California is considering a law that would require warning labels on gas stoves.
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New research shows gas stove emissions contribute to 19,000 deaths annually
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Think about your analogy more: remember how early in the pandemic a disproportionate percentage of the severely ill were not Republicans but poor brown people who had the kind of jobs which are considered essential and impossible to do remotely? This is similar: look at the politics of the landlords, not their tenants. The same people who buy the cheapest gas stoves allowed on the market are the same people who won’t pay for proper ventilation, won’t service anything except under legal threat, and don’t upgrade anything until it’s unambiguously unusable. Each gas appliance bought now is going to be polluting for multiple decades.
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purposelycryptic
Ars Scholae Palatinae
I just bought a new house last year, and was honestly shocked when I checked out my extraction hood, and realized it "extracted" the air right back into the kitchen.
I'm used to lab extraction hoods, that, well, actually extract. There should be a 'Truth in Advertising' law about calling hoods that don't extract extraction hoods. Just call it a "Filter Hood", the industry can even make HEPA versions to sell at an ungodly markup.
I looked into getting a proper extraction hood installed, but since there is no vent built into the house for it to use, it isn't exactly cheap. Still, I've already budgeted for a forced extraction system for my garage workshop, I'm hoping I can get a discount on the extra vent work if I get them both done at the same time.
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quote snipped
How is a resistive radiant heater more efficient than induction, if you have to heat up the coil and the glass ceramic in between as well? Unless you are so accurate and frugal with your controls that you cook to 99% with the residual heat of the glass ceramic. Which 99% people aren't.
The only way a pure resistive heater is more efficient is in a water kettle with a directly immersed coil, only because induction has some energy losses in the IGBT circuitry, and that's only before scaling on the coil comes come into the equation. No way a radiant resistive heater is more efficient than inductive.
A good induction stove offers pretty much instant response, and if you want to save energy even more, just get a pot with a thick bottom, it will accumulate the heat just as well.
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According to the study, residents of homes
less than 75 m2 are exposed to an extra 8.6 ppb of NO2 per year—four times as much as people living in houses of more than 280 m2. It appears opening at least one window would help a lot.
Very surprisingly the American Gas Association (AGA), a trade group, calls the study misleading and unsupported. “The data presented here clearly does not support any linkages between gas stoves and childhood asthma or adult mortality,” AGA president Karen Harbert says in a press release. At least two earlier studies the researchers cited, including a meta-analysis commissioned and funded by the WHO, “contradict the conclusions they have presented,” Harbert says.
So looking at the study the authors found that people who never open their windows experience 9 times more long-term NO2 exposure compared to those who frequently open windows (see Figure 5 in the study). To mitigate acute short-term exposure a fan venting to the outside should be used in addition to an open window.
less than 75 m2 are exposed to an extra 8.6 ppb of NO2 per year—four times as much as people living in houses of more than 280 m2. It appears opening at least one window would help a lot.
Very surprisingly the American Gas Association (AGA), a trade group, calls the study misleading and unsupported. “The data presented here clearly does not support any linkages between gas stoves and childhood asthma or adult mortality,” AGA president Karen Harbert says in a press release. At least two earlier studies the researchers cited, including a meta-analysis commissioned and funded by the WHO, “contradict the conclusions they have presented,” Harbert says.
So looking at the study the authors found that people who never open their windows experience 9 times more long-term NO2 exposure compared to those who frequently open windows (see Figure 5 in the study). To mitigate acute short-term exposure a fan venting to the outside should be used in addition to an open window.
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Finished SHOUTING? Are you feeling OK? Have you forgotten to take your tetraethyl-lead pills today?
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The last time I had a recirculating "extraction" hood over a gas stove in my childhood, after a few years of cooking the combination of grease from food and fine soot or particulates from the gas burners made it into an uncleanable biohazard mess...
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We're looking to switch our hot water heater from gas to electric, and have run into exactly this problem.
Don't know what codes are like in your area, or your infrastructure options, but our electrician has suggested adding a sub-panel as probably being the most economical solution. As I understand it, this won't mess with the existing wiring and we'd only need a permit for the new work. Might be something you could look into.
