🔋Cookin' Up Trouble
The recent demonization of gas stoves and why the reasons don't justify taking the choice of appliance away from the consumer.
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Get Rid of Your Stove?
Chances are, if you chose to install a gas stove, you are partial to it for its heating quality, temperature control, and reliability. 35-40% of households in the US have a natural gas stove. There has been a huge uproar recently about the dangers of them in terms of climate and health. Some states have already banned the new gas hookups to homes. Mainstream media in the US and abroad have in mass released articles citing new research as to why gas stoves are bad for both of these reasons.
Coincidentally, at the same time the Biden administration announced they are considering a federal ban on gas stoves.
This is in line with the direction the country is headed as laid out in the Inflation Reduction Act; read about heat pumps and the large move away from gas powered heating and water systems in Doomberg’s article.
The new research suggests that US residences with gas stoves leak up to 1.3% of the methane, mostly while off. Further, harmful gases like carbon monoxide, formaldehyde, and most importantly, nitrogen dioxide have been shown as common products of gas stove use. Without proper ventilation, nitrogen dioxide levels can exceed the safe range and lead to respiratory issues. With proper ventilation and/or a larger kitchen this is not a worry. Nonetheless, other articles has attempted to lay blame to nitrogen dioxide and other gas stove biproducts as the causes of asthma in the US, particularly children. In fact, the federal legislation above is brought on the grounds of child safety. Another recent article reports that 12.7% of current childhood asthma in the US is attributable to gas stove use.
History of Home Cooking
How have we gotten to this point and why are there so many gas stoves? For decades and still in the majority of the world, wood and other forms of biomass are the go-to fuel source for preparing food. It often is stated that the discovery of fire allowed humans to evolve and become the dominant species on earth. Over time as we became more advanced we made fires in more sophisticated ways using fuels such as coal, oil, gasoline, kerosene, and other carbonaceous compounds including natural gas (methane). The trend has been toward cleaner and more efficient burning fuels as civilizations develop. The stove fuels (methane and propane) are among the cleanest burning fuels on the planet.
Across the world 7mil people die each year from air pollutants (3.2mil from household pollutants) largely because they do not have access to cheap cleaner burning fossil fuels like natural gas and propane like the US and other major nations do. This 3.2mil/year is as severe as the COVID-19 pandemic at its worst in 2021 yet hardly garnishes any attention. It is likely that millions of lives are saved each year precisely by using gas burning stoves as an alternative to wood/biomass burning fuel[1,2]. This misguided fervor is the first error in the scramble against gas burning stoves.
Asthma
Now obviously burning any type of carbon based fuel will produce biproducts that are not healthy to breathe regardless of the burning cleanliness. However, using childhood asthma as the reason to get behind legislation to ban them is not the solid foundation it is presented as (especially in historical context of the glaring benefits to using gas stoves outlined above).
Starting in the 70s, the percentage of homes with gas stoves took a linear trendline up and to the right. Studies may show correlations between homes with gas stoves and asthma, but the macro trends don’t support the trend.
To avoid biases, I will use government data for this comparison. According to the CDC, incidence of asthma has been decreasing since 2010 and up only 0.6% since 2001. Additionally, asthma severity or “attack prevalence” has gone down significantly in the same time period.
Clearly there is a decoupling in the story between asthma and gas stoves since around 2001 and there are other very significant factors at play. There are other controllable ways to reduce change of asthma including getting in shape (diet + aerobic exercise), keeping a clean house (avoids mold, pests, and allergens), and not being exposed to harmful chemicals via smoking or in the diet.
Conclusion
Gas stoves are the latest item on the chopping block in the way of the anti-fossil fuel ideology embedded in many who discuss climate change, and in this case having a convenient health narrative behind it in order for it to be taken seriously. While I applaud the scientific spirit behind the twitter thread below and measuring the nitrogen dioxide release of his own gas stove, it seems like there are some flaws in the values he measures himself. He reports regularly exceeding 200ppb when cooking, although the characteristic pungent odor is perceptible above the 100ppb level. He either fails to report that observation, or he put his nitrogen dioxide monitor unreasonably close to the stove such that the numbers are a bit exaggerated which would fit well into his argument.
All in all are gas stoves really that bad? The macro trends don’t seem to point to a big deal, but obviously studies show issues with them especially if there’s not good ventilation. Does this mean that they should be banned? Why not let the people decide for themselves? If the dangers outweigh the cost and benefits then people will make the switch to electric. The disconnect here is the legislation is not truly about health, but in fact getting rid of fossil fuels. Methane leaks from stoves play a role but is not an earth shattering number. The study I mention in the beginning says that over 20 years, methane leaks from gas stoves equate to emissions from 500,000 cars. With approximately 275million car owners in the US, and 15million new cars sold each year, over 20 years that isn’t an earth ending amount by any stretch.
Anecdotally, I grew up with both a propane stove for cooking with regular use and wood stove as the primary source of heating and ended up a fairly successful distance runner at a division one university. This anecdote is to merely suggest that we should not fear gas stoves as being all bad and dangerous. Nothing is completely black or white. Policies like this often find themselves in these grey areas. People, politicians, and eras are often defined by the decisions made and consequences of the decisions made in grey areas.
Maybe the US is rich enough to move completely away from gas powered stoves, but many around the world don’t even have the luxury go get a gas stove, let alone electric. Regardless of the ability of most Americans to move onto electric, I believe it should be the choice of the individual whether or not they want to purchase a gas burning stove. I think people are smart enough to understand the gravity of the health and climate risks and make reasonable decisions in light of their children, themselves, and the future.
-Grayson
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