82
votes
More evidence that gas stoves produce suprisingly large amounts of harmful pollutants
Link information
This data is scraped automatically and may be incorrect.
- Title
- Cooking with a gas stove in your home is like living with a smoker, new research conducted in Denver finds
- Authors
- Noelle Phillips
- Published
- Jul 5 2023
- Word count
- 1114 words
I love mine. After using electric stoves for years I was extatic to switch to gas. I don't get any gas smell when its on at all and I leave my vent hood fan on anytime I'm cooking.
I'm not going to claim I'm not getting any fumes or other harmful stuff because I don't know and I don't have the equipment to measure that output.
I like to char peppers on the open flame or warm up tortillas right in the grate. I'm not going to switch it out if it still works though.
Depends how sensitive you are to the smell. My family has a long history of sensitivity to burning methane usually in the form of headaches. Obviously a truly clean methane burn is odorless, but few home stoves combust the methane perfectly.
I'm from a culture that cooks lots of flatbreads and in general loves using gas. My grandmother would force me to come into the kitchen as a kid and "get used to the gas smell", the way she did with my mom.
If you're curious about the effects of your gas stove on your air quality, you can grab an air quality sensor. Our sensor shows obvious, easily measurable changes when running the gas stove. That and my odor sensitivity is motivating our switch away from gas.
One thing I find interesting about the gas stove debate is that, other than the applications where flame is necessary, the justification for gas seems pretty emotional. Not really any figures on how fast things heat or whether heating is more uniform over gas, but just a lot of "I love my gas" style stuff. Cooking is of course an emotional affair, at least for me.
A fair observation. I can only speak anecdotally. I've owned 2 electric stoves and lived in many apartments where they were the default. They were all slower to heat up. In particular cast iron skillets, which is my preferred cooking vessel 99% of the time. That said, I understand the induction models to be really quick to heat up. I just am not in the market for a new one.
I wonder what contribution natural a gas furnace has to this air quality talk. That's the most common heating fuel where I live and we have pretty harsh winters.
So this is the real environmental reason behind most legislation trying to transition from gas stoves. Natgas furnaces are by far the largest actual consumers of natgas. Then there's also the general impact of the infrastructure and any leaks present in it when piping natgas. All told, gas stoves are marginal uses of natgas, but because people are so much more emotionally attached to gas stoves, they're likely to hold onto their natgas furnaces and natgas lines by holding onto their gas stove.
Not to mention electricity costs in some areas. We're fortunate with heaps of hydro, wind, and solar. So the bills are cheap by comparison to other states/countries. But I can't imagine the energy bills for folks in high electric priced markets.
I don't have any studies, but I will make the observation that a gas furnace has a dedicated exhaust system to vent the combustion gasses directly outside. This is required by regulations.
While the volume of gas that a stove uses is certainly less than a furnace, it does seem weird in retrospect that we don't also require the same kind of venting on a gas stove. It's burning the exact same thing. And yet every house that I have lived in they have all had a fan that blew back into the room and not outside (usually the microwave).
If people want to make the argument that they accept the risk and that it's worth it to them that's their decision. However I don't think that there's a valid argument to be made that combusting anything indoors doesn't severely affect the air quality of the house.
I have a vent hood that goes outside. I also have a whole house fan that I use if I'm searing steaks or something like that.
I'm very envious. It's on my list of house projects to get my range hood vented outside. Sometimes even just turning the oven on to preheat triggers the smoke alarm, because the vent fan does effectively nothing.
interesting that ovens there use methane, i’ve never heard of that. over here it’s all liquefied petroleum gas, which is a mixture of propane and butane mostly
LPG is supplied from a tank on the property somewhere and you need to have a truck come and refill it occasionally, natural methane gas is piped in by a utility that monitors your usage.
I've used a gas stove all my life, but have been using electric stoves since I moved to Houston. God I miss gas stoves
As time goes on it seems like there's more and more research showing how harmful gas stoves are to the environment and to health. I'm honestly surprised people actually like them and have a theory why. Growing up I was never exposed to them as my parents only used electric and then induction. However, I recently went on vacation and had the chance to cook on a nice gas stove for about a week.
