STOP BREATHING, ASTHMATICS: CNN Rails Against ‘Climate Pollution from Inhalers’ – ‘Substantial contributors to planet-warming pollution’

From CLIMATE DEPOT

By Admin

CNN: Climate pollution from inhalers has the impact of half a million cars per year, study finds – Oct 6, 2025

Studies published Monday in the journal JAMA found that medication inhalers are “substantial” contributors to planet-warming pollution. It’s not the medicine itself that’s the problem; rather, it’s the HFAs (hydrofluoroalkanes). …

To treat conditions like asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, millions of Americans use what doctors often call metered dose inhalers, small boot-shaped devices that spray set doses of medication into the lungs in a quick burst using propellants called hydrofluoroalkanes, or HFAs.

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In one year alone, one of the new studies says, planet-warming pollution from inhalers were the equivalent of driving more than half a million cars, or the same as electricity requirements for 470,000 homes, the study said.

In one of the new studies, researchers found that pharmacists dispensed 1.6 billion inhalers in the US from 2014 to 2024, generating 24.9 million metric tons of annual carbon dioxide equivalent emissions (CO2e). Annual emissions increased 24% from 1.9 million to 2.3 million metric tons of CO2e over that decade.

“It drives me crazy that the medication I use to address my symptoms drives climate change.”

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https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/business/joseph-vazquez/2025/10/07/stop-breathing-asthmatics-cnn-rails-against-climate

By Joseph Vazquez

Tough noogies, asthmatics! CNN has officially pinned your breathing tool as the latest climate change threat to the environment.

Jen Christensen of the CNN Health & Climate Unit railed against respiratory-challenged individuals’s survival tool in an October 6 story headlined: “Climate pollution from inhalers has the impact of half a million cars per year, study finds.”

Apparently being full of hot air is no longer just an idiom for the lefty media. Christensen’s story was utterly ridiculous from the start: “The people who are most vulnerable to the hard-to-breathe air that comes with climate change may inadvertently be adding to the problem, new research finds.” Darn those respiratory-challenged people trying to stay alive, eh Jen?

For context, Christensen noted that “[t]o treat conditions like asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, millions of Americans use what doctors often call metered dose” inhalers. The problem, claimed Christensen, was how inhalers use “propellants called hydrofluoroalkanes, or HFAs,” which the wacky study she cited asserted was devastating the environment.

Christensen descended further down the rabbit hole, suggesting that lung cancer patients who literally can’t live without the metered-dose inhalers switch to alternative sources: “The other study published Monday shows that concerted efforts to reduce traditional inhaler use can make a difference.” In essence, she literally co-opted the same talking points climate lefties use to badger consumers about using renewables and EVs instead of fossil fuels and shoe-horned them into her beef with inhalers:

Metered-dose inhalers were responsible for 98% of the climate pollution from inhalers, the study found. People with lung conditions can’t live without them, but the researchers noted some might be able to switch to an alternative inhaler that emits fewer problematic propellants.

But — here’s a surprise — alternative breathing tools are more expensive! Christensen admitted in a buried paragraph that “[t]here can also be a price barrier with dry-powder inhalers, since many of the versions that use HFAs are generic and less expensive. And insurance doesn’t often cover the dry-powder kind.”

JunkScience.com founder Steve Milloy mocked CNN for being completely tone-deaf with its climate fanaticism in comments to MRC Business:

The ozone hole was a hoax. Global warming is a hoax. And because of these two hoaxes, greens don’t want asthmatics using inhalers to survive because the propellants may possibly contribute in unmeasurable amounts to the two easily debunked global atmospheric hysterias of our time.

“As an asthmatic who has relied on inhalers,” said Milloy, “it is wild that medical researchers would deny people irreplaceable life-saving medication because of nonsense spewed by Al Gore.”

It’s also wild that the media would treat this kind of faux-scholarship as being worthy of any serious consideration.

Did Christensen bother to mention any of the conflicts of interests of the researchers that were disclosed in the, er, “study” she cited? Of course not! If she did, it would throw a wrench in her appeal-to-authority-argument.

One researcher “reported receipt of personal fees from Alosa Health and for serving as an expert witness in litigation against inhaler manufacturers.” Another disclosed “previous employment by GSK prior to initiation of this project.” GSK is a biopharma company that has a particular obsession with leftist climate pipe dreams. “We are committed to net zero impact on climate across our entire value chain,” the company’s website states. Doesn’t sound like the researchers are the most objective people in the world, eh Jen?

It’s not even until you get to the 20th paragraph of Christensen’s propaganda that readers would know that “inhalers are a relatively small cause of climate change compared to the bigger culprits like traffic, agriculture, and power generation.” But even that pathetic caveat glosses over how tiny the supposed green effects of inhalers are by the study’s own admission, which Christensen left out: “[I]nhalers are responsible for less than 0.5% of the more than 500 million mtCO2e of annual health care–related greenhouse gas emissions in the US.”

First it was the cow farts. Now it’s the things asthmatics and others use to stay alive. What’s next?

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