RFK Jr. said a government arm is spraying the sky with jet fuel chemicals. That’s Pants on Fire!

During a town hall hosted by TV personality Phil McGraw, known as Dr. Phil, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said that one of the Defense Department’s research and development arms might be spraying Americans with harmful chemicals. 

An audience member who identified herself as Emily prompted Kennedy’s comments.

"My biggest concern is the stratospheric aerosol injections that are continuously peppered on us every day," she said. "Bromium, aluminum, strontium — it’s sprayed in our skies all day long."

When McGraw asked Emily if she had a specific question, she said, "Yes, how do we stop it?" 

Kennedy responded. "That is not happening in my agency. We don’t do that. It’s done, we think, by DARPA," he said, referring to the Defense Department’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. "And a lot of it now is coming out of the jet fuel. You know, those materials are put in jet fuel. I’m going to do everything in my power to stop it."

Kennedy’s statement builds on years of chemtrail conspiracy theories, which allege that the U.S. government is spraying toxic chemicals from airplanes. PolitiFact has repeatedly reported that chemtrails aren’t real. 

We examined jet fuel’s components to check Kennedy’s version of the claim. DARPA did not respond to our request for comment. Although Kennedy’s office responded to PolitiFact, it provided no evidence for his statement. 

Planes aren’t spraying jet fuel as part of a Defense Department program when flying. The clouds seen behind airplanes when they fly are called contrails, short for condensation trails, and they’re primarily ice crystals, not jet fuel. Jet fuel is primarily made of mixtures of hydrogen and carbon compounds, with small amounts of impurities. Rarely, planes will dump jet fuel at high altitudes or in remote areas during emergency situations. For example, there were, on average, roughly 15 fuel dumps per year from fiscal 2015 to 2020 out of about 25.5 million flights per year, the Federal Aviation Administration reported.

The town hall questioner referenced "stratospheric aerosol injections," which refers to the concept of releasing more reflective aerosol particles into the stratosphere that would reflect sunlight in an attempt to cool the planet.

Experts on atmospheric science who are familiar with this idea told PolitiFact they weren’t aware of any current initiatives "peppering" the skies with such injections. Scientists have explored models and researched it in labs, but the work isn’t being done in the atmosphere, they said. 

"There is no publicly available information supporting the idea that any entity is deliberately releasing materials in the stratosphere at scale, with the exception of the relatively small amounts that come from rocket exhaust," said Chris Field, a Stanford University interdisciplinary environmental studies professor. 

Experts also said they didn’t know of proposals to use materials such as aluminum or strontium that the town hall attendee singled out. Faye McNeill, a Columbia University professor of chemical engineering and earth and environmental sciences, said materials for such injections would have to be abundant, inexpensive and have minimal environmental and human health impacts. The most commonly discussed materials are sulfate and calcium carbonate, she said, not the chemicals mentioned in the town hall.

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Does jet fuel contain aluminum and strontium? 

Kennedy linked the chemicals the town hall attendee mentioned — including aluminum and strontium — to jet fuel. The attendee also mentioned "bromium," which is not a chemical element. Barium and bromine are chemical elements.

None of those elements are in jet fuel.

Jet fuel consists of hydrocarbons with "trace amounts" of other additives, said Joshua Heyne, director of the Washington State University Bioproducts, Sciences and Engineering Laboratory. 

Heyne said elements such as aluminum, strontium, bromine or barium would be unwanted and potentially dangerous contaminants to the fuel system, so if they were present in jet fuel "they would be at very low concentrations, likely undetectable by most analytical methods."

The Environmental Protection Agency said in a 2000 fact sheet that it still refers to on its website that aircraft jet fuel is "analyzed for strict impurity limits before use."

Kennedy said DARPA is spraying the skies with chemicals that are in jet fuel. That builds off the widely debunked chemtrails conspiracy theory and Kennedy provided no evidence to support the statement. We rate it Pants on Fire!

PolitiFact Researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report.

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