Steve Milloy
The new study the Consumer Product Safety Commission wants to rely on to ban gas stoves is classic junk science.
Here is the study. The abstract is below.
Here is a quick summary of the some of study’s principle flaws, in no particular order:
- It’s not actual research on children. It is a meta-analysis of previously published (and ignored) studies — a study of otherwise unpersuasive studies. The authors did a literature search for previous epidemiologic studies on gas stoves and asthma in kids and then just mixed those results together in an effort to contrive statistical signioficance. This is a bogus technique for a number of reasons including publications bias in the component studies — i.e., studies with null results aren’t published.
- The study results, including the component studies, are weak statistical associations — i.e., noise range correlations. The study results, likely including the component studies, are not statistically significant either.
- Asthma is an allergic disease. There are no allergens in natural gas. So the study has no biological plausibility. No one knows what causes asthma in children and so competing causes could not be ruled out.
- The claim that gas stoves are responsible for 12% of childhood asthma – an epidemioogic concept called “attributable risk” – is entirely bogus because epidemiological studies can only be used to associated exposures with disease. They cannot be used to determine risk of disease because (1) the underlying data is not representative of the population; and (2) epidemiologic studies cannot be used by themselves to determine cause-and-effect relationships.
If none of that means anything to you. you need to read “Junk Science Judo: Self-defense Against health Scare and Scams.”
Bureaucrats and lawyers will use junk science anyway, if it fits their goals.
s/anyway/especially
Ari Nutter…At it again I see
I am 60. We had Gas heating and cooking growing up. I’ve had Gas heating and cooking for all of my 60 years. My parents always had Gas heating and cooking. My Grandparents had Gas heating and cooking all their lives too.
I don’t have Asthma.
My daughter doesn’t have Asthma.
My brother didn’t have Asthma.
My Sister doesn’t have Asthma.
Neither of her kids have Asthma.
None of her grandkids have Asthma.
My Dad didn’t have Asthma.
His parents didn’t have Asthma.
My Mom didn’t have Asthma.
Her parents didn’t have Asthma.
My Uncle didn’t have Asthma.
None of his 4 ex-wives had Asthma.
None of his 9 children (my cousins) have Asthma.
We all grew up with Gas in the home for heating and cooking.
If in home gas causes asthma…with a childhood asthma rate of 5-7%…there should be at least 2-3 people in my family with asthma
4 Grands
2 parents
5 aunts and uncles
2 siblings
1 offspring
2 niece/nephew
2 grand nephews
9 cousins
28+ direct family members…all with Gas…no asthma.
I don’t think gas causes asthma
I’m 73. My mother had asthma her whole life. She died at 87. My sister had asthma, I had asthma (stopped having it in my 20s). We never had a gas stove or gas heating. We did have cats, dogs, horses, and occasionally Guinea pigs, rabbits, hamsters, and rats. But I only had asthma when I had a cold or when I spent time with the horses (allergy related).
I have seen many studies designed to try and find health and safety risks related to gas fired equipment. Some funded by enviros, some by electric appliance competition and some by government regulatory agencies seeking a pretext to ban them. None ever established a credible problem. The only real hazard is the potential for a faulty or damaged gas appliance to produce dangerous levels of carbon monoxide. This has, of course, been well known for decades, hence mandates for installation of CO detectors and alarms.
Bureaucrats and lawyers & THE SIERRA CLUB.
The Sierra Club is a pack of lawyers.
My guess is that a reasonable portion of paying sierra club members have gas stove tops.
My guess is that a crapload of paying sierra club members do not pay attention to the REAL politics of the organization.
My hope is that a few if the paying sierra club members wake up as they learn that the sierra club is pushing this type of thing on a regular basis.
There are lots of studies that say dust mites cause asthma. Dust mites live on your skin. You can reduce dust mite population by bathing in DDT. DDT was banned because of Rachel Carson.
“No, New Study Does Not Link Gas Stoves with Asthma in Children”
They know this.
We know this.
They know we know this.
We know they know we know this.
They don’t care. The narrative is what is important, and they would rather whole of Western Civilization collapse entirely than admit to the mistake.
There is no mistake. The collapse of western civilisation is the aim.
