Opinion by Kip Hansen — 19 January 2023
No, they do not. As true as that it, it does not make for a very informative OpEd.
I know, I know…. ”There’s a Study!” There is always a study when the press and government power-seekers propose doing something as nutty as banning natural gas cooking stoves and home heating equipment. There have been other pieces here (and all over the press) as to whether or not “The Government is coming for your gas stoves!”. They are, but that is not what I’m writing about today.
What kicked off the press frenzy, besides the faux pas by Richard Trumka Jr., a US Consumer Product Safety commissioner, was a study that was interpreted in a New York Times OpEd by Farhad Manjoo as this:
“About 13 percent of cases of childhood asthma in the United States may be attributable to gas cooktops, a recent study found — a population-level effect similar to that of exposure to secondhand smoke.”
The recent study is: “Population Attributable Fraction of Gas Stoves and Childhood Asthma in the United States” by Talor Gruenwald, Brady A. Seals, Luke D. Knibbs and H. Dean Hosgood III, which was published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health which is an ”open access journal published semimonthly online with article processing charges (APC) paid by authors or their institutions.” Some would interpret this to mean a “pay-to-play online journal”.
And who are the authors? The lead author is Talor Gruenwald – who’s listed institution is “RMI, Carbon-Free Buildings” – and who is RMI? The Rocky Mountain Institute, Amory Lovins’ was the founder. Talor Gruenwald is touted at Energy Central as providing “quantitative analysis and policy research in support of eliminating fossil fuel use in buildings at the Rocky Mountain Institute.” Co-author Brady A. Seals is also at RMI. The other two co-authors are real epidemiological researchers: Luke D. Knibbs and H. Dean Hosgood III, both studying air pollution and other issues.
So, this is an activist-driven study.
Did this study actually measure children’s exposure to gas stoves, water heaters and furnaces (or any pollution that they might have caused) in the homes in which children suffered from asthma? No, of course not. Did this study actually measure any homes for NO2 levels and connect this to children’s asthma? No, of course not.
This was a “meta-analysis” study. This means that this study tried to combine the findings of previous studies, some dating back many years, that seemed to study the issue at hand.
Did those studies actually measure the real-world exposure of any children to pollution caused by the us of gas appliances in homes of children who suffered from asthma? Not that I can find. In fact, there is no Supplemental Information available for this study and thus no list of the “The title review identified 27 manuscripts as potentially pertinent. Full manuscripts (n = 27) were independently reviewed by co-authors; none reported new associations between gas stove use and childhood asthma specifically in North America or Europe.”
Say what? None of the studies covered specifically North America or Europe?
Here’s the thing:
“As a result, effect sizes previously reported for current asthma in North America and Europe combined (weighted by inverse variance; Nstudies = 10; Odds Ratio (OR) = 1.34, 95% Confidence Interval (CI) = 1.12–1.57) were utilized in the PAF estimations.”
They don’t actually seem to have done a new study on effects of gas stove use and asthma at all – they used “effect sizes” from a 2013 study which itself was a meta-analysis, in which the 2013 authors re-analyzed (tortured) each of the original studies’ data until it admitted that gas stoves were bad.
The 2013 study uses data from a number of even earlier studies, such as a 1978 study that did actually measured NO2 levels and found that NO2 levels in homes that had gas cooking or heating in children’s bedroom to average 0.03 ppm while ambient outdoor air in the neighborhood had NO2 levels of 0.02 ppm. We have to wonder at the tremendous power of that extra 1/100th of a part per million to damage children’s health.
In another examined study, the finding was: “In the 1977 cross-sectional study, only the prevalence of day or night cough in boys (p « 0.02) and colds going to chest in girls (p < 0.05) were found to be significantly higher in children from homes where gas was used for cooking compared with children from homes where electricity was used.” (NB: Not asthma.] Yes, gas cooking causes boys to cough and girls to get colds in their chests.
Many of the studies found no effect from gas cooking stoves on children’s respiratory health, with findings such as this: “No relation was found between the type of fuel used for cooking in the home and the prevalence of respiratory symptoms and diseases recalled by the mother after allowing for the effects of gender, social class, and parental smoking.”
Almost every contemporary study on gas appliances and asthma in children start with some version of: ”Gas stoves emit pollutants that are respiratory irritants. U.S. children under age 6 who live in homes where gas stoves are used for cooking or heating have an increased risk of asthma, wheeze and reduced lung function.”
Bottom Lines:
1. Gas cooking stoves are blamed for children’s respiratory illnesses, like asthma, widely in the literature. Almost none of the studies actually measure the exposure of the child to the putative cause: hours exposed to how much gas stove use; measure NO2 levels in the home, whether there are multiple gas appliances in the home (water heaters, clothes dryer, heating appliance), or ambient NO2 in the child’s outdoor environment or school. Many of the studies failed to note or take into account parental smoking in the home.
2. In the UK studies, it was found that poorer homes used the cook stove or oven to heat the house – vastly increasing byproducts of combustion in the home. Homes that use the oven to heat the home are unlikely to leave the windows open for proper ventilation.
3. This topic exposes the often seen “everybody knows” aspect of health sciences in particular. The Health Sciences have already decided that gas cooking stoves are bad – on the thinnest of evidence. Thus, every new study relies on older studies, which themselves rely on even older studies, going back decades, that “sort-of say it is so”. Thus we have the Salt Wars, the Sugar Wars, the Obesity Wars, the Med Diet War, the PM2.5 Wars – all of which are based on the same sort of iffy science. What we need in these areas of study are “start from scratch” proper more-or-less randomized, controlled designs (RCD). And some just plain Good Science.