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Tell me you don't know what science is without telling me you don't know what science is. The examples you cited aren't science, they're marketing.
The problem isn't with science, the problem is with people like you who don't know science from BS, and with marketing departments who use "here comes the science" advertising to exploit people like you who don't know science from BS. If you educate yourself properly, not only will you be wiser, you'll also be richer as these guys won't have such an easy time emptying your wallet.
Also, just in case you didn't know, shampoo doesn't turn your hair into strands of steel or silk. It's just shampoo.
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Here in India, Cigarette packets have oral-cancer pics with warning. Most movie screening shows one or two people with oral-cancer. Still people smoke. I wonder why the product is allowed to be manufactured and sold. But I guess govt. loves its tax money more than people.
And free will (or the illusion of it), of course!
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I switched to induction by buying a bamboo cover for my gas burners ($100) and a Duxtop professional single burner for $170, it uses 110V. I’m probably going to pick up a dual burner at some point as I’m starting to feel the restrictions of 1 burner.
i can flip the breaker if i run my dishwasher, set the burner to boil, and run my electric tea kettle at the same time (my dishwasher is a countertop model that runs on 110v too). My kitchen was built before all these electric devices were common so it’s all on one circuit.
i can flip the breaker if i run my dishwasher, set the burner to boil, and run my electric tea kettle at the same time (my dishwasher is a countertop model that runs on 110v too). My kitchen was built before all these electric devices were common so it’s all on one circuit.
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Hey, I feel it was you who started with being condescending, but whatever. Sure, whatever works for you. I'd still think any continuously adjustable old lab hotplate from an uni sale would be much better than a resistive stove top with something like 6‑12 random power levels, but if that's your only option, all the power to you! Do with what you got, I get it. I just didn't get complaining about it in a thread about cooking, sorry...
And no, not "everyone should be just rich" – no way. I perfectly understand that, not exactly being rich myself. Just that other options exist, like using a different cheap heater for whatever tinkering you want, when an induction kitchen one doesn't work that well for that. If you really want fine control, you can even tinker up a resistive one yourself.
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Unfortunately, recent studies show that is not the case: https://www.npr.org/2022/01/27/1075874473/gas-stoves-climate-change-leak-methane
Gas stoves leak constantly, even when off. Cost, age and brand of the stove was irrelevant. Pilot-light stoves are just much worse at this.
Less of a direct health risk since the leakage amount is low, but the effect is notable over the broad population of stoves.
I've got a gas stove myself, but I would like to replace it with a built-in induction cooktop in the near future. The furnace will be the first to go though.
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It is very hard to get a complete combustion, especially in a flame. A flame (if not well pre mixed) has a radial gradient between "rich" and "lean" mixture where combustion happens. Outside the gradient area you have pure fuel or air. This area moves inward radially as you move higher up the flame. If you have a big, cool surface for the flame to touch you will quench the flame close to the surface and end up with non complete combustion along the surface. Even without a surface you will get instabilities, especially at the tip of the flame. Small areas might not be able to retain the temperature until fully oxidised if they "break free" from the main flame
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John Timmer recently wrote an article titled “Using vague language about scientific facts misleads readers”.
The article about gas stoves says their “emissions contribute to 19,000 deaths annually”. In a different way this is an example of vague language.
In 2015, a total of 393 deaths resulted from unintentional carbon monoxide poisoning. (1) That is tragic however to put that into perspective;
In 2016, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reported 37,461 people killed in fatal motor vehicle crashes. (2)
Gun murders were about at the rate of 10,000 per year in the mid 2010s (increasing rapidly during the pandemic). (3)
The gas stove article states;
”Researchers also found that people of color are disproportionately affected by the stoves.”
This is about poverty. We should certainly want no gas stoves to be used as space heaters and that all of them should have proper ventilation.
In addition, it should also be known that there are other greater risk factors for people living in poverty in the US (and parts of Canada).
