By Roger Donway — February 11, 2022
Ed. This piece is adapted from a LinkedIn post by Steve Everley, a communications advisor in the field of energy.
A study last month generated some scary headlines about the supposed “health risks” of your gas stove – an appliance that most homeowners prefer (and for good reason).
If you were frightened, take a deep breath. You were misled.
First of all, the headlines that the study generated were alarming. Things like:
“Gas stoves are a threat to health and have larger climate impact than previously known, study shows” (CNN)
“Gas stoves in kitchens pose a risk to public health and the planet, research finds” (Washington Post)
“Stanford scientists find the climate and health impacts of natural gas stoves are greater than previously thought” (official release)
But it gets worse.
One of the researchers said in the press release announcing the study that you should replace your gas stove with an electric one: “Why not reduce the risk entirely? Switching to electric stoves will cut greenhouse gas emissions and indoor air pollution,” said Dr. Rob Jackson, a Stanford professor and study coauthor.
Dr. Jackson also told the Washington Post that it’s a “good idea” to replace your gas stove with electric, although he did issue the caveat “if you have the financial ability to do so.” Probably wise, because electric is more expensive than gas, often considerably so.
But here’s the best (worst) part: After weeks of those scary headlines proliferating, the lead author of that study—in a comment buried deep in a story published February 10 in Popular Mechanics—said: Actually, replacing your perfectly fine gas stove is “not the right response at this time.”
“We don’t want people to go out and completely ditch a perfectly good gas stove,” lead author Eric Lebel said.
Wait, what?!
After weeks of reports that your gas stove was secretly hurting you and your family, we find out that you just need to ensure proper ventilation (which is true regardless of whether you use gas or electric, by the way).
But the damage was already done. Google “gas stoves and health” and you’ll find endless headlines about that study that could frighten working families into making costly replacements that they both can’t afford and don’t need to make.
Meanwhile, another expert told a separate media outlet that the researchers had encased the kitchens in a Mylar tent to “trap and concentrate the emissions, and then measure the concentration.” No one cooks in a kitchen like that! He said it would “incorrect” to draw any health conclusions from the paper.
If you like electric appliances, that’s great. A lot of people do, and having that optionality is key for affordability.
But this isn’t zero sum. Gas appliances are safe. If your house has gas appliances, you are safe—and you are probably saving a fair amount of money too.
Hopefully, journalists, we can all agree that the next time a study makes a claim about how gas appliances are supposedly harmful to your health, an appropriate level of scrutiny will be applied at the time of, and in the same article as, the announcement itself.
In my region this was click bait many times over and probably will again in the near future. Seems that there is no end of these types; thought it might slow down after COP 26 but the eco horse has the bit in its mouth. If my gas stove has any leaks I would smell it due to the stink added to our supply.
I’m halfway through an unending kitchen renovation that includes the installation of a brand new gas stove. All the scary “cooking with gas is dangerous” articles seemed like bunk to me. I guess I’ll know for sure once my new gas cooker is up and running. If I get sick and die from the gas stove, I’ll be sure to post the details here. 😉
A Mylar tent? Oh no, the insult to Gaia! Don’t they know that mylar is made up of two compounds, dimethyl terephthalate (C10H10O4) and ethylene glycol (C2H6O2)? Look at the big C in the front of both formulas. They are CARBON based. The horror.
As a chemical scientist, seeing these articles and commentaries about gas stoves appearing over the last few months, I got the real sense of “concerted, deliberate campaign that is not in any way coincidental with the full blown campaign against gas use for power generation”, and ground my teeth in rage as falsehood after exaggeration after non-sequitur was linked together as “evidence”. This is a second front to sow fear in the general public, very much like the risible “microplastics are lethal” nonsense that is designed to vilify plastics manufacture and use. These fake studies are frequent, well-funded and relentlessly on message and, like dozens of fake activist-trumpeted climate trends that are the opposite to the truth, unable to be refuted if you are not in a science field and read the literature. It’s difficult to know how the truth is going to win out here, I’m becoming very pessimistic.
As a pro working in this field, I can *assure* you that electric stoves are likely to produce higher concentrations of PM2.5 and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) and volatile organic compounds (VOC) in a typical kitchen than a gas stove.
The reason was given in the text: ventilation. When you have a gas stove you have to vent the hood outside. If it is very fancy it has a heat exchanger but usually they don’t.
Cooking produces a *lot* of emissions from the food – particularly frying, stir frying, roasting, baking and broiling. How many times have you set off your smoke detector in the kitchen?
When people put in an electric stove they assume “it is clean cooking” and therefore there is no need to vent the fumes outside. Many over-stove vent fans are nothing more than a recycling vent hood with a crappy filter designed to collect condensed fats are oils. Very few filters trap much PM and certainly almost none of the PM2.5. They suck it up and blow it over your head into the room.
So the layman fitting his kitchen with equipment may be lulled into thinking a recirculator is acceptable instead of an external vent.
I am willing to bet that inside their “stove envelope” no cooking tool place. True or not? A pot of burning beans is a helluva lot worse than any stove or fuel.
For our European readers, you would be interested to know that American gas stoves are only allowed to produce 40% of the carbon monoxide of an EU-compliant stove.
The gas stove is an amazing tool to fight climate change. We’re told that methane is what, 40x more potent as a greenhouse gas than CO2. Here we have an appliance then that converts this much more potent methane gas into much less troublesome CO2, and cooks your food at the same time! Everyone should have to use gas stoves so we can convert more methane and save the planet!
after huge storms and winds in Vic aus the other week..the people with GAS could cook dinner and heat water for the 16hrs or so our power went off , even though we have to buy expensive LPG (compared to towngas) the mains power kept going on and off for a further 24 hrs intermittently. so it was heat kettles fill the thermos and keep the fridge shut! many of our homes run on rainwater so if the powers off so is ALL our water too.
I encased my garage in a Mylar tent to trap to concentrate the emissions and then measured the concentration and came to the conclusion all ICE cars should be banned immediately and scrapped. And with the alarming dearth of electric tow trucks we should use horses to pull those ICE cars to the junkyard.
that could frighten
working familiesidiotic suburban wine moms. FIFYEven if you believe that carbon is an urgent problem (I don’t), going electric is self defeating.
A high proportion of electricity still comes from gas, so instead of heating your food with 100% of the heat available from the gas you propose burning it in a power station, losing a lot of the heat up the chimney, lose more in transmission and heat your food with what’s left?
Eh?