4. I have a niggling suspicion that there is a concerted effort coming from the anti-fossil-fuels advocacy camp to produce lots of “science” that condemns home gas appliances (stoves, ovens, water heaters and furnaces) as “harmful to the health of children” towards the end of instituting bans on natural gas use in homes. They have had some successes with states and cities. With enough “evidence” (no matter how thin and ephemeral) advocacy groups can petition or sue (as in sue-and-settle) the EPA for “relief”.
Sequence of Events:
1) Trumka [US Consumer Product Safety commissioner ] recommended in October (2022) that the CPSC seek public comment on the hazards associated with gas stoves.
2) Rocky Mountain Institutes submits a meta-analysis paper based on decade old studies to a journal on 4 November 2022, which is published just before Christmas 2022.
3) Armed with the “new study” Trumka blabs out on 9 January 2023 that gas stoves are harmful and Bloomberg had this: “The US Consumer Product Safety Commission will move to regulate gas stoves as new research links them to childhood asthma.” ““This is a hidden hazard,” Trumka Jr. said. “Any option is on the table. Products that can’t be made safe can be banned.” [ source ]
4) Chaos ensues with wild backpedaling and denials from all quarters in the U.S. administration.
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Author’s Comment:
Before anyone accuses me of conspiracy thinking, let me be perfectly clear. The intention of Rocky Mountain Institute’s study authors, Talor Gruenwald and Brady A. Seals, state clearly, as a policy, that their purpose is to produce research in support of eliminating fossil fuel use in buildings.
And they did. Personally, I think they (RMI) alerted the US Consumer Product Safety Commission in advance of their intention to do the study and what they would find, thus the initiating the call for public comment, to which RMI submitted the paper (maybe a pre-print) in support of a finding of harm.
The anti-fossil fuels groups have way too much funding and very clever public relations professionals planning these campaigns – and they are very successful. To the detriment of the public good.
Thanks for reading.
# # # # #
Gas stoves can cause a lot of indoors air pollution
So can electric stoves.
The solutions:
Good vents to outdoors,
or just or order a pizza
A study on cooking a Thanksgiving dinner inside a test home found more “air pollution” indoors, in the final hour of cooking, than in the outside air of the city of Delphi, India, the most polluted city in the world at the time.
I wrote an article on indoor air pollution in mid-2020
Honest global warming chart Blog: CO2 is fake air pollution — Consider real air pollution, inside your home ! (elonionbloggle.blogspot.com)
Note: The unusual narrow column formatting at the time was because of a vision disability — it may not be easy to read on smart phones
I wonder how much of that Thanksgiving indoor air pollution was simply the great smells of Thanksgiving food. Sort of like one greenie’s pollution is a green plant’s food.
I also wonder how much of the indoor pollution was caused by the increased number of bodies wandering around the house during Thanksgiving gatherings.
It was a test hme with one cook inside.
If you look very carefully under the carpet where Big Pharma hides their sins, you may find lots of literature documenting correlation between the additives and preservatives in junk food, and a plethora of dis-eases, including respiratory dysfunctions.
This is not the forum to publish the graphs showing direct correlation between asthma prevailence and the meteoric growth in childhood vaccinations.
Which brings me to: Stop wasting gas for your selfish cooking stuff, our Betters need it for gaslighting all us inferior useless eaters.
One could reduce natural gas usage by eating cold foods at home.
Of course you can eat cold foods and get gas too.
The indoor pollution does include all the smells of Thanksgiving dinner and most people enjoy those smells. I happen to dislike the smell of birds cooling in the oven that’s not a pleasant smell for me. Bacon cooling smells much better to me (bacon is a basic food group in the Greene Pyramid of Foods. Also hamburgers and Pizza).
Concerning asthma and air pollution, there have been many bogus studies on that subject. I wrote about one of the worst of those studies a few years ago:
Honest global warming chart Blog: Danish study of air pollution and asthma in kids is science fraud (elonionbloggle.blogspot.com)
Scientists say scientific studies are very unreliable in recent years, often not replicable. One should beware of any words that follow “Scientists say”, which is a very popular phrase among leftists. I read the Retraction Watch website to remind myself how unreliable studies are:
Retraction Watch – Tracking retractions as a window into the scientific process
Richard ==> My #1 Best Solution is to eat cold pizza.
Seconded!
You will live long and prosper, Willie E,. if you also eat bacon and hamburgers too, in addition to your pizza.
My Dad lived on eggs, bacon, meat and potatoes for 98 years. Was living on his own in the end.
Eat whatever foods make you happy and keep you from getting fat. You’re going to die anyway, so enjoy your limited time alive. Kale salads and tofu are for losers.
I would sooner be fat and happy than skinny and miserable Good food makes me happy and that does not include kale or tofu.
What started my asthma was not my chain smoking dad, but whooping cough.
Antibiotics were not routinely prescribed for it in the 1950s.
What kept it bad was living in a cold damp house with no central heating, and mould.
The hypothesis that freedom from infections of other sorts causes asthma is, just a hypothesis…
I am also old enough to have seen the effects on people who have died or been maimed by most of the things we routinely inoculate against. I’d trade asthma for Polio or TB any day. And I had measles, I had mumps, and I had German measles – the things that the MMR vaccine protects you from and I had asthma before any of them.
The anti-vax movemen is all very well, but it is treading on thin ice, and there is very little data one way or another. We live massively different lives now than in the 1950s, and although the level of some pollutants is far lower in Western countries , others are far higher. It is fashionable to blame pollutants, but oits by no means sure they are to blame.
Leo ==> One of the UK studies was specifically in asthma caused by cold, damp homes….
Leo ==> The childhood diseases that damage lung tissues can and do have long term effects. We have to remember that asthma is not a disease — it is a condition, with multiple causes.
I am not against vaccines, I am against fake vaccines, ya know, the Chinese Disease shots.
