Pollution from gas cookers cuts short the lives of 39,959 Europeans each year, the first scientific estimate of premature deaths has found. Researchers at the University Jaume I’s School of Health Sciences in Spain found that World Health Organisation guidelines are regularly broken in the average home in 14 European countries when background pollution combines with gas cooker fumes during normal use. Read the full press release here.
While the topic is clearly of broad public interest, we have already seen a lot of similar studies and the novelties of this technical research was not immediately clear. So my task as a media consultant was to work with the research team to bring these to the fore. The research did well, being covered in at least 643 news pieces, mostly in Europe also beyond, including by the New York Times. Editors regularly placed it prominently, including a morning splash in the Guardian’s Europe edition.
