunee County, Wisconsin, where they rotationally graze beef cattle. In 2004, a family nearby became very ill from E. coli poisoning in their water. “I was really upset that this had happened in our county,” she said. “A lot of the support was for the polluting farmer, and you know, farming is right there with the American flag and grandma’s apple pie.” Utesch worries that the current system of industrialized agriculture has created a world where people living closest to the polluters do not have access to clean water themselves, and are afraid to speak out against the actions of their neighbors. “Other people also have an American dream, and they want to be able to turn on their faucet and have clean water, or know that if they put their baby in a bath, that they’re not going to end up in the hospital with major organs shutting down because they have been poisoned,” she said. “If they clean a scrape because their grandchild fell down in the driveway, they could be hurting them if they use the water from the tap.” The Plight of the Small Town In June 2022, fertilizer runoff pushed Des Moines Water Works, the municipal agency charged with overseeing drinking water, to restart operations of their nitrate removal system—one of the largest in the world—at a cost of up to $16,000 per day. Des Moines finances its removal system from its roughly 600,000 ratepayers. “Financially, Des Moines can spread out needed treatment over many thousands of customers, whereas a small town can’t do that,” Jones said. “If you have a small town of 1,000 people, your well gets contaminated, and you need a $2 million treatment plan to clean up the water, that’s a burden.” “Financially, Des Moines can spread out needed treatment over many thousands of customers, whereas a small town can’t do that.” While cities like Des Moines are willing to pay the cost to remove nitrates, other small communities will have a tougher time doing so. And once their aquifer is contaminated, “it doesn’t go away for a long time, in some cases, thousands of years,” Jones said. Utica, Minnesota, which has fewer than 300 residents, has two deep wells, both measuring at unsafe levels for nitrates. “[Residents are] scared to death,” Broberg, who lives in a neighboring town, said. “The city has investigated water treatment expenses at around $3 million for reverse osmosis, and they only last 10 years. A town of 85 households can’t amortize that debt by themselves.” The town has applied for a grant from the state and is waiting to hear back. Another nearby town, Lewiston, dug a new, deeper well to solve their nitrate problem. “They went down there, and the water was contaminated with radium. It’s radioactive,” Broberg said. “So they kept their nitrate-contaminated well and their radium-contaminated well and blended the water so that it doesn’t exceed the health risk limit for either nitrates or radium.” However, as Chris Rogers reported in the Winona Post, that plan didn’t quite work. Thus, Lewiston dug another well at a cost of $904,580, and is now sourcing all of their water from that new well. That well is now testing trace amounts of nitrates and has less radium than before. Many rural residents also rely on private, personal well systems, which aren’t regulated for contaminants, to source their water. Forty million people rely on well water nationwide. “Public water systems have these maximum contaminant levels that are set by the EPA. There are rules and regulations that they have to follow, but private wells aren’t covered by the Safe Drinking Water Act,” said Stacy Woods, research director of the food and environment program at the Union of Concerned Scientists. “It’s really on individual well owners to decide whether to test their wells and what contaminants to test their wells for, and these tests can be really expensive.” Broberg and his group are working to extend the protection of the Safe Drinking Water Act to well water. In southeast Minnesota, the EPA agreed to the plan, though the path forward is still uncertain as funding packages move through the legislature. “I’ve spoken with people who simply don’t want to test their well water because they can’t afford to do much about it if they find out that their nitrate levels are unsafe.” Without these protections in place, or intervention at the pollution source, rural residents often find the responsibility of clean water falling on them. “I’ve spoken with people who simply don’t want to test their well water because they can’t afford to do much about it if they find out that their nitrate levels are unsafe,” Food and Water Watch Legal Director Tarah Heinzen said. “They are basically powerless to protect their drinking water resources from sources of pollution that aren’t being adequately regulated by the state.” The solution, according to Woods, “is to protect the drinking water sources from that pollution in the first place.” Conservation on the Farm One way to do this is by using less fertilizer on the field. Another is to introduce on-the-field and edge-of-field conservation practices, like Tesdell is doing on his Iowa family farm. Tesdell’s farm is not the typical Iowa farm, which averages 359 acres. Tesdell’s is 80. He does, however, rent 50 acres to a neighbor who grows corn and soybeans, like most Iowa farmers. Where Tesdell’s farm differs is how he deals with excess nitrate. In 2012, Tesdell, who has always been drawn to conservation, became interested in adding cover cropping to his fields. Through his research, he came across other conservation practices such as wood chip bioreactors. He installed his first bioreactor that same year. “There’s a chemical and biological reaction between the wood chips and the nitrate in the tile water,” Tesdell said. “Much of the nitrate then is turned into nitrogen gas, which is a harmless gas. We don’t take out 100 percent of the nitrate, but we take out a good percentage.” According to Iowa State University, a typical bioreactor costs around $10,000 to design and install. Tesdell paid for his bioreactor partly out of pocket, but also acquired funding from the Iowa Soybean Association. For his saturated buffer, an edge-of-field practice that redirects excess nitrates through vegetation, Tesdell received funding from the USDA’s Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP). To install the saturated buffer, Tesdell needed his neighbor to agree. “We put that one on a tile that actually comes from my neighbor’s farm. Because the creek is going through my farm, it’s a more direct route to come off a hill [on] his farm,” he said. “Neighbors need to work together.” Roughly 80 percent of the farmland in Iowa is owned by offsite landlords, who rent it out to farmers. Tesdell cites this as a roadblock to conservation practices. “If the landowner doesn’t care, why would an operator care? They want to pull in with their 24-row planter, plant their corn, come in with the 12-row corn head in October and harvest, then truck it off to the ethanol plant,” he said. “I don’t blame them.” Iowa currently has a “Nutrient Reduction Strategy” plan, which outlines voluntary efforts farmers can take to reduce their pollution. There is no active legislation that limits how much fertilizer farmers use on their cropland. Heinzen, of Food and Water Watch, explained that agricultural pollution is largely unregulated, with the exception of concentrated animals feeding operations (CAFOs). “In fact, even most CAFOs are completely unregulated, because EPA has completely failed to implement Congress’s intent to regulate this industry, which we’re suing them over,” she said, referring to a new brief filed by multiple advocacy groups in February aimed at upgrading CAFO pollution regulation. Even Des Moines Waterworks, with its state-of-the-art nitrate removal facility, is calling for change. “We cannot keep treating water quality only at the receiving end,” spokesperson Melissa Walker said. “There needs to be a plan for every acre of farmland in Iowa and how its nutrients will be managed, as well as every animal and its manure.” “You’re either going to have to change your practices, change your farming, or you’re going to have the accept the risk of preventable disease.” Some communities have sued for damages related to nitrate-contaminated groundwater. In Millsboro, Delaware, residents received a payout but still have contaminated water. In Boardman, Oregon, five residents are suing the Port of Morrow and multiple farms and CAFOs due to their well-water testing “at more than four times the safe limit established by the U.S. EPA,” Alex Baumhardt reported in the Oregon Capital Chronicle. A few weeks ago, 1,500 tons of liquid nitrogen were spilled into an Iowa river. No living fish were found nearby. Today, polluted water flows downstream into the Gulf of Mexico, where it causes “dead zones” stripped of marine life. “You’re either going to have to change your practices, change your farming, or you’re going to have the accept the risk of preventable disease,” Broberg said. “And you need to put that equation in your family budget. If you’re going to get bladder cancer, diabetes, birth defects, juvenile cancers—what are those going to cost?” When asked why protecting water is so important, Tesdell paused and looked away. His voice cracked with emotion. “It’s for the grandkids.” The post Across Farm Country, Fertilizer Pollution Impacts Not Just Health, but Water Costs, Too appeared first on Civil Eats.

