The first of the year the Biden Administration considered tightening regulations on gas stoves in households and businesses. The Administration claims it was not trying to ban gas stoves. Rather, the proposed rules were intended to reduce harmful emissions and make gas stoves more efficient. In the end the federal agency reached a compromise decision after a fierce backlash by Libertarians, Republicans, moderate Democrats, chefs, home cooks and everyone else who enjoys cooking and eating. In January E&E News (a Politico affiliate) had this to say:
Stoves that consume 1,770 thousand British thermal units (kBtu) per year of gas will be permitted under the new regulation, which aligns with a compromise floated last year by the Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers (AHAM) and the environmental group Appliance Standards Awareness Project. That’s a much more flexible regulation than the 1,204-kBtu threshold initially proposed by DOE.
It almost seems an oxymoron to try to make gas stoves more efficient. By their very nature gas stoves are designed to burn gas to heat pots and pans for cooking. To a significant degree, the cook determines the efficiency setting (otherwise known as the burner knob) based on cooking needs.
Gas stoves have become part of a broader culture war. One reason the Administration is trying to ban gas stoves or curtail their use (and usefulness) is the Left’s dislike for fossil fuels. A new red herring argument being thrown about are supposed health risks from using gas stoves. Research at Stanford University is adding fuel to the fire (so to speak) by calculating the exposure to harmful gases while cooking. The study attempts to further tarnishes the utility of gas stoves, claiming gas stoves contribute to thousands of deaths annually.
Ruth Ann Norton… started learning about the toxic gases, including carbon monoxide, formaldehyde, and other harmful pollutants that are emitted by stoves into the air, even when they’re turned off.
The study, published in the journal Science Advances, found that gas stoves contribute to about 19,000 adult deaths each year and increase long-time exposure to nitrogen dioxide to 75 percent of the World Health Organization’s exposure guideline.
“The exposures that we’re estimating, they’re not going to cause immediate, terrible health outcomes tomorrow,” Kashtan said. “So we certainly don’t want to be alarmist. On the other hand, day after day, year after year, using a stove that the exposure really does build up and does increase the risk of all these respiratory diseases.
Presumably researchers do not believe many people have ventilated hoods above their stovetops. In my experience everyone does. Indeed, building codes in most states require gas stoves to be vented to the outside. I tend to use the vent above my gas stove more in summer when I want to keep heat out of the house and when cooking foods with strong odors.
“Just like when public health scientists found that seatbelts were able to reduce risk of injury in car accidents. And just like when public health researchers found cigarettes to be dangerous to our health, there are now many scientific studies, including our recent article, showing gas stoves are not healthy because of the indoor air pollution they create,” said Nadeau, who is chair of the Department of Environmental Health at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. “Therefore, we should focus on solutions to reduce indoor air pollution to try to protect children, pregnant women, the elderly, adults, and public health in general.”
Are gas stoves really comparable to driving without seatbelts and smoking cigarettes? Driving without seatbelts is not deleterious unless an accident occurs. In the parlance of risk analysis driving without a seatbelt is what’s known as a low probability, high severity risk in the event of a catastrophic failure. By contrast, smoking cigarettes has a cumulative risk that builds over time of use. The miniscule risks associated with cooking with a gas stove are nothing like driving without a seatbelt and have little in common with smoking cigarettes.
We can largely dismiss public health arguments against gas stoves as another front in the attack on fossil fuels. If you’re worried about the dangers of gas stoves, turn on your vent hood. For that matter, I purchase filters for my HVAC system that contain activated charcoal to pull out household pollutants.
It’s all part of the new religion. But I do have to point out that I have seen a few hoods with no outside ventilation, which is apparently not required by recent building codes. The hoods do have fans, but the exhaust blows right back into your face.
I currently have an IR-ceramic cook top, which seems to be the worst of all. They are slow to heat up, and slower to cool down. I would gladly trade it for either gas or an old coil-electric range.
Most building codes require gas stoves have vent hoods that vent to the outside, whereas electric cooktops can use the vents that recirculate through a filter. My two previous cooktops were ceramic electric whereas now we have a Whirlpool gas. My wife hates the gas because it’s too hard to clean. Our previous Dacor cooktop was actually fast to heat up. I thought I would love the gas but it’s really just about average.