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Are airplane condensation trails aka chemtrails bad for your health?

The first ever peer-reviewed study to debunk chemtrails has been published.

No. 

Scientists call them contrails. Conspiracy theorists call them chemtrails. Whatever you call them, the white streams of condensation made by plane engines streak the sky and cause controversy.

About 3 percent of people think a secret government program uses planes to spray dangerous chemicals into the air. And 1 in 6 believe this claim is at least partly true, according to an international survey by researchers at Harvard and the University of Calgary.

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Conspiracy theorists say chemtrails linger in the air because they contain aluminum, strontium and barium and that these chemicals are used to control humans, pollute the food and water supply and change the weather.

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Scientists argue that contrails, short for condensation trails, are nothing but water particles and that aluminum, strontium and barium are found in soil because they occur naturally in the Earth’s crust.

For the first time, we have a peer-reviewed study about condensation trails. Published last week by IOPscience, "Quantifying expert consensus against the existence of a secret, large-scale atmospheric spraying program" was written by researchers at Stanford and the University of California, Irvine.

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The researchers asked 77 geochemists and experts in atmospheric science about chemtrails and whether there is any evidence to support a SLAP (yes, the acronym for this supposed government conspiracy is SLAP).  Seventy-six said that there was no evidence of a SLAP and that what conspiracy theorists point to as proof can be explained by chemicals naturally found in the atmosphere and by the physics of airplane emissions.

The one scientist who said there might be evidence of a SLAP cited evidence of  "high levels of atm[ospheric] barium in a remote area" that usually had low levels of barium in its soil.

Scientists have tried to debunk the chemtrail conspiracy theory before — but not very often. In this new paper, the researchers say there haven’t been enough attempts to dispel myths about military and government conspiracies and chemtrails.

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Back in 2000, the Environmental Protection Agency, Federal Aviation Administration, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration published a fact sheet about contrails.

They explained that contrails are formed by a mixture of water vapor from a plane’s exhaust fumes and the low temperatures in the atmosphere when planes cruise a few miles above Earth. The white streaks in the sky are mostly ice crystals and are not harmful to humans, they said.

Conspiracy theories about chemtrails are said to have picked up with the advent of the internet. There are a huge number of websites dedicated to the chemtrails conspiracy theory. What complicates things is that sometimes planes do spray chemicals that mess with the weather. It’s called climate geo-engineering, and it’s been used to make clouds form rain. In cloud seeding, scientists spray dry ice and silver iodide onto clouds to make rain.

If you think chemtrails are part of a government or military-operated SLAP, you're not alone. A bunch of celebs endorse the chemtrail theory including Erykah Badu, Kylie Jenner, Billy Corgan of The Smashing Pumpkins and Beck, who wrote a song about chemtrails. If only every conspiracy theory was accompanied by a song.

Some hardline conspiracy theorists have threatened violence against scientists who try to debunk the myth. (Don't come for me, please. I clap back.) In his book, A Case for Climate Engineering, Harvard scientist David Keith describes how scientists who debunk SLAP and study geoengineering have been threatened by those who say the conspiracy theories are real.

But now the experts have spoken, and they are pretty much in consensus. The trails left by plane engines are simply ice crystals. The government is not trying to kill us through the clouds, although that's not to say they haven't tried to kill and maim people before. But in the case of chemtrails, consider this conspiracy theory debunked.

Debunked is your go-to site for demystifying science and medicine. Send your questions and conspiracy theories to syasmin@dallasnews.com or tweet me @DoctorYasmin. I'm a medical writer at The Dallas Morning News and a professor at the University of Texas at Dallas. I worked as a medical doctor and disease detective before training to be a journalist.

Conspiracy theorists say that chemtrails linger in the air because they contain aluminum,...
Conspiracy theorists say that chemtrails linger in the air because they contain aluminum, strontium and barium and that these chemicals are used to control humans, pollute the food and water supply and change the weather. Scientists argue that contrails are nothing more than water particles. (2014 File Photo/Getty Images)