Do not confuse the successes of modern plumbing, sanitation, clothing and housing, with the claims made by manufacturers who sell by fear. Infectious diseases were reduced drastically before the introduction of vaccines, merely by having fewer kids hungry, cold, damp and dirty.
To prove my point, see the correlation between the recent upswing in these almost-eradicated diseases in places like US and UK, and the corresponding fall in standard of living, healthcare and social services, as well as increased homelessness, drug abuse, governmental neglect…while vaccinations are now over fifty before age six!
But the latest vax promises to solve the problems of life, terminally.
P.S. I tole ya this is not the right forum for these graphs!
Cooking your own food from scratch is probably the healthiest option without any consideration to the cooking appliance.
Do you mean Delhi. I am not sure Delphi is in India…?
Missed it by one letter — partial credit?
“Half of bridge fall down; no partial credit.”
Richard ==> Yes, and definitions of “indoor air pollution” are a bit wonky. If you can smell the cooking, it has “polluted” your indoor air. Think of the marvelous deliciousness of smell of fresh baking bread….and the rather unpleasant odor of cooking cabbage.
Nothing like real indoor air pollution by millions and millions of mothers and their children in homes cooking and heating with wood and dung.
I have no experience with cooking with wood and dung
Obviously a lot worse than cooking with gas or electric,
Cooking asparagus smell makes me sick.
I suspect the means with which those fuels (wood and dung) are employed is far more important than the fuels themselves. In other words, it is just a matter of fairly simple technology to insure that burning any fuel for cooking vents none of the combustion products into the interior of the building. I said ‘simple’, not inexpensive.
You are wrong.
Wrong about what?
I’ve been wrong before?
Back in 1964 I was wrong about the Beatles after hearing them sing “I Want to Hold Your Hand” on Ed Sullivan with girls in the audience screaming like lunatics. Said that was a song for children — no big deal.
“a Thanksgiving dinner inside a test home found more “air pollution” indoors”
Then don’t let the food burn. Burnt food is a big source of fine dust.
As soon as I see it’s a meta-analysis study I immediately know it has no merit and that the authors are biased and lazy. Biased, because they always—ALWAYS!—cherrypick the studies to include in order to support a preselected conclusion. Lazy, because they aren’t doing the hard work of developing a robust, repeatable test methodology and doing, you know, real science. They don’t even bother to investigate the methodology of the studies they supposedly “study” to see if there are flaws. They just pass on the findings—and all the flaws—as fact. It’s the worst kind of lazy pseudoscience, conjured up to sell a story to gullible and sympathetic journalists.
stinkerp ==> John P.A. Ioannidis and others have question the use of meta-analyses — which are not capable of determining cause and muddle or falsify effect sizes.
I’ve always suspected meta-studies, even though the academic world regard them as the bees knees. My problem is with the basic process. You take a bunch of studies, which are each crap (pardon my french): bad data, bad methodology, etc. Then you pass them through the magic meta-study magic and hey presto, you have a good quality study with reliable data coming out.
They can be done from their armchair. Do you still wonder why they are used. Reliable information is not one of the results and bias is easy to support.
Don’t most gas stoves in the US have vent fans required? I imagine that indoor air quality will be vastly improved once Nut Zero is implemented, and people have to use wood or charcoal grills to cook their dinners during the regular evening electrical brownouts!
There doesn’t seem to be even one aspect of modern civilization that the devout Marxist isn’t working diligently to destroy!
I bought a new gas stove a couple of years ago, and its installation and owner manuals said nothing I remember about venting. I did put in a range hood when I bought the house 20 years ago.
The requirement for venting is a local building code issue. In Sarasota County, FL they follow the national building code which recommends that gas ranges be vented to the outside. When we sell gas appliances we refer the buyer to a local licensed HVAC contractor for code information.
abolition man ==> Stove vets? Yes, required. Used? Surveys have showed that most families don’t actually use them regularly and even those that are used occasionally do not really vent to the outside.
Case in point, we have a vent, it vents to the same level basement in our home. We only use it when cooking greasy foods to take advantage of the filter in the vent.
I never realized that a lot of the vent hoods over stoves don’t actually vent anywhere, at least not outside the home. I have a friend who lives in an older apartment complex and she complained about her next door neighbor’s marijuana smoke seeping into her unit. I asked her if she tried turning on the stove vent, and she said it’s useless because all it does is vent right back into the unit!
Yes. I am now living in a house (electric stove) with an installed microwave oven above the stove. There is a vent fan (quite noisy) but absolutely no where to vent to except the wall directly behind the microwave oven. This forces the air over the top of the microwave oven (quite forceibly) back into the cook’s face.
We have an electric range with a self cleaning function. The manual warns that when the self cleaning is used pet birds should be removed from the house. We only use it when we can open doors and widows and thoroughly ventilate even though it has a catalytic converter that eliminates most of the smoke. But my point is that electric ranges are not free of indoor pollution issues.
As for the asthma health studies, I’ve not seen any that deals well with controlling for the dozens of things that can trigger an attack such as pet dander, pollen, mold spores, viral or bacterial infections, dryness, dust, etc. I’m quire sure there’s a hereditary component as well.
I have a gas stove with a self cleaning oven. I only used it once. the electronic controls did not work properly for several days after. probably from moisture being driven into contacts. I don’t use the convection setting on the oven for similar reasons. My air fryer works just fine.
The major pollutant from a gas stove is probably NO2. I am sure, however, that my indoor levels never exceed outdoor levels in the center of any large city.
Having attempted to point out to a ‘green energy’ fanatic some difficulties with the gas-asthma hypothesis, and having mentioned stove vents — which are often ignored by the cook — I was informed that most homes with gas stoves don’t have vents So there!