Initially I was pretty excited because I've heard how great they are at heating quickly and being able to quickly adjust heat. But after using it for only a couple days I think something else is going on. The overall experience is baseline worse than electric. It smells up the entire area even with ventilation, it doesn't heat noticeably faster than electric (you still probably have to walk away for a bit), it creates a ton of excess heat, and you have to watch out for an open flame when resting utensils or grabbing lids with a towel.
But a lot of people swear by them, and my pet theory is they are rationalizing liking gas due to an association between food and gas smell. Because the gas smell is strong and distinct. I imagine anyone who grew up with gas or cooks on gas for a period of time is going to form an association between the smell and food. As well as a feeling of home, etc. Something you don't get with electric and induction, where the only smells are the from the actual food.
I'm not sure what you mean by the smell. If you smell something, you should probably call the gas department so they can check for leaks.
A major part is just that gas is fun to look at, which makes it seem like it's really doing a lot. Meanwhile, electric stovetops are a bit underwhelming visual-wise.
Gas also does get hot faster. In, say, a boiling water test, electric can win sometimes, but that's just one scenario. If you're saute-ing something in a thin frying pan, the gas stove is going to get your pan to frying temperatures much faster, because electric has a start up time.
Also some things just can't go on electric stovetops. A wok, for instance, is gas only.
Induction is the king of speed, but it limits the types of vessels and requires you to have a vessel - while it's not that common to do, you can use a gas burner as a burner, to say, char something, or warm a tortilla (with a nice char), or whatever.
Properly installed and ventilated gas stoves won't do what OP experienced, vis a vis the strong smell. I've had both over the course of 40ish years of owning homes, and would go back to gas today if it were feasible.
Also, peppers, naan, and other items have to be done over flames.
I'd have to get more experience with a gas stove to say if the smell is normal. I wouldn't say it was strong, but it was noticeable. The smell also wasn't the same smell as gas, but a sort of combustion smell.
Its possible that some people can smell benzene and VOCs and others can't. I have no research to back this up, but I do have a story.
One time at my old job working on air quality instruments, my coworker asked what the awful smell was. I had no idea what he was talking about about. He followed his nose, and we found one of the lab doors propped open. A different coworker was running calibrations on the VOC sensors for our instrument which requires high concentration bottles of pure benzene. He'd forgotten to turn on the fume hood, so apparently the gas filled the room and spilled into the hallway and made it all the way down to the cube area. Neither I nor the guy running the calibration could smell anything, but the guy who noticed it said he had a headache all day and that the smell lingered.
I'm quite sensitive (from my mother's side) to benzene and VOCs, usually in the form of an odd odor and headaches. I specifically buy low-VOC finishes when finishing my carpentry projects at home. When we were kids, my mom used to keep new mattresses in the garage for a week-ish to have them offgas. It was a frequent source of conflict between my parents because my mother is sensitive but my father can't smell a thing.
Keep in mind you were on vacation experiencing a different climate I assume.
Plenty of people experience a various symptoms as they acclimate to the new climate while away from home.
I have a gas stove and gas oven in my apartment and it’s always made a decently strong smell, at least to my nose. Especially the oven.
Have them check everything out - at the most, you should get a brief whiff as you light the pilot.
Compared to cheap electric stoves, gas is also infinitely faster to change temperature once hot. That's a huge plus for any home cooks.
It's a point in favor of gas, but most cooking doesn't really demand much responsiveness. If a recipe calls for a temperature change, you can make it a minute in advance to get similar results.
A boiling-over pot disagrees with you. :)
Also just fine-tuning the temp is much nicer on gas/induction. I burn my eggs way less on those.
A boiling-over pot can be trivially changed in temperature by lifting it up.
And operating a knob is way easier than lifting a pot which has boiling water spilling over the sides. This isn't really a problem, except when it is, especially with tykes around.