In a Canadian study it was found that there were significantly more injured pedestrians, cyclists, and motor vehicle occupants at intersections in the poorest than in the richest areas. (4)
In studies on the effects of poverty, studies have found a strong link between increasing poverty and the rise in homicide rates across the United States. (5)
For people in poverty there are many more premature deaths due to other factors compared with gas stoves.
But a question remaining could be; what about gas stove “emissions contribute to 19,000 deaths annually”?
Many things can “contribute” to premature death.
Cigarette smoking remains the leading cause of preventable death in the United States, accounting for more than 480,000 deaths every year. (6)
One study showed that increasing total processed meat intake by half a daily serving or more was associated with a 13 percent higher risk of mortality from all causes. (7)
And that relates to poverty. Men and women with incomes below the federal poverty level had a significantly higher smoking prevalence than those who lived at or above the poverty level. (8)
It has been found that men tend to consume higher quantities red and processed meat and that lower socioeconomic groups are consuming larger quantities in high income countries like the USA. (9)
So in a poor area in the USA, a gas stove could be swapped out for an electric stove. But that doesn’t change that there are multiple higher risk factors associated with poverty in the US by comparison.
This is one reason why a California warning label on gas stoves might be ignored by those who use a gas stove properly with good ventilation.
(1)
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/66/wr/mm6608a9.htm
(2)
https://www.nhtsa.gov/press-releases/usdot-releases-2016-fatal-traffic-crash-data
(3)
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/04/26/what-the-data-says-about-gun-deaths-in-the-u-s/
(4)
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3483951/
(5)
https://www.psypost.org/the-combina...-predict-homicide-rates-in-the-united-states/
(6)
https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/adult_data/cig_smoking/index.htm
(7)
https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/st...-links-red-meat-consumption-with-early-death/
(8)
https://www.cdc.gov/pcd/issues/2019/18_0553.htm
(9)
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4974628/
The article about gas stoves says their “emissions contribute to 19,000 deaths annually”. In a different way this is an example of vague language.
In 2015, a total of 393 deaths resulted from unintentional carbon monoxide poisoning. (1) That is tragic however to put that into perspective;
In 2016, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reported 37,461 people killed in fatal motor vehicle crashes. (2)
Gun murders were about at the rate of 10,000 per year in the mid 2010s (increasing rapidly during the pandemic). (3)
The gas stove article states;
”Researchers also found that people of color are disproportionately affected by the stoves.”
This is about poverty. We should certainly want no gas stoves to be used as space heaters and that all of them should have proper ventilation.
In addition, it should also be known that there are other greater risk factors for people living in poverty in the US (and parts of Canada).
In a Canadian study it was found that there were significantly more injured pedestrians, cyclists, and motor vehicle occupants at intersections in the poorest than in the richest areas. (4)
In studies on the effects of poverty, studies have found a strong link between increasing poverty and the rise in homicide rates across the United States. (5)
For people in poverty there are many more premature deaths due to other factors compared with gas stoves.
But a question remaining could be; what about gas stove “emissions contribute to 19,000 deaths annually”?
Many things can “contribute” to premature death.
Cigarette smoking remains the leading cause of preventable death in the United States, accounting for more than 480,000 deaths every year. (6)
One study showed that increasing total processed meat intake by half a daily serving or more was associated with a 13 percent higher risk of mortality from all causes. (7)
And that relates to poverty. Men and women with incomes below the federal poverty level had a significantly higher smoking prevalence than those who lived at or above the poverty level. (8)
It has been found that men tend to consume higher quantities red and processed meat and that lower socioeconomic groups are consuming larger quantities in high income countries like the USA. (9)
So in a poor area in the USA, a gas stove could be swapped out for an electric stove. But that doesn’t change that there are multiple higher risk factors associated with poverty in the US by comparison.
This is one reason why a California warning label on gas stoves might be ignored by those who use a gas stove properly with good ventilation.