I know my parent’s home has a vent that goes outside. The fan is fairly loud. My first home had no exterior vent. My current home has a range vent, but it is the recirculating type. Recirculating vents have a charcoal element in them that is supposed to adsorb the particulate matter and gaseous emissions. You’re supposed to replace them on a regular basis. Raise your hand if you’ve ever done this. Yeah, me neither.
To those who consider a natural gas cook stove to be a ‘harm’ to health, wait until they discover the risks of frying, on an electric induction hob, energised via a 100%-renewables electricity tariff.
Anyone with an implanted medical device should check wit their doctor before purchasing an induction range or cook top. Specifically if you have a pace maker.
Talk about heartburn!
Tom ==> Thank you for that advice…and it is not medical “mis-information”. See:
Do induction cooktops interfere with cardiac pacemakers?
Joe ==> Thanks for the image of the document. Think of all those teens in McDs and BurgerKing, slaving over a hot grill.
More likely to cause indoor pollution from what you are cooking than what you are cooking it with.
Turn on the range hood fan, and learn how to cook better.
PCman999 ==> In modern homes, absolutely. Cooking methods also can create more stuff in the air.
We should all use the range hood, keep its filters clean, and make sure it vents to the outside, like your gas clothes dryer.
PCman ==> But in the 3rd World — cooking and heating with wood and dung afre thousands of times worse than the worst US home burning propane or natural gas.
Don’t give the greenies ideas.
Why also go for the easy solution? ;-p
I’m flabbergasted by these idiots
They forget once we had paraffin heaters, leaded petrol etc
The air has never been cleaner and I bet they know it.
I am sure these idiots have been briefed by our alien overlords, and reminded that Fake News has been destroying the Globalist Dream ever since that guy came up with that lie about them Dark Satanic Mills.
We all know now that grampa only burned Green turds…
But, as life expectation improved?
Gas stoves don’t cause asthma? I dunno so much. We use gas to cook, and let me tell you, allow my wife near it, and you’ll soon find a bunch of people sitting around looking glassy-eyed, untying their belts to breathe better.
I find her lamb roast with taragon and thyme to be the most pneumorestrictive… I can hardly catch a breath between each mouthful.
If gas stoves cause asthma where are the hundreds of thousands or millions needing treatment? According to the British Lung Foundation ~12% of the population has asthma – it’s an existing condition, not one caused by a gas cooker. It may well be a problem for some that are highly sensitive to NO2 etc, but then some people are allergic to nuts, too.
Gas is a cheap, safe and easily controlled fuel for cooking. That’s their real problem with it.
cilo ==> And, properly, gas appliances, including ovens and cook tops, should have hoods and vents leading outside.
They never used to before the 70s Kip. But then they didn’t open the windows – winters were colder then – with coal or paraffin heating, either.
What toll does a freezing cold outdoor toilet take?
Today’s world does not recognise what boomers grew up with in the 50s and 60s.
Yet we must believe its worse now than we thought – today
One of my homecare clients is a 94 year old man who recalls doing his school homework by the light of a kerosene lamp. And getting up and getting dressed for school in the warmth of the coal stove in the kitchen, and then walking the 2.5 miles to the bus stop. And as an adult he worked without safety goggles, hearing and other protections in a machine shop for many years. And lived in a home he bought for he and his wife for 40+ years that had a gas stove! And being the house was built in the 1920’s, very doubtful it had an exhaust hood. He also recounted using horses to plow on his parents’ farm.
But this guy can still get down on the floor, sit “Indian” style and then get up without help….he’s deaf in one ear, but considering all he was exposed to today’s idiots would scarcely believe that someone like him would have lived past 50!
I remember coal furnaces and wood cook stoves. They sure produced pleasant blowing air and nice local radiation.
Freezing cold outdoor toilet plus bath in a tub in the kitchen using hot water from a kettle – those were the days! 🙂
I also remember that portable kerosene heaters were a real like saver. Of course some of those house were almost as drafty as a barn.
No, all those useless eaters are using up the supply. THAT is the problem with it.
The interesting thing is that almost simultaneously articles on the same topic appeared in Belgian, Dutch and French media, some citing other studies than RMI’s. To a lesser extent I see this was also a topic in German, Italian, Potuguese and Spanish media at the same time, but not in Scandinavia or Poland.
I have no proof, but it does feel orchestrated , in particular because other studies were referenced at the same time, such as that of the Dutch research institute TNO.
Everything climate related is orchestrated.
Art ==> I would be interested in links to the EU press on the topic.
Kip==> Actually, the links are too many to mention. Here are a couple of examples in their native language from major outlets:
RTL news channelDutch national newspaper ADDutch National newspaper De TelegraafFrench national newspaper Le Figaro (refers though to the controversy in the US)
(google translate is sort of your friend)
For the Dutch publications, if I Google “astma koken op gas” (without the quotation marks), I get 85 results. Some of these web pages point to a report by national research institute TNO published in 2019 (!) (now it is suddenly news ???). The summary of that report in Dutch states among other items:
“Cooking on gas
In addition to ultrafine particles, cooking on gas also causes nitrogen dioxide (NO2) emissions and according to the WHO (2010) is associated with 20% more respiratory complaints children. Laboratory and field measurements with gas cooking show strong results with increased NO2 concentrations. Since currently in the Netherlands 50% of the hoods sold are sold as recirculation hoods, of which the carbon filter captures less than 20% NO2 within a few weeks of use, cooking is over gas, especially in airtight homes where there is insufficient ventilation is cause for concern. From a health point of view it is recommended to use electric cooking in these homes. And from an energy point of view, MilieuCentraal (2019) recommended inductive cooking.”
The WHO report is cited as: “WHO Guidelines for indoor air quality, Selected pollutants, 2010, p. 4 & 247″
This report appears to be mostly a meta study and is partly funded by TKI Urban Energy, an organisation that has multiple missions to get to net zero in housing and energy by 2050.