But it was a simple example to illustrate but one use case. Don't get me wrong, I'm 100% in favor of ditching gas. But it's way nicer to cook on gas/induction than a resistive cooktop.
Edit: Add ancedote from 2 hours ago:
Boiling hot dogs in water for dirty water dog KraftMac. Have lid on, step away to help kid. Water has overboiled, covering induction surface with greasy hotdog water (and this model is stupid cheap with soft touches instead of knobs). I lift pot, then turn on fan to cool water. Once its at about 'hot tea' temp, i throw a cloth diaper on it and impromptu clean it.
A resistive range would have boiled off the hot dog water instantly and started burning the grease into an unholy mess. It would have still been burning hot for 10 minutes, making it even harder to clean. A gas range likely would have extinguished the flame and started spewing gas into the house.
Induction forever.
I actually can't remember the last time I had a pot boil over! If it's happening to your pasta, it doesn't even need to reach a boil to get the right consistency, so you can temp down to avoid it happening altogether.
best way to cook an egg, is in cast iron, medium high heat and then immediately turn it down to medium low heat as soon as you crack the egg in... but the cast iron retains heat well enough it should be fine on most electric.
But in general, if you wants eggs jelly or little runny, etc, you have to pay attention and baby the heat a little, especially on a stove you're not familiar with
I like my eggs like I like my steak: Pittsburg Rare. Charred on the outside, raw in the middle.
Not really, but dippy eggs and toast is my favorite thing I mess up too much.
well if you want easy&perfect poached eggs, have you considered an immersion cooker (sous vide)?
basically a water oven. and oven filled w/ water which holds its temperature better than air, and more precisely.
eggs can be cooked as is, but other stuff you just vacuum seal it first.
https://www.seriouseats.com/sous-vide-101-all-about-eggs
Oh not poached (though sous vide is fun), over-easy. Cooked whites, runny yolk. Perfect for sandwiches (break yolk and use like jam).
Nest Eggs are another favorite. Make a hole in bread with a cup. Put some butter in pan, and fry bread, cracking an egg in the middle partway through. Flip to crip other side.
This is not true. It's true that electric stoves don't get hot enough to do restaurant-level wok hay, but neither do pretty much any home gas stoves in the West. You can still cook in a wok fine in either case, your heat management is just going to change -- whether you use gas or electric or induction or whatever. The real fanatics will buy separate mini propane burners that can get hotter than a normal stovetop, but it's perfectly serviceable to cook over a conventional Western home stove even if it doesn't reach some pinacle of wok temperature.
You do need to use a flat-bottomed wok on an electric stove rather than a round-bottomed one, but this is also true of most Western gas stoves (though they do sell "wok rings" which work with round-bottomed woks and gas stove burners. There are people with strong opinions about only using round-bottomed woks but those people are probably a pretty small minority of the people actually cooking with woks day-to-day.
I use an electric stove bc landlord and it's definitely got its quirks that I don't like, but I cook plenty of decent stuff in my wok all the time. I'd switch to induction in a heartbeat, but I already have asthma so I wouldn't switch to gas for the health risks alone (even if it were allowed here, which I'm not 100% sure it is).
That's not really a wok, in the same way a spork is not a fork. While it has some attributes of a wok, it misses the continuous temperature gradient of the sloped sides which is critical for many advanced wok techniques.
I'm sure you can get some good stir fry from it, but you can also do that in a frying pan. But you won't be able to get wok hei
The environmental/health aspects are a legitimate topic and reason to switch to electric, but from a user perspective I wonder if you were using a poor gas stove or poorly ventilated area?
I grew up on gas but have been using electric for the last 6+ years since I moved. Any somewhat decent gas stove absolutely heats things up quicker than an electric stove, and the only time I smell any gas is on the initial ignition. After that the smell never lingers. Excess heat is for sure a potential hazard to watch out for, but it also shouldn’t really be an “open” flame. The flame should pretty much be always contained under the pot you are cooking on, it’s really not taking up any more room than say, coils from an electric stove. It likely does generate more side heat though.