That’s giving them too much foresight. They just want control, and if civilization collapses, they will blame it on free markets and recalcitrant liberty lovers regardless.
Not only do they want to bring about the destruction of western society they also want to manage it as well
I tend towards Scarecrow Repair’s view.
They are idiots, yes. They want to control you, and have learned the tools of how to control people. But they are still largely idiots.
Eh????
The “hygiene hypothesis” makes more sense.
This relates to both mother and child being exposed to “dirt & things” that
modern families frequently avoid. If you can’t afford expensive toys, dirt
can be used in lots of ways.
When I was a kid there was a neighbor that disinfected bananas before peeling them.
I’ll bet they didn’t follow the 5 second rule either.
I’ve often wondered what happened to that child.
Natural immunities require natural environments. It appears to me (74 years experience) that children protected from nature are sicker on average.
The tradeoff is, of course, lots of cuts, bruises and busted bones. One of our horses ran over me and stomped off the tip of my middle left finger when I was a kid, along with all of the other physical damage caused by leading a real life. Combat was not kind to me either.
My brother and 3 of his friends decided it would be great fun to race down a hill on 2 bicycles. 2 guys peddled and 2 Sat atop the handlebars. Needless to say the accident was spectacular and all 4 limped around for a few weeks afterwards
And they became much smarter!
I’m told that among the foreign students doing a Russian language learning trip in Soviet Union, the Americans were the sickest. Europeans were sometimes sick. Africans, Asians? Never!
Absolutely, John.
When I started my PhD I was astounded to learn how the immune system works in mammals.
After the brain, it is the second most complex organ. It begins learning at birth, sampling its environment. As it develops it makes decisions about what is normal, acceptable, or foreign/harmful. Exposure to non-harmful antigens is an essential part of its self-education. Children with animal pets tend to have less allergies.
I’m not saying we know everything. I had a pet rabbit in my teenage years. Before I developed a sneezing allergy. Twenty years later the same sneezing allergy came on within seconds when I picked up another pet rabbit.
Killed by their first encounter with a germ.
I have heard of parents – OK let’s be truthful, mothers – who would not allow their infant in a house where all surfaces are not cleaned daily with anti-bacterial cleaner.
I have never seen any data or reports from other than western countries – too busy with important stuff or nothing to see – but both the UK and US show asthma increasing in contradiction to the reduction in air pollution. What is happening in China I wonder. Or former Soviet countries.
My niece was that way with her first child. Later children were allowed to encounter the natural environment in which they would live their lives. The first was always sickly. Cause/effect?
Just what is it in the natural gas combustion products (at typical household concentrations) that cause asthma? So what if 35% of U.S. households cook with natural gas? Do all of the children in those households get asthma? Exactly how many develop asthma?
Bullshitting around with statistics tells us nothing. It is just another way to grow the intrusive governmental behemoth.
You stand a far better chance of getting mercury poisoning from an exploding mercury vapor twisty bulb
We (6 boys and numerous “friends”) used our fingers to rub dimes with mercury to make them shiny; drank from garden hoses and stock ponds; work/played with asbestos; hit each other with anything at hand, including hay hooks (interesting scars on my now-old hands, arms and head, which I added to in Vietnam combat); shot each other with BB guns, slingshots and homemade bows and arrows; ate anything and everything no matter how rank and filthy (we were always hungry!); and generally did many dangerous and scarifying things. Other than a wild brother that was killed by the cops and another brother that got into terminal drugs and alcohol, we are all still kicking up to 80+. BTW, the VA takes good care of my health.
Mommas, don’t let your babies grow up to be Soy Boys. FJB and F-Leftists.
I remember Dad cutting asbestos sheets with a hand saw just outside the kitchen door. Can’t imagine why all 5 of us are still alive 60 years later – Dad made it to 96 with faculties intact.
I have been told that pleura cancer (malignant mesothelioma) is only caused by asbestos and the proof of its dangers, but it could be caused by SV40 (Simian virus 40) transmitted by a polio vaccine.
But vaccine is the truest non religious religion shared by both progressives and conservatives in the US. On Trumpers don’t have such a cult, which is the main reason Trump was hated by the establishment and the intelligencia.