Also interesting is the press release of the Collaborative Labeling and Appliance Standards Program (CLASP). They say the TNO research included measurements of simulated indoor cooking situations.
There is no nitrogen in methane, so the NOx reaction must come from heated air which is 80% nitrogen. That means electric stoves and all other heating devices will produce it too.
Unlikely. NOx is produced during combustion, particularly at high temperatures. Electric resistance or induction heaters do not get hot enough to produce NOx.
Which is not to dispute that the claims about gas ranges being a risk are complete BS.
Where does the nitrogen come from?
That should depend upon the temperature necessary for the reaction. Electric stoves do not heat utensils to anything close to gas flame temperatures.
Remember that the garbage (French) meta analysis that concluded hydroxychloroquine was garbage managed to poll studies of COVID patients with survival rates not even of the same order.
So they use data from here, data from there, and get “statistical power” by polling data were the frequencies are so different they can’t possibly describe the same physical processes.
One author of that meta analysis was the same clown who promoted the bullets victims have been waiting in line in front of US hospitals because these are full of hydroxychloroquine overdose patients because Trump hoax.
Yes, a French “medical scientist” got caught on that pathetic could be the bee but not actually from the bee “news”.
These “meta” people don’t care about anything real world related. They have their “inclusion criteria” and that’s all.
We want a “betta” analysis
Not a meta analysis
Agreed that the study is junk, and thanks to Kip for doing the leg work and looking up the studies that are the basis of this meta-study.
But on the issue of what to cook on – I have cooked on four kinds of stove, an Aga range, a gas top with gas oven, gas top with electric oven, traditional electric top and oven, the ones with the thick raised metal plates, and electric oven with the newer thin smooth glass top and halogen or similar electric heating for it. I have not used induction.
Of them all the combination I prefer is electric hob of the newer sort with the thin glass top, and a a separate electric oven. The reason is that I find an electric oven much more controllable and pleasant to use than a gas one, I would never go back to gas. The hob is a matter of taste. Some people find gas more precisely controllable, which I do not think is an issue with the new halogen hobs. The most important reason is after using the halogen hob I no longer feel at all comfortable with the flames. Especially not all four at once, and especially not cooking something slowly and being able to leave it for a couple of hours. And especially not in a confined cooking area.
The Aga, solid fuel or gas, is fine, but its a special style of cooking, with extensive use of the ovens more or less essential. It has the merit of being always hot, but in summer, even in Northern Europe, the heat it emits can be oppressive. Like last summer in Britain it would have been impossible to keep on.
There is also a very practical side to this: stoves with flat glass surfaces are way easier to clean than traditional gas stoves.
The issue in the US is probably that you need a 220v dedicated feed to use an electric hob and oven, and this will be expensive and require special installation. Whereas in the UK and Europe probably just about all houses will have this built in as a dedicated cooker outlet, and there are lots of electric ovens which can be plugged into the ring main.
Yes, indeed. In the Netherlands it is common to have a dedicated three-phase 230 V plug for electric stoves. At 16 A per phase, that means you have 11 kW of power available.
In the US, our electric stove and oven built-ins are already wired for 220 and have been that way for more than fifty years.
That depends. Yes, if you have a major “boil over” it is easier to deal with. But, minor spills and grease literally get baked onto the surface (I know, because I have a glass cook top) that can’t simply be wiped away. You also have to watch what you use to clean the surface as not to scratch it. There are special cleaners made for that purpose which are to be rubbed on, and then left to dry and wiped/buffed off, not unlike waxing a car. In addition (and this is why me and my husband are hoping one day to replace the glass top with a gas cook top) you don’t want to cook in cast iron pans as they can crack the glass if you aren’t super careful.
Personally, if I had to have an electric cook top I’d go with the old coil type burners. They heat faster, cool off faster and the enamel surface around them is very easy to clean.
Now, after many years of a few different exposed coil electric stoves, I have a glass top one with some sort of infrared elements. I turn on the element to medium setting and it is glowing orange (under the glass top) within seconds. I don’t know the operational strategy but those elements go from dark to bright and back to dark fairly often, without intervention, as the meal is cooking. I presume to control temperature.
In regards to cleaning, I have read that newer development ceramic tops are much easier to clean than older ones. As this one came with the house, I have no idea of its age, abut cleaning is SO MUCH EASIER than going after all the small spill and crumbs that always drop beneath and around the exposed coils.
michel ==> Interesting…are you a professional cook?
My grandmother used a wood fired Aga until the day she died….in the screened outdoor Summer Kitchen in the summer and in the inside kitchen in the winter, the heat heating the rest of the house as well.
I live near the Culinary Institute of America, premier chef’s school, and they use nothing but gas. I try to image a chef in a Chinese restaurant using an electric stove under his wok….
No, far from! I have just found myself in the position of having to put food on the table, using whatever cooker was installed at the time, and then used that experience to install what I had found best.
I agree, restaurants must be different, I have no experience of that. This is strictly family cooking.
I have mostly done electric cooking for decades. Recently I rented for about a year in a place with a gas stove. Of course other gas stoves may be more controllable, I don’t know, but I had constant problems because of the way I cook and because the gas pressure (flame size) was rather intrinsically variable. Mainly it kept increasing slowly without the control knob being touched or sometimes going out because it didn’t have enough gas at the burner.
As to my method of cooking, most often after the skillet gets adequately hot, I turn the control way down and continue on low medium. That gas stove would not substation a low flame height. It would either die, releasing unburnt gas, or grow to make thing hotter than I wanted.
OBVIOUSLY, gas cooking is not sustainable.
Methinks we should go back to the old and proven method of burning cow dung and straw.
Ed ==> I have visited and eaten dinner in homes in the Dominican Republic that do that…it is not all that nice (to say the least).