Having used both, I can definitely say it’s not about “rationalizing due to association”, but just overall better usability and versatility.
That said, given environmental/health impacts that keep coming out, I’m ok sacrificing some of that for a more environmentally friendly option.
What kind of electric stove? Induction or resistive heating? Resistive is a terrible user experience compared to induction. Induction feels like magic cookware heating, and resistive stuff feels primitive by comparison. If you were on resistive gear, I can understand your experience, but have to say it's invalid.
If you were on induction, I'm going to guess it was a weak one. I've used a high-end gas stove before, and I'd say my mid-range induction stove is a better user experience for almost all use cases.
I suspect they're talking about the ceramic & coil-style. My very first stoves, i.e. the stoves in my shittiest apartments, were coils. My SO grew up on ceramic stoves & I've lived in a couple of places that had them.
More than the fact that they're both slower to heat than a gas range, they're glacially slower to ADJUST temperature once you're cooking. So anybody with a passing interest in making their own food is going to like a gas stove.
I think this is part of the issue. Gas stoves all work in the same way with the same effectiveness whether you go cheap or high end. Electric is terrible at the cheap end and great at the high end, but for renters or anyone who can’t afford a new stove (probably most of us) electric seems worse than gas because the high end option is out of reach
For renters, I highly reccomend buying an induction burner. You can get a decent one for <$100, and its miles better than the garbage stovetop your landlord gives you.
Heck, we bought one in our house for cooking outdoors in the summer, and it's completely replaced our usual resistive range, until we can afford a full induction setup.
We currently have gas which I far prefer (and an extremely draughty house which I don’t, but hopefully it’s at least keeping us safe from the gases!)
But this is a good tip!
What the hell? No. Stop that. That's ridiculous.
"Electric" i.e. plate heats up very slowly, period. It also cools slowly. Spiral is much better, but still has inertia of the Moon. Flame is instant and has zero inertia. Smell? You have a leak.
Including chefs. That should tell you something. This is mostly because of said (lack of) inertia. The thing is, chefs switched to praising the relatively new induction because it's superior in practically every way except roasting marshmallows. But so-called electric is just garbage no matter the incarnation, and you'd be surprised how many people don't know induction is completely different or that it exists.
I grew up with electric. After I bought my own place I upgraded to induction. Current house has gas, and I'm not going back. I don't think there's any association between food and the gas smell, unless I spill something.
I'll echo what others have said: there's definitely a problem with the kitchen you rented. We have zero gas smell outside of a second on ignition, and that's with the hood fan on its lowest setting. That and the lack of a significant improvement in heating up time makes me think the stove wasn't combusting properly.
Also, the recent study on the health effects of gas stoves isn't exactly well done.
If you're smelling gas at ANY TIME that is a sign of something very bad! I like gas because it heats much faster, cooks more consistently, and is much harder to leave on by accident,
Yeah, smelling gas means there is a gas leak, and that's not good. They add a smell to it specifically to make you notice if there is a leak. It's a potential emergency.
At a previous place I rented, I started smelling gas around the stove and reported it to the landlord. He sent someone out immediately, and they diagnosed it as a faulty stove and replaced it. I've never had such a quick response to any other issue I've reported.
Anecdotally your theory falls flat. I grew up on electric and always thought it sucked, then I got my first apartment with my now wife that had a gas stove and realized how much better it felt to use. I had no positive associations with the gas smell and you only smell it for half a second until the flame kicks up. If you're smelling the gas all the time, something is wrong.
One advantage of a gas stove is that it will work (at least the burners will) when the power is out.
In certain food cultures, especially ones with lots of street food, there's a deep association with flame and good food. Many South Asians, both rich and poor, grow up with large flames in their house and walk on streets and see street vendors cook food over huge tawas on large flames. Part of this is the sight, smell, and sounds of food being cooked. It's really hard to break that deep association.
