“‘Chemtrails’ theories warn of health dangers from contrails”. The idea took off at Kennedy’s HHS.
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. plans to study climate and weather control, an idea that is gaining ground as an updated version of a fringe theory linking airplane vapor trails, or contrails, to toxic substances that poison people.
Kennedy is expected to create a task force to recommend possible federal action, according to a former agency official, an internal agency memo obtained by KFF Health News and a consultant who says he helped with the memo.
“HHS does not comment on future or potential policy decisions and task forces,” agency spokeswoman Emily Hilliard said by email.
These projects show how rumors and conspiracy theories can gain legitimacy under the Trump administration, where researchers say nonscientific ideas have unusual power to take hold and shape public health policy.
The concept posits that vapor trails from airplanes are actually “chemtrails” that harm public health. Another version claims that planes or devices are deployed by the federal government, private companies or researchers to trigger large weather changes, such as hurricanes, or to alter the Earth’s climate, thereby emitting dangerous chemicals.
HHS should appoint a special government employee to investigate climate and weather control, according to Gray Delany, former head of the department’s Make America Healthy Again program. He said he wrote the agency’s internal memo. HHS has been interviewing candidates to lead a “chemtrails” task force, said Jim Lee, a weather and climate blogger who Delany said helped edit the memo, which Lee confirmed.
Delany, who was ousted from HHS in August, said Kennedy expressed keen interest in chemtrails. The memo alleges that “aerosolized heavy metals such as aluminum, barium, and strontium, as well as other materials such as sulfuric acid precursors, are being sprayed into the atmosphere under the auspices of combating global warming,” via a stratospheric aerosol injection process.
“It’s a pretty shocking memo,” said Daniel Swain, a climatologist at the University of California. “There’s no more tinfoil hats. They really believe toxins are being sprayed.”
Deploying chemtrails to poison people is just one of several baseless conspiracy theories that have found traction among the Trump administration’s health policy makers, led by Kennedy, a longtime anti-vaccine activist before entering politics who espoused a series of such ideas.
In April, Kennedy was asked on “Dr. Phil Primetime” about chemicals being sprayed into the stratosphere to change Earth’s climate. “This is being done, in our view, by DARPA,” Kennedy said, referring to a Department of Defense agency that develops emerging technologies for use by the military. “And a lot of that product now comes from jet fuel. These materials are put into jet fuel. I’m going to do everything in my power to stop that. We’re bringing in someone who will only think about that.”
DARPA officials did not return a message seeking comment.
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