In a way, (gas) stoves do really actually cause asthma.
So much garbage as what (I think) they’re on about here is what sets off (causes) Asthma attacks.
i.e Where/when the underlying chronic disorder makes its presence known.
And a truly frightening thing it can be for all concerned – I’ve done my share of taxi/ambulance races to A&E and Emergency Rooms in the middle of the night to know that
The underlying comes from a malfunctioning immune system.
One that hasn’t been primed properly and not working correctly because of:Caesarian birthsLack of colostrumInsufficient breast feeding and physical maternal contactIn the US esp, massive over-dosing with vaccines in the first 5 years of lifeMost important by a million miles, A Shit Diet revolving around carbohydrate
This is where stoves and cookers of all shapes and forms come in.
The diet we evolved eating and should be eating is entirely composed of stuff that does not need to be cooked.
If you want proof of Ehrlich’s hypothesis, look no further than any kitchen anywhere on this Earth
See the cooker in there?
THAT is the Starvation Machine – the very symbol of what’s going wrong everywhere, with peoples’ (mental as well as physical) health.
If you have a cooker in your house and you regularly use it – You Are Starving.
Because it is, in a rudimentary fashion, converting something that is totally inedible (starch) into something that is not completely horrible (sugar) when we push it into our mouths.
That does not mean we evolved to eat that nutrient-free mush ## and its exactly those missing nutrients that cause our immune systems to malfunction.
Asthma is just one manifestation – some folks reckon there are nigh on 200 in total autoimmune disorders.
## We all know ‘Pasta’ – lovely yummy stuff and the basis of many comfort foods – in turn the cause of magical thinking not least
Pasta: From the Italian; Translate as: Paste
as in Wallpaper Paste – that’s exactly all is is and is fit for
hey Peta cooking turns dangerous raw meat into YUMMY meals, and sorry but baked spuds n parsnips pumpkin etc is damn good too
Peta ==> Come on now, don’t hold back. Give us your real opinion straight out. 🙂
I like taters & I’m not giving them up … even if it did mean that my brain would function as well as yours.
antigas started a few months back in aus as well , abc jumped on this crap reportage of course.
attending at least 5 schools from 1 to 10(60s to 70s ) I cant say we EVER had an asthmatic kid and kero heaters gas n wood were the go to home heating back then, most stoves were gas in the cities.luxury for mum after woodstoves
not until I was 14 did I even know an asthmatic and she was only triggered by perfumes, nothing else and was an adult neighbour
ps if anything in gas triggers asthma its more likely the stinky stuff they add to make you aware of leaks, forgot the name but sure know the smell
ozspeaksup ==> In my homesteading years, we lived in a very rural,very poor area in which almost every home used kerosene heaters at least as supplemental heating. They have a unique smell, not too unpleasant, but make a lot of heat — dangerous as heck though.
When I moved to Montreal in the early 1970’s, kerosene heaters were common in poorer rentals where the building furnace only kept water from freezing.
I think kerosene heating is still pretty common in the US
If you look up modern kerosene portable heaters you will find that and dear of dangers is probably somewhat misplaced. They do require K1 kerosene in order to function within those safety parameters. This is not so of the fixed, vented to outside kerosene heater which can use K2, or diesel.
Yes, they need a little ventilation from outside; they do use up oxygen and they do produce very small quantities of CO, but they come with safety shutoffs for oxygen reduced atmosphere and safety shutoffs for tipped over (portable) heaters. Of course a CO detector would not be out of hand, it will warm you, like the smoke detectors, well before things get critical. The only real danger is with the user, such as pushing the thing back out of the way, into the drapes.
My tin foil hat is looking pretty ragged these days. May need to replace it soon. This latest proclamation by the guvmint has been around for a little while. And seems to have about as much validity as all of the rest of the “climate” hoax studies produced by those who want to make big bucks off of publishing them. Oh, and being part of the “in” crowd on the playground. Seems like I should’ve taken my studies more seriously and gone into some sort of “science” where I could make claims and get paid to back up my BS.
Back in 2020 the Sierra Club & the Natural Resources Defense Council began running PR campaigns that touted the health dangers of using natural gas.
The choreographed BS is now coming to fruition (for them).
It is likely that they were the just the shills for the original planners of the scheme, whoever ‘they’ may be.
The potential health hazards were being reported at least 60 years age but, as far as I know, never with any solid evidence.
Per a Mayo Clinic publication on astma:
“Asthma triggersExposure to various irritants and substances that trigger allergies (allergens) can trigger signs and symptoms of asthma. Asthma triggers are different from person to person and can include:
None of these mention gas stoves, only “air pollutants and irritants, such as smoke”. Well, smoke irritates everybody, astmatics or not, and in high enough concentrations in air can kill one almost instantaneously.
Also, the same pub said that we don’t know what causes astma, only that certain conditions listed above are known as “triggers” of astmatic attacks, not the cause of the disease itself.
Duane ==> Yes, thank you for bringing up the triggers issue and the fqact that we don’t really know what causes asthma.
Most journalists have no idea of how to evaluate studies, or ever actually had a hard science course, ever.
So silicone breast implants, Alar, nuclear power, climate change, and gas stoves all can get very credulous coverage, as the reporters treat every opinion as motivated by the personal history of the proponent. Industry Bad!
Liability Lawyers Good!
diagnostic triggers are not causes
I have lethal asthma, lethal meaning the little displayed number on the daily med is the days I have to live and I have to take a 200 inch 0.295 micron *first world niosh* respirator with me or smoke that I cannot even see can put me in the hospital
it most certainly was NOT caused by gas stoves
prjndigo ==> Ya, sorry about that. In lower school I had a friend, skinny little guy, who couldn’t play outside when the L.A. smog was bad. Once he snuck out to play kickball and the school had to call the ambulance for him.