South Asian food also has a lot of flat breads and it's much easier to cook a flat bread over a direct flame than it is on a heated grill. At home, I've solved this by having an Iwatani butane burner for flat breads or things that need the direct flame. This also doubles as an emergency stove if the power cuts out.
Yup, my wife cooks chapatis directly on the flame when we're calorie counting (eschewing the oil that would be used on the griddle).
Having said that in most of South and South-East Asia where gas is the norm kitchens tend to be reasonably well ventilated.
Yeah my grandmother's house had huge veranda doors from the kitchen to a tiny balcony and we'd pop them open each morning to start the day. Also kept the kitchen smelling nice from spices.
Huh. Gotta say, the same sentiment (preferring gas for IMO irrational reasons) persists in some people in Germany, but I don't think I've ever heard of gas smell when cooking with gas here. My personal pet theory is that it's caveman associations. Something about actual fire. I certainly get the overall fascination with fire, but when cooking, I don't care for it.
OP potentially had a gas leak or did not know what natural gas smells like.
are you sure you're not confusing induction (which is based off electric too) to electric coil?
My GF had an electric stove and I had gas, and switching back and forth frequently i disagree w/ all of that.
My gas does heat up faster noticeably as to where out of habit i crack an egg on a similar cast iron pan and forgot i was on electric and its not cooking/sizzling for a while.
i cant think of any open flame problems re: leaving utensils thats different than the same circle space i can't on her electric... and her top stays hot longer (as opposed to webbed grill grates which i guess allow a faster cool down?)
clean up ease depends on glass top (which is a pain, but at least its flat) and old school electric coils are the worst. Gas grill grates i can throw in the dishwasher and wipe down the wells.
never had a smell
but that all being said, i would switch to induction as soon as its possible convenient for me.
I only smell gas when there's something wrong. Even without ventilation, a properly maintained gas stove shouldn't give a significant smell. This can be dangerous. You should look into it.
I have indoor air quality sensors in various locations in my house, and I can state that gas cooking decreases overall air quality according to these sensors; and that's just from turning them on, not cooking with them. But also, we've known about the risks for many decades, it's just that now we are learning that the risks are actually much greater than previously understood.
As someone who had electric ranges in a couple homes, they were objectively awful in terms of user experience. Maybe electric ranges made in the last few years have gotten significantly better, but electric was slow and the metal elements on the really old range was a nightmare to keep clean. The glass cooktops were better but even slower than the exposed metal spiral heating elements.
Induction, however, is the top pick. Faster, safer, and better use experience to gas. But up until recently it was orders of magnitude more expensive. And in the USA you typically have 110v outlets but induction ranges, and most good electric ranges, need 220v outlets, but it could cost thousands of dollars to install that after the fact. So even though induction ranges themselves are more affordable these days, the cost to prep your electrical for it is not, and that's because of the ridiculous way USA does 110v outlets.
So really it's a matter of cost and existing infrastructure. And of course existing misconceptions. I bought a sous vide device many years back and started to prefer using that to cook my steaks with a light sear from a fry pan. Everyone that tries it tells me it's way more juicy and tender from the sous vide but some people refuse to try it on principle, because it wasn't done on a grill or in an oven. Some people just have a way they know and you won't easily convince them otherwise, if it's even possible to do so.
Do you have VOC sensors specifically or are they PM 2.5 sensors? Most residential indoor air quality meters don't include VOC sensors because they're expensive, inaccurate, and go out of calibration quickly. Most sensor bundles I've seen might have easier gases like CO, CO2, radon, formaldehyde, and always a PM sensor. PM 2.5 is the only one that matters, though some include PM 10 and PM 0.3 with them. To a lot of people "air quality" is synonymous with PM 2.5, which just detect any particles of that specific diameter. Lots of things show up in that scale, including water vapor.