Vaxxism is the one cause “fact checkers” (which don’t deal with facts and don’t check) won’t ever go against: fact-checkers can blame the Dems, can blame Obama, can blame Biden – but they can’t blame vaccines.
“Vaccines are great” is even a bigger hoax than “radiations (usually) mutate DNA and cause cancer”.
Sealing up houses that were not built with forced air and air exchangers for ventilation probably creates much more problems than having a gas stove. Yet this is being pushed hard.
Larry Kudlow has his say:
Kudlow’s put upon? My wife demands a gas range top but an electric oven! I had to put in 230V breakers and run a 230V line from the service entrance up into the attic, clear across the entire house through the attic, down into the kitchen wall and install a 230V outlet at the stove. And that was before my knee replacement.
Brandon has nothing on my wife.
But, having cooked on both gas and electric range tops and ovens, I think your wife is right, and electric ovens are much preferable.
Personally I like electric range tops a lot better than gas, now that you can get the rapid reacting radiant lamp kind. The old hot plates were terrible, they just react too slowly. But I understand people continue to like the instant reaction and the continuous adjustment you get from a gas burner.
I really think she is right about the oven, however.
I should have said why. Because the ways you can cook in an electric oven are so much more flexible. You mostly have a grill, a fan and the usual resistive heating elements which you can use separately or in combination. This means you can, for instance, grill and use the fan oven at the same time, which for very quick cooking of some dishes is a real asset. You can regulate the temperature very precisely.
Once you’ve used one you will never go back.
This is just the merits of the device. Agreed with Milloy that the study is junk.
We recently pulled out the electric range and installed a gas range with an electric convection oven. We pulled out the electric dryer and installed a gas dryer (for which we had to wait for 7 covid months). Now we are cooking with gas, drying with gas and baking with electricity.
Gas is cheaper.
I had one of those “duel fuel” stoves. It cost a packet, weighed 300lb. It ended up in the metal dump because the ungaranteed replacement for the computer that controlled the oven cost more than a very nice gas stove and oven.
I’ve been using a gas range since May of last year, and no one in the house has experienced any ill effects. The house already has gas appliances: a furnace, water heater, and fireplace. As a long-time electric range user, it took some time to adjust to the general usage of the gas unit. I am satisfied with the operation of the gas oven for baking and roasting, and I find the broiling capabilities superior to electric. One main difference with the gas cooktop is the burners are always on when in use, whereas electric burners will cycle on and off. A nice advantage is the gas cooktop will operate during a power outage. On the downside, it takes more effort to clean the gas cooktop, as it isn’t a smooth ceramic, like my old electric range.
One of the unintended consequences of making houses more energy efficient is indoor air pollution.
Califonia banned new nuke plants. The level of radiation worker breathed in my nuke was lower than in our homes because of radon being trapped.
My doctor diagnosed me with asthma when I was 60 because I ran in the very cold in high school and experienced tightness in my chest. I was in the navy and a radiation worker. I had annual testing to wear a mask.
I suspect increase in asthma is due to confirmation bias. Could be clean air too.
Kit
50 years ago when the air was dirty, few people had asthma. As the air got progressively cleaner, more and more people got asthma. As the air approaches super-clean, asthma incidence became surprisingly high.
Ergo, cleanliness causes asthma. This conclusion is more defensible statistically than the study above.
Some years ago I saw a study of Ethiopian children. The air was cleaner in the cities than on farms, and the city ones had much more asthma. There are other studies showing that a dog in the house decreases allergies in kids – you know, those animals that lick their butts and then the kid’s face.
A lot of biathlon/Nordic ski athletes use inhalers (those used for the asthmatic people).
They don’t care that it’s junk science. They will use it to institute their ban anyway, and if you object you will be labelled a “Science Denier”. The majority of the population, carefully schooled to lack an understanding of science, will accept what the “authorities” say, because they will tell them it’s for their own good. This game plan has been used so many times, but it still seems to work.
Getting tired of this constant nanny state and their worship of electricity. Just spent $3k for stove and plumbing gas line so we can cook with propane. It’s a far superior fuel. When are people going to have enough of these agencies.