Kip,
Blair King writing at A Chemist in Langley did a masterful analysis of the paper:
To conclude, I can only restate that the Gruenwald et al paper seems to have some clear challenges that would typically preclude it from consideration in a policy-making process.
– Its underlying data is of low statistical power.
– Its conclusion is directly contradicted by more recent studies with significantly greater statistical power. and
– It relies on a statistical tool that is considered invalid in situations with confounding variables yet it is being used to analyze an association that is absolutely rife with confounding variables.
Put simply, this is not the study I would rely on to make a major policy change that will affect millions of people and will cost billions to implement.
Roger ==> Terrific coverage by Blair…. readers should note that the primary misinformation killer mentioned by Blair is this:
“Cooking fuels and prevalence of asthma: a global analysis of phase three of the International Study of Asthma and Allergies in Childhood (ISAAC) “
Seems to me this is a perfect study — from ‘their’ point of view.
No. Next stupid question, please.
Pan smoke and grease splatters are also generated by cooking off of electric stoves. It’s about having a proper hood fan to suck all the smoke out of your kitchen.
Cam ==> Yes, the proper thing is to vent the cook stove and oven — to the outside (not like in my home, which is 150 years old.)
To summarize: a garbage study by biased “researchers” published in a sham journal; I believe we have the trifecta of junk science here. I smell a class-action lawsuit coming:
Alan ==> “Wait for it…..”
Call Scumacher, Howe, Yander, Scott, Thomson, Erickson, Richardson and Sanders
ie: SHYSTERS
Thank you Kip for this excellent takedown of activist driven bullshit science.
Anthony ==> I wish I could do it as well as you do!
They are treating gas stoves as if they are a new invention that is responsible for allegedly increasing rates of asthma. Gas stoves have been in widespread use for many decades, largely unvented either by design or practice (vent fans are very noisy), so if asthma is on the rise, something else must be changing.
Examples: – sealed insulated homes with poor fresh air makeup causing increased indoor air pollution (EPA studies quantitatively demonstrated this 35 years ago: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. 1987. The total exposure assessment methodology (TEAM) study: Summary and analysis. EPA/600/6-87/002a. Washington, DC.). – Children and adults decreasing exposure to the outdoors, – poorer cardiopulmonary health from inactivity (kids don’t play like they used to), – obesity and poor diet.
If the idea of indoor pollution from cooking with clean-burning gas or electricity is considered problematic, they might soon require that we all cook outdoors. They will also be banning fireplaces, wood-burning heaters and any other indoor pollutant-generating activities (e.g., essential oils, perfumes and fragrances, vacuum cleaners, household cleansers, etc.). At most, how about placing a simple notice on the product and then letting people buy according to their own preferences? California has for years been placing Proposition 65 warnings on practically every consumer product that it deems toxic or cancer-causing, but few of any people take them seriously.
think of the children!
Been an asthmatic since 3 years old, its seasonal set off by grass pollen amongst other things including powdered detergents. I have lived in cities, visited Shanghai for months and had my throat burned by the pollution in the air and currently rural in grasslands. But after all that the worst attack of asthma I ever had was after a summer thunderstorm in 1983. So did thousands in the same city and the event was studied as A&E was overwhelmed. Further similar events have been documented.
In England, the first recorded episode of thunderstorm asthma occurred in Birmingham in July 1983 and there have been a number of recorded events across the country since.
Most recently, a potential episode of thunderstorm asthma was detected by UKHSA’s real-time syndromic surveillance systems in June last year (2021).
https://ukhsa.blog.gov.uk/2022/03/18/thunderstorm-asthma-and-public-health-looking-back-to-move-forward/
An outbreak of acute asthma occurred in Birmingham and the surrounding area on July 6 and 7, 1983. In most patients symptoms began at the time of sudden climatic changes associated with a thunderstorm. Air pollution was not a factor.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0140673685915107
A gas hob has never been a factor either.
komando ==> “worst attack of asthma I ever had was after a summer thunderstorm in 1983.”
I think thunderstorm asthma attacks are triggered by excess ozone and charged particles in the air.
Up until that attack in 1983 a downpour with or without thunder during the summer had always given me 2 to 3 days of respite as the rain washed the pollen out of the air, as confirmed by lower pollen counts. No one has yet worked out how these events are acting as they do, the pollen count goes down, not all thunder storms initiate attacks. One theory is it drives fungal spores down towards the ground, which fits with me as fungal spores are a trigger. But as yet there is no conclusive evidence as to the causal mechanism other than ‘Some Thunder Storms’. I have never experienced a thunder storm induced attack since, their rarity means the underlying cause may never be known.
If these meta studies reach back to 1977 for reference and data … there is no merit whatsoever to their study. Why? Because in 1977 most gas cooktops and ranges in use had pilot lights. A little gas flame that burned 24/7 to allow ignition of the burners. Same with furnaces and water heaters (many of which were located inside homes).
Building codes and environmental regulations have done away with pilot lights on all appliances. All appliances have electronic ignition now. I would argue that whatever “data” was actually collected on the topic in 1977 is horribly outdated and not relevant to the gas cooking appliances of today.
kenji ==> If the studies had measured NO2 and other products of combustion, they might have made sense, but they used the proxy “home has gas cook stove”….no measurements (well, I found one study that measured, but they found very little difference to ambient air outside.)
Maybe the latest sales have no pilot lights but be assured that pilot lights are still extremely common. I was disappointed not many years ago to find out that the new gas water heater the landlord had installed (in CA no less) had a pilot light. On the other hand, that pilot light kept the larger burner from coming on at all during the warmest 4 to 6 weeks of the summer.
Many studies show that asthma is caused by dust mites.
doonman ==> Almost….asthma attacks can be triggered by dust mites. Medicine is still uncertain on what causes asthma.