When I worked on air quality instruments, we had an ultrasound humidifier on hand so we could artificially trigger high readings on our PM and relative humidity sensors to test our firmware. You can try this yourself by going up to your sensor and blowing on it for about 5-10 seconds. You should see a spike[1] in PM 2.5 and relative humidity depending on the sampling rate of the sensor, how they do rolling averages, and how often they update the screen.
[1]: disclaimer: I could be remembering this wrong. I know the ultrasound humidifiers for sure spikes PM 2.5 but I don't recall for sure whether breath vapor did too. I spent a lot of time blowing on the thing for the humidity and CO2 display, so I could be misremembering doing it for PM as well.
My device measures PM 1, 2.5, and 10 as well as CO, CO2, and VOC. It was not cheap, but I have asthma so it was a worthwhile investment for me.
And to your point any the humidifier, we accidentally put non-distilled water into the humidifier once and the aqi shot up line crazy because pm reasons were going up so fast.
The VOCs go up as well as the PM readings. It's not crazy or anything though, it's usually subtle if it does trigger a sensor change, but it does happen with enough consistency (like 75% of the time) that I can tell it's related.
Do you have a range hood that vents to the outside? Does your house have mechanical ventilation?
These things are more or less mandated by building codes in my area, and I wonder how much they do to lessen the air quality issues.
E.g. when pan frying on my electric stove I won’t notice anything in the living room
I do have a range hood the vents outside, and I also open up a tiny window I have in my kitchen, but the bigger issue is that gas ranges simply aren't 100% efficient. Which is alright conceptually, electric aren't 100% efficient either, but the loss of efficiency in electric ranges is just consuming more electricity. The loss of efficiency in a gas range means some of the gas isn't being combusted, and that's a problem regardless.
If you have a super heavy duty hood with external vent, yeah, maybe it's a non issue, but that's not a cheap solution. And for renters it's not a solution at all (they don't get a say in those kinds of changes).
This is not true. Gasoline engines are nowhere near 100% efficient, but you'd better believe every gram of gas in a cylinder is combusting. Efficiency in these contexts refers to the amount of stored energy which makes it into the work of cooking. Almost all of the energy in a complete combustion of methane (propane, etc) is converted to heat. Combustion is not necessarily complete (which does cause pollution, and poorly installed/maintained stoves are awful for that ad these recent studies demonstrate), but if you can't smell gas after using the stove, and the flame is a bright blue/white all the way through, you're at least converting the methane into a different chemical.
The vast majority of the inefficiency rating in a gas stove comes down to what's essentially heat spillage. The flames go up, as does the heat, but a large bulk of that heat is deflected by the bottom of a pan/pot rather than absorbed, or simply scatters in the air around it through diffusion, since it isn't like most of us use jet stoves.
It is still a problem regardless! We're still talking about recklessly burning methane for no productive purpose, and while I'm a fan of gas stoves over resistance electrics, it would be much more eco-friendly if everyone could somehow swap to induction, even if the power plants are running on gas anyway.
Oh interesting, I was not aware efficient had a particular meaning like that in this context. I'm not sure what the correct terminology is then, but the study I linked to says that not 100% of the gas is combusted, some of it does escape that process. Which seems plausible to me because in an engine it's all closed, but for a stovetop it's open, more chance for little bits to not not react and become fire. I don't know exactly how much, I'd have to set of the article mentions the exact amount here, but yeah, thanks for explaining what efficiency means in this context.
Yeah, sorry, I was a little unclear on that. There's definitely more incomplete combustion going on in a stove than an engine, I was trying to clarify that almost all of the methane does combust. However, very rarely do hydrocarbons instantly decompose into water and carbon dioxide, usually there are partial products which are further broken down into those end results in an ideal situation. It's those products (e.g. benzene) of partial combustion that are the risk factors, not methane. Nothing to do with this definition of efficiency, though I know that sensationalist publications will often intentionally confuse such domain-specific jargon.
That's not really true either. It's a function of getting the fuel and air ratios right, otherwise some fuel won't be combusted.
