Public health experts, doctors and climate organizations in Connecticut and Massachusetts signed a letter sent to Eversource Energy last week, demanding the utility take immediate action to transition away from natural gas.

The letter also asks Eversource’s leadership to meet with the medical professionals and environmental organizations within two weeks to discuss a plan that the utility can take to urgently phase out natural gas and grow non-emitting, renewable alternatives, such as geothermal energy.

“I speak out because there is an attempt to obfuscate the truth about the health impacts of natural gas,” Regina LaRocque, an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, told NetZero Insider.

LaRocque is an infectious disease physician scientist, but she has been involved in public health advocacy on the detrimental effects of using natural gas as an energy source. She is also associate director of Massachusetts General Hospital’s Center for the Environment and Health and a member of medical and environmental advocacy group Climate Code Blue, one of the signers of the letter.

After witnessing the natural gas explosions in the Merrimack Valley in 2018, and more recently, five emergency shutdowns and gas releases from the Weymouth natural gas compressor station over a six-month period, LaRocque said “there are some real questions that need to be answered by utilities.”

Releases of natural gas from a compressor station operated by Enbridge, the same company that owns the Weymouth compressor station, in her hometown of Wellesley, Mass., without widespread public knowledge also inspired LaRocque to get involved.

“These are fundamentally health issues,” LaRocque said. Despite strong consensus in medical literature about the health impacts of natural gas, most people don’t know natural gas extraction, transport and combustion releases carcinogens that cause cancer and problems with pregnancy, LaRocque said.

Cooking with a gas stove releases nitrogen dioxide and other pollutants into household air, which is associated with increased risk of childhood asthma. The impact on children can be “substantial” because at least one third of households in the U.S. cook with gas stoves, children spend most of their time indoors and indoor air is unregulated, according to a report in Environmental Health.

Emissions from natural gas account for 40% of emissions in Massachusetts and Connecticut, the two states where Eversource sells gas, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. And a recent Harvard study found that in Massachusetts, air pollution from burning fossil fuels in buildings led to over 740 early deaths and $8.4 billion in health costs in 2017.

In Connecticut, fossil fuel combustion in buildings led to over 310 early deaths and $3.6 billion in health costs.

The utility’s leadership, however, says the company is taking action already.

Eversource is “leading the way toward a cleaner energy future” by “encouraging the use of renewable natural gas” and “continuing to expand affordable, reliable natural has for heating and cooling as an alternative to higher-emitting and more costly options,” William Akley, president and CEO of Eversource’s gas business, said in testimony to the Connecticut legislature last year.

But the letter to the utility stresses that the organization’s “lack of forthrightness on clean energy and climate is not just a benign marketing strategy.”

“It is harmful to our states’ ability to transition to a cleaner, more just economy.”

The Acadia Center, HealthLink and Greater Boston Physicians for Social Responsibility, among others, called for the utility to put a moratorium on new and expansion gas projects, discontinue rebates and subsidies that encourage new gas hookups and stop using ratepayer funds to pay for memberships in trade associations that oppose electrification, such as the American Gas Association.

“After making $1 billion in profits for their shareholders last year, Eversource is in a position to proactively shift its business model toward clean, combustion-free products,” the letter said.

Sierra Club Connecticut, another organization behind the letter, believes utilities have an opportunity to make a more significant difference in mitigating climate change.

“They should be worried about their business” because electricity will soon be cheaper than gas, Samantha Dynowski, state director at Sierra Club Connecticut, told NetZero Insider. Instead, the gas industry is “trying to squeeze every last drop of profit out of something that’s dangerous,” she said.