Cough is the number one symptom in asthma. Better be careful here.
“In another examined study, the finding was: “In the 1977 cross-sectional study, only the prevalence of day or night cough in boys (p « 0.02) and colds going to chest in girls (p < 0.05) were found to be significantly higher in children from homes where gas was used for cooking compared with children from homes where electricity was used.” (NB: Not asthma.] Yes, gas cooking causes boys to cough and girls to get colds in their chests.”
clougho ==> While cough is often a symptom of asthma, it is not a diagnostic for asthma — lots of things cause nighttime coughing.
especially sinus draining while lying.down
And reflux of stomach acids.
The #1 cause of asthma in children today? Parents “hot-boxing” their children in a fog of marijuana smoke. Here’s a statistical analysis to perform … compare the relaxation of marijuana laws with the increased incidence of asthma in children. Yeah, yeah, correlation is not causation … but isn’t that what’s being used in this study as it is?
kenji ==> Smokey air in a household is BAD — no matter what causes the smoke. Smokey fireplace or woodstove, parents smoking anything, constant burning of incense.
Of course, in the 3rd World, cooking on a wood fire or dung fire inside the house.
Well … here in CA … the CARB has BANNED wood burning fireplaces … so that’s been eliminated as a source of kids asthma. So fewer children should be getting asthma. Also … fewer and fewer parents smoke the EVIL tobacco cigarettes than ever. So fewer children should be getting asthma. What’s been increasing exponentially? Marijuana smoking.
But as with everything … marijuana is political. It’s “in favor” politically. Hence there will NEVER be a study correlating marijuana smoking and asthma. That’s how science works … right?
The #1 cause of asthma in children today?
Don’t know but here’s my experience with our first born son. Around 3-4 months old and the wife is relief teaching odd days in Canberra so he goes into childcare. So it begins with seemingly perpetual coughs runny nose and flu type symptoms as he goes on bottle feeding too.
Wife decides this isn’t normal and off to the doc to come home and tell me the diagnosis is he’s likely asthmatic and will need puffer treatment. My BS detector goes to redline and no way. Even to the point where he had a nasty fever and I stayed home bathing him and keeping his temp down one time instead of the usual analgesics. (wife swears if our son dies she’ll never forgive me)
Now I smoked most of my working life until it was advisable to do it outside and for the last 7 or 8 years I vape my nicotine which the missus doesn’t mind inside the home or driving. Son turns 40 this year with 2 tackers of his own and along with his younger sister they’ve never had asthma in their lives.
But get this. Son’s first born daughter at 3 months comes down with fever and symptoms like he did and despite doc visits including evening callout she’s listless and clearly going downhill so admitted to hospital and news comes they’re testing her for dreaded meningitis. Turns out she has 3 viruses all at once (RSV, coronavirus and another that escapes me) and she’d developed bronchiolitis but with intensive care she pulls through against some not so lucky with Code Blues.
Now for the kicker as she’s a 5 year old in school Reception class late last year. While first mum then dad and then younger 3 yr old brother all come down with Covid (yes mum and dad are fully vaxed) she remains Covid free in their infectious household over a 3 to 4 week period. Be alert but don’t talk yourselves into asthma for kids in my experience as they need to build their own immunity.
Gas stoves have been around a lot longer than any increase in childhood asthma.
“After the Fact therefore because of the Fact”. A logical fallacy.
In this case the Fact of gas stoves were widely used for generations before any increase in childhood asthma.
So it’s okay to look at the causes of asthma in children now? Great, let’s look at vaccines shall we? The most frequently cited “study” on the safety of the CDC-recommended(required?) shots are an IOM meta-study in 2012. NO ONE and I repeat NO ONE who ever used that study to defend the insane vaccines that are being injected into kids actually read that meta-study. If they did they’d be an anti-vaxxer like I am. And this was well before the stupid Covid crap.
Oh aren’t convinced asthma is caused by the vaccines? Great, prove it. Autism? Prove it. Allergies? prove it. It HAS NEVER BEEN! Why? Because the pharma-ideologues say it would put kids at risk if they were the control group, i.e., the ones who didn’t get vaxxed.
It’s a scam. I’d say about 75% of all science today is a scam.
The authors should visit huts in India where food is cooked on stoves that burn cow dung.
My family and then myself have only ever had gas stoves and I don’t have asthma after 60 years. I have a cooker hood but only tend to use it when the kitchen starts getting smoky from fat splashing onto the electric grill for example. I have been surprised at how poor it is by getting it to hold up a piece of paper. Speeds 1 and 2 fail but maybe they should be used for all cooking first and then up to 3 if it gets smoky.
There is no mention of the benefits of a gas cookstove over the use of dung, coal, or wood inside a home.
I could not find any mention of the difference between bottled gas and pipeline delivered natural gas. Bottled gas is usually propane which is quite different from methane.
Some jurisdictions have actually subsidised the cost of bottled gas to provide a safer alternative for cooking.
There is a failure to consider the fact that many rural areas of the world do not have access to sufficient electricity to power electric cooking or perhaps even a venting fan.
Often the decision on what to cook with is based on availability and cost. Safety considerations will be the for best we can provide.
I was raised in a home with wood stove cooking and have used gas stoves for almost all of my 80 years. I would consider switching when my gas appliance is no longer serviceable if technology can provide a better alternative at comparable cost of purchase and operation.
If it can be proven to be safer that could enter into my decision process.
Gas stoves have been around for a LONG time. (And don’t forget that gas indoor lighting was once common.)
NOW there is an increase in childhood asthma? Caused by gas stoves?
What else has happened more recently that might account for it besides (the real target) fossil fuels?
For example, plug in home deodorizes?
Not blaming them but they are new along with many other new things.
(Maybe it was Pac-Man?) 😎