Though cars are getting very close. 2/4 stroke lawn tools however....those should probably be banned. That smell they emit is due to all the uncombusted fuel being spewed into the air. It's so bad, you'd be better off figuring out how to make your new pickuptruck blow leaves than use a gas-powered leaf blower.
Yeah this has come up every few months for the past few years. I don't understand why there's so much concentration on piddly little things like gas stoves and straws, as opposed to easier changes that would make a bigger difference (like manufacturing, shipping, etc).
I've been anti-gas for awhile. Only things in my home now with gas are an unused decorative fireplace and an outdoor backup generator.
If for no other reason, the risk of carbon monoxide poisoning is basically 0 now. I probably would have been less eager to switch if homes/apartments still had proper vent hoods.
Going full-electric is gonna be an important part of the path to going full-renewables. Save the combustion for vehicles that need that power density more.
I like the thought of a future where the most combustible gas anyone has is a small tank of propane/natural gas, and that piping natural gas all over the place becomes a relic of the past.
I would guess the major reason is the fear of taking away someone's right to choose (yes I get the irony, please don't bother pointing it out.)
It should be up to the consumer to choose if they want a gas stove, not the government. The major talking points were coming from cities and states talking about banning the installation of gas stoves in new homes.
I don't know why the threads come up at certain cadences, but there's a clear reason why people dislike gas stoves. The costs of natural gas infrastructure are high. It has to be mined, then pumped to a home. There's only a few sources of it, unlike the many sources of electricity around. Leaks in natgas infrastructure are bad for the environment and hard to detect. Carbon monoxide poisoning is a leading cause of death in most countries.
Having used all 3 primary stove types, I prefer gas (at least for a stovetop) over induction over electric (coil of flat top). I do prefer electric for an oven, though. It creates a dryer heat which is better for baking. And so my current setup is the best of both worlds - gas cooktop with an electric wall oven. And yes, I have extremely good external ventilation. For some things I cook, you can smell it outdoors better than indoors.
I also have an induction standalone burner because it does boil water very quickly, which is useful on a really hot day to help keep the temperature down inside if our AC struggles to keep up (or if I just run out of burners on my cooktop). It has a few pitfalls that I don't have to deal with on my gas range though.
So while induction is better than the coil electric stoves, it's not quite as good (IMO) as a gas stove, at least when it comes to my personal preference. I'm totally willing to do whatever I need to in order to ensure that I have the ability to safely cook over gas in my home. We even have a propane tank whose sole purpose is for cooking at our cabin (since we don't have municipal gas service like we do at home).
Here’s the press release for the study and here’s the paper.
Do you know where the article title claim, that it’s like living with a smoker, came from?
That headline really set off some alarm bells but I can’t access the article due to
firewallpaywall.Edit:
Yeah that italicized statement is doing a lot of heavy lifting. If you have a hood that vents externally, gas stove emissions inside are not a big deal. They aren’t as contained as, say, the chimney for your furnace, but pretty much everything is getting sucked out.
With that said I grew up in a house with a gas stove and no vent, but I didn’t really notice the air quality issue until I bought a house as an adult with a proper vent. Cooking smells and vapors clear out so much faster and cooking at my parents’ annoys me more now. I do think anyone who chooses gas cooking should invest in proper ventilation.
Otherwise, induction is very good. Not worth the effort of retrofitting my house that doesn’t have an electric stove outlet but if I had one I’d consider induction, it heats up and cools down so quickly.
Sounds a bit dramatic. Is benzene the chemical from smoking that causes the most harm to humans? Or are they comparing it to smoking because it makes their claims sound more substantial?
It would be good to distinguish between different kinds of air pollution, because there are different ways to do something about them.
Smoke particles are pretty easy to remove with an air filter. They don’t work for gasses, though.
There seem to be activated carbon air filters that do more?
I've used Gas, Induction and Resistive Electric and I prefer them in that order. I have a hard believing the combustion products of gas are worse that the products produced through frying. Home vents are a bigger issue, especially in apartments where they don't vent but just run it over a charcoal filter.
