A Texas petition that outlaws ‘aerosolized spraying’ doesn’t prove chemtrails are real

Can Texas elected officials outlaw something that doesn’t exist? Social media users baselessly claim Texas might be the first state to get rid of so-called “chemtrails.”

“BREAKING: Texas could become the first state to outlaw ‘chemtrails’ with a new petition that is collecting signatures to ask state representatives to pass laws banning dangerous atmospheric aerosol spraying,” read the text of a screenshot in a Dec. 18 Facebook post.

(Screenshot/Facebook)

The post was flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.)

We’ve debunked several claims about “chemtrails,” a conspiracy theory that claims that the condensation trails behind aircraft are part of a secret, large-scale program to poison the atmosphere with toxic chemicals. The U.S. Air Force and scientists say chemtrails are not real.

In the Facebook video, a man read an excerpt from a Jan. 19, 2023, article in  The People’s Voice, a site known for spreading misinformation. The article said, “Texas is set to become the first state to potentially outlaw the spraying of aerosolized particulate matter into the skies — a phenomenon commonly referred to as ‘chemtrails.’”

The article links to a petition by Clean Texas Skies, a group asking state legislators to pass legislation to prohibit “aerosolized spraying” without testing and approval from public representatives. The petition did not use the word “chemtrails” but used other language from the chemtrails conspiracy theory, saying that the trails behind airplanes are part of a covert U.S. military operation. Some chemtrails theories posit the spraying means to reduce people’s life expectancy or sterilize them, control people’s minds or control the weather.

The petition included photos of what it said were “crisscrossing bands of substances and particulates” in the sky, claiming that the condensation trails formed by passing jet planes are thin and disperse quickly, but the trails in the photos are heavy and spread out.

According to the National Weather Service, contrails don’t necessarily disperse quickly; how quickly they fade hinges on how much humidity is in the atmosphere. The more humid the atmosphere, the longer the contrail will last. NASA’s Earth Observatory said some contrail clusters have lasted up to 14 hours.

Crisscross condensation trail vapor patterns are found in areas with heavily traveled air space and an atmosphere conducive to the formation of contrails, the National Weather Service said.

“Persistence of contrails is neither an indication that they contain some kind of chemical, nor that it is some kind of spray,” the agency said.

A U.S. Air Force fact sheet said, “There is no such thing as a ‘chemtrail.’ Contrails are safe and are a natural phenomenon. They pose no health hazard of any kind.”

We rate the claim that a Texas petition to outlaw “aerosolized spraying” is evidence of chemtrails Pants on Fire!

This fact check was originally published by PolitiFact, which is part of the Poynter Institute. See the sources for this fact check here.