They want us to back to burning dung and wood to prepare our meals. These are “carbon neutral”.
Ultimately you will be required to buy your bugs and soy in ready to microwave units so you don’t consume too many resources through superfluous cooking.
I expect they will genetically engineer your bugs and tofu to not require heating, at least beyond putting it under your armpit for ten minutes.
Of course it’s bogus, but they are just using it to try and get gas stoves banned as a back-door way of cutting “emissions”. Because “electric good, gas bad”.
And eliminating fossil fuels is itself just a backdoor way of destroying western democracy, which appears to be the ultimate mission. The climate change thing is just a way of cloaking the mission in green and persuading the proles to go along with the nonsense.
So far they are not doing too badly in their mission.
If they are successful, it is likely that their next move will be to prohibit distribution of gas. If there are fewer people needing it, they are not likely to encounter much opposition.
In the UK 22m of the 28m households are connected to the gas distribution network although not all will use it for both cooking and heating. Our kids (33 and 28 year olds) grew up in a household that used it for both and both they and their parents had no problems with asthma
So does that mean that 88% of asthma cases are associated with electric stove use in the home?
Go Home
My wife and daughter both have asthma, both have had it much longer than we have had a gas stove and it has not gotten any worse over time.
Pfffft!!
Regarding “The new study the Consumer Product Safety Commission wants to rely on to ban gas stoves is classic junk science”: What Steve Milloy of “Junk Science” claims here has even his citation being only to a proposed regulation of gas stoves on basis of one study claiming stoves being a cause of childhood asthma. I have Twitter experience of seeing Steve Milloy doing lots of cherrypicking for half-truths and mostly-falsehoods.
“Proposed regulation” is all it takes. Since it’s been already proposed, it’s obvious they don’t care that it’s only one study.
What exactly is your complaint about this article? Too truthful?
My specific complaint about the article is that gas stoves are required to have ventilation outside the home. How does anything from combustion “pollute the air” in the house if everything is going outside?
It doesn’t matter what “toxins” are produced by natural gas combustion (if any). If there is polluted air inside the home it is a failure to implement the building code.
If they get this trough then they will next be coming after our gas furnaces.
They can pry our furnaces (gas and oil) from our cold, dead hands…..and without fossil fuels for heating there will be lots and lots of cold, dead hands!
Facts and science adherence long ago departed those intent on pushing an anti-fossil fuels agenda by whatever means, ethics be damned.
Yesterday, the same news was huge in the Netherlands as well. Media said that in the Netherlands last year, 70,000 kids got asthma symptoms due to fine dust from burning gas in stoves.
Bells started ringing:
A five-minute google search gave:
Funny thing is that the very same researcher who came up with this number of 70,000, had a similar project a few years ago, where he looked at indoor fine dust. One of the findings back then was: PM2.5 concentration as a result of burning gas are typically a factor ten lower than the concentration as a result of cooking, baking and roasting meat in oil or burning candles and cigarettes.
Recommendations in that report were: better ventilation of homes and better placement and suctions of the hoods above the stove.
https://www.tno.nl/nl/duurzaam/veilige-duurzame-leefomgeving/energie-gebouwde-omgeving/installaties-componenten-energie/fijnstof-huis-koken/ (Report in Dutch).
Measurements can be made to a rather fine degree. What do they measure in the homes that is produced by gas stoves and could be responsible for the bad health results they are claiming?
Has there been any follow up with the substance, or substances, under controlled conditions? Just having a gas burning stove in the kitchen certainly isn’t a controlled condition. Even the dreaded cigarette was subjected to large scale laboratory experiments. Or does gas do its nefarious work through psychic, or political, influences?
Maybe they’ll take it even further (some greens in Switzerland already talk that way):
This should be forbidden, if one doesn’t bring proof that something isn’t dangerous ..
Junk Science Indeed!
It is wonderful to have a place like WUWT where the *real* story is told.
Thanks for the heads-up.
I think 40 percent of Americans cook with a gas stove. The Trafficer-in-Chief, Joe Biden, will have to do better than this to convince these people to give up their gas stoves.
I wonder what kind of stoves the chefs use in the White House?