Archive link: https://archive.is/OOkY7
Edit: never mind, didn’t work. Does anyone else have an archive link?
Also, here is the direct link to the study: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.2c09289
From Deimos himself:
p.s. The archive.org snapshot actually successfully captured the whole text, (cc: @skybrian):
https://web.archive.org/web/20230705140633/https://www.denverpost.com/2023/07/05/gas-stove-benzene-air-pollution/
So how does archive not get in trouble for hosting all these full articles that are behind a paywall?
Libraries, archives, and museums get exemptions from certain elements of copyright laws in most countries. However, Internet Archive is often still operating in a bit of a grey area, and they also regularly push the boundaries of those exemptions too... so they have been sued (and lost) before. E.g. Most recently - https://www.npr.org/2023/03/26/1166101459/internet-archive-lawsuit-books-library-publishers
Im kind of curious about natural gas vs propane gas stoves. Ours is propane and its a more refined gas but not sure if that mitigates any of the benzene concerns. Definitely nicer for quick heat vs electric, although we also have a countertop induction burner thats even faster than the propane stove, but not as easily controlled heat level.
Since no one has posted it yet: here's the Climate Town episode on cooking with gas. Lots of great info in there that covers a ton of what is being discussed in this thread, like why people seem to like gas a little too much and how harmful it can be to our planet.
I see a lot of hate for electric here but I suggest checking out Technology Connections video on this topic. Very detailed and helpful for the topic.
https://youtu.be/eUywI8YGy0Y
I love my induction cooktop. I had a gas stove in my childhood and it was fine, probably because it was an older model that "just worked" since it lasted so long. Then I had electric stoves for years since living in various apartments, I also thought they were fine. I then moved into a condo with a new gas stove -- I hated it; it took forever to boil water, it seemed like was wasted so much heat energy, the "responsiveness" of the flame was maybe the only "pro," but I didn't need it that much for basic home cooking. In our current condo, we got an induction, and it's now the only type of stovetop I'm interested in. It's clean and sleek, it has instant responsiveness, and it can heat up so fast. Prior to the induction stove, I'd always put already-hot water in the pot if I needed boiling water because gas/electric stoves took so long to boil water -- with the induction I can get cold water to a rolling boil in a few minutes. I love it. I don't get the gas stove hype.
I just bought a house with a gas stove in it after having electric my entire life. It was more incidental than anything else, and I'm set to move in next week. Now I'm all worried that I'm going to brain / lung damage my kids after reading all of this stuff. As far as functionality goes I'm pretty stove neutral, but it's going to be a pretty big expense to get rid of this one and swap it out for an induction stove, which I'd like to do.
My wife would like to keep the gas stove since it works during a power outage however, and we seem to get at least one major one a year that lasts up to a week. I'm very uneasy now though.
This is one of the points that I always think of when this debate comes up. It really is a kick in the teeth that using electric for every device we have makes power outages even worse than they are.
Get a camping stove, they're cheap, small and easy to stow away when not in use plus you can use it for cooking in odd places or, you know, for camping.
What’s not mentioned in this article or other places, is that if you have a good hood that vents all that smoke and gas outside much of the problem is mitigated.
Start there and feel much better about your purchase
While it's true that good ventilation can help mitigate the problem, there was a study done that showed gas appliances typically leak methane gas even when not in use 1. Even though these levels are very low, unless you are ventilating your kitchen 24/7, you aren't necessarily going to mitigate "much" of the problem.
That's the real issue with gas appliances. While I'm sure that make, model, and installation all contribute to exactly how much leakage there is, that's still not a great statistic for gas appliances. Personally I try to only use gas outside, ie my grill, but I also get that it's not realistic for everyone to have access to induction. Thankfully, air purifiers exist that can help combat against some of this problem and you can place one or two near the kitchen to help.
[1] https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.1c04707#
Three words: Generac Gas generator. It solved basically all of our worries with full electrification.
And if that goes, I'm intending to replace the gas fireplace I have with a proper wood pellet stove for emergencies.