Health

Pollution

Water

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The Connection Between Bats and Coronavirus: Wildlife is not to blame

What exactly is the connection between bats and coronavirus? And how has sheltering-in-place disrupted field research in California and beyond? State and local governments have set restrictions on bat research and rescue in an effort to curtail the spread of the coronavirus. Dr. Winifred Frick, chief scientist of Bat Conservation International, describes how the new restrictions have affected conservation efforts.

Animals

Science

Health

Vanishing Springs

The Florida you know is a lie. In contrast to what Americans have been told, Florida’s magic is not found in the giant mouse, the rolling green golf courses, or in the beachside palaces. The beauty and uniqueness of Florida is under our feet - the aquifer. This pure, crystal clear water is the life blood of our state and without it, life as we know it in the sunshine state would not exist. This life sustaining force is only seen where it bubbles up to the surface through Florida’s collection of 1,000 springs. These springs were originally what drew society to this land. Wealthy tourists in the 1900’s flooded the Florida springs seeking medicinal cures from its pristine waters. As springs became a popular tourist destination, spring houses were built around these pools of water. When this development began, the springs began flowing less and some eventually stopped altogether. People assumed this was the natural order of this wonder and moved on. Theme parks, golf courses and resorts were erected to entice tourists to visit Florida, the natural beauty of the state soon faded out of our memory. The springs of Florida now silently suffer from the effects of continued development in Florida. The current strain we are placing on the fragile ecosystem is choking the life out of our state. Overdevelopment is one of the leading forces that is damaging the springs. The once pure sources of water no longer boil up like a fountain the way they have for centuries. The water that the springs do produce is polluted by nitrates. This pollution fuels the growth of toxic algae blooms, which are taking over springs and the rivers they feed, thus putting our health at risk. Over 90% of our drinking water gushes out of these sapphire pools. These glorious reservoirs have begun to shrink. If something is not done soon, the springs will simply become part of Florida history. In southern Florida they already have. Springs once bubbled up all across the state. They were wiped out in South Florida decades ago by the ditching and draining of the landscape as well as over-pumping of the aquifer. This water was then sprayed on suburban lawns and farmers' fields, run through showers and flushed down toilets, turned into steam to crank turbines for electricity, or siphoned into plastic bottles for sale around the country. Because of poor use and neglect of our greatest resource, we will soon be without this supply of fresh water. Floridians regard their water supply as abundant and cheap, when the fact is it's neither. Until this attitude changes, the springs will not be rescued.

Water

Conservation

Health

Sprayed

An exploration of what happens when whole communities get exposed to toxins: Naled sprayed on Miami residents to fight Zika virus, Agent Orange sprayed on the Vietcong, and release of GMO mosquitoes in Brazil with pyriproxyfen added to drinking water to fight dengue. What are the results for nature and humanity? We meet Agent Orange survivors at Vietnamese detoxification and rehabilitation centers, parents of babies born with microcephaly from Zika virus, and Florida residents dealing with efforts to kill mosquitoes carrying Zika virus. Perspectives of doctors, scientists, and politicians are balanced with voices of ordinary citizens and victims to explore concerns about the potential impact on current and future generations.

Chemicals

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Science