I find it hard to believe that only 40% of households cook with gas. In all my life I have met very few people that have electric stoves. It is notable that those I met that use electric stoves don’t really cook, but mostly boil water. Perhaps they are just considering natural gas, not including propane? Darn near everyone in rural areas use propane.
Some of the involved studies probably forgot the major correlation that modern electric or ceramic cooking frequently comes with modernized suction and filtration systems. It’s known that cooking on any stove releases all kinds of chemicals. It was actually argued before in studies that having sub-standard suction and filtering above a stove was many times worse than living near a busy road or traffic center in terms of fine dust and allergens. Which puts a lot in perspective. And it certainly will influence collected data on kitchen use if this factor is not compensated for. Older houses and lower budgets often cook with gas powered stove or won’t have invested in top level ventilation systems providing the sufficient air flows.
The scientific community need to clean up its act and begin suing media outlets for misrepresenting science itself.
Where are the Institutes and Associations who are supposed to represent science and its members when this junk is degrading the very principles of their existence?
Cooking produces a multitude of allergens, and lots of methyl ethyl bad stuff too. Whether you do it with gas, or electricity, or a wood or coal fire, or a dung fire is irrelevant regarding the chemicals generated by cooking itself. However gas and electric are the cleanest of the various ways to cook.
I recall an article I read in New Scientist back in the early 1990’s (before they became toilet paper) – doubt very much I could find it now, but it lead with something like here is a list of 50 extremely toxic and harmful chemicals, and what would you consider if you were exposed to this list? (list included dioxins, cyanide and many other immediately scary compounds)
They then pointed out this list of toxic chemicals are actually contained in the average person’s breath! And another list of similar scary nature, was the burning of leaves.
We are exposed to and generate in our bodies, which by the way are internal combustion engines using hydrocarbon fuel and burning it with oxygen; and emitting CO2 and a host of very bad chemicals – we are exposed to a plethora of “bad stuff” – there’s two aspects to this:
1) the concentration matters
2) our systems can handle and mitigate the plethora of “bad stuff” which we are exposed to, or in fact generate by “living”.(caveat number 1 above)
So I call bullchips on this and any similar “studies”.
I don’t subscribe to it so couldn’t read it, but is this the article?
https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg15921472-200-toxic-breath/
No it was a much earlier article and there was no mention of an instant mass spec device in the article I remember.
It’s obvious this has nothing to do with health and safety. If Gas stoves truly were as dangerous as they are trying to make them out to be, why would current gas stoves be allowed to stay under the proposals they’re forwarding? If you already have a gas stove it’s OK to kill your children?
They’re using junk science as an excuse to forward their political agenda. It’s as clear as the nose on your face.
I know that just around the corner will be the study that claims that …
Climate Change leads to hemorrhoids
Yep, causes warts, moles, colds and sore assholes.
Only for those who bend over and accept it as “settled science”.
(It may take awhile butt the results will show up in the end.)
Apparently Bob Sagat recorded a song called “From Climate Change to Hemorrhoids”…
Apparently, “the lead authors of the study are from the Rocky Mountain Institute and Rewiring America, both anti-fossil fuel and electrification advocacy organizations.”
Can someone confirm this?
I am reminded of the quaint descriptor: Lying, liars who lie. Cheers –
I would love to see a comparison of indoor air pollution from cooking with natural gas relative to pollution from smoking weed which is definitely on the rise in the US. Perhaps natural gas appliances could be rated in terms of doobie or bong hit equivalents. Surely some researcher will be willing to take on the challenge … for the children of course!
What about all the other chemicals we put in the air inside our homes?
Plug in air fresheners? Aerosol air fresheners? Window cleaners? Countertop cleaners? Disinfectants? etc.
If you can smell it, it’s in the air.
(And some things you can’t smell are in the air.)
This is how it works: there have been a couple of ridiculous headlines contorting the results of irrelevant studies, then there will be more poorly conducted studies, more headlines, more funding, then the consensus will be announced, and the science will be settled. And gas stoves will go the way of the incandescent light bulb.
One of the studies I saw referenced by this tested “toxin” levels in a kitchen fully sealed with plastic.
“No one knows what causes asthma in children”
Is the v- word allowed?