(1)
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/66/wr/mm6608a9.htm
(2)
https://www.nhtsa.gov/press-releases/usdot-releases-2016-fatal-traffic-crash-data
(3)
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/04/26/what-the-data-says-about-gun-deaths-in-the-u-s/
(4)
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3483951/
(5)
https://www.psypost.org/the-combina...-predict-homicide-rates-in-the-united-states/
(6)
https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/adult_data/cig_smoking/index.htm
(7)
https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/st...-links-red-meat-consumption-with-early-death/
(8)
https://www.cdc.gov/pcd/issues/2019/18_0553.htm
(9)
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4974628/
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How do studies like this even get published. This should have been a full stop limitation:
“Our estimate of mortality is thus limited in its precision by potential confounding pollutants that co-occur with outdoor NO2, such as particulate matter, and by the variability in RRs reported by different studies.”
Then to go on to report the pediatric findings were meaningful!? Yeah if you think that a 95% CI including -20 is relevant, apparently no2 could potentially reduce pediatric asthma!
Then the real icing is to use retrospective data with a dubious correlation (at best) to mortality to go on to write this sentence “This increased exposure likely causes ~50,000 cases of current pediatric asthma from long-term NO2 exposure alone…”
What a joke.
“Our estimate of mortality is thus limited in its precision by potential confounding pollutants that co-occur with outdoor NO2, such as particulate matter, and by the variability in RRs reported by different studies.”
Then to go on to report the pediatric findings were meaningful!? Yeah if you think that a 95% CI including -20 is relevant, apparently no2 could potentially reduce pediatric asthma!
Then the real icing is to use retrospective data with a dubious correlation (at best) to mortality to go on to write this sentence “This increased exposure likely causes ~50,000 cases of current pediatric asthma from long-term NO2 exposure alone…”
What a joke.
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You said what's changed--we have real data now. It's the same thing as leaded gasoline, asbestos insulation, lead paints, radium watches, Xray "novelty toys," solders, and an endless number of other things that we used to think were harmless but learned were bad for you and quit using. As for why it was studied in the first place? Climate Change and CO poisoning cases are both causing us to spend a lot more time looking at what's in our air.
From, the paper itself, that 19K is in the US, not globally, so it's closer to twenty five times that rate, about 0.005%. Statistics tend to get more reliable as numbers get bigger. "About 19,000/year" is only a couple of significant digits, so there's likely a fair amount of uncertainty and/or variation, but that's still roughly half the number of people who die in automobile accidents in a year, so it's a pretty big effect.
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We just finished building our first all-electric (no gas) house, and the power demands of induction cooktops aren't insignificant. Ours required a 63A (240V) circuit to support the cooktop and oven combo. Each stove element alone is 2-4kw (x5), and then you have the oven. They do apply a power factor (0.67) to account for the fact you rarely have all elements going at once, but it still works out to be a rated power draw of ~15kW. Most domestic houses (at least in Australia) have 100A switchboards, so the oven is taking 2/3 of my houses switchboard capacity. Add an EV charger circuit and you're at capacity before you've added anything else like air conditioning, power points, etc. We had to upgrade our switchboard to 150A which then required us to upgrade the cable from the pole to the house to avoid excessive voltage drop.
To be fair you can get smaller induction stove, but we wanted one that could perform the same as a good gas stove as well. So for houses with gas stoves and hot water systems, switching to all electric isn't likely to be as simple as replacing the devices themselves, many people will require some upgrades to their switchboard and possibly grid connection, especially older houses with lower capacity switchboards.
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I’d be interested in seeing the numbers behind this. Growing up, we had electric coils because we couldn’t afford gas. Even in college and after, it was always a beat up electric coil stove with the pans covered in foil.
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California is 3 million housing units short of what we need, which is why there's so much homelessness in the state. The leg doesn't wan't to do anything to hamper new home construction.
Gas stove is better for your life expectancy than rough sleeping.
Should note that LA has already banned gas appliances in new homes, and SF has banned some but not all gas appliances for replacement in existing homes. So a lot of this is happening at the local level. My SoCal city banned gas appliances in new construction about 2 years ago. So a lot of what New York did is already happening. And since the housing mandates are distributed by city here, it kind of makes sense to let local cities make that decision for now.
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Try testing your ventilation with an incense stick. If the smoke is not going out, it is not doing much except making noise and wasting electricity. Most residential exhaust systems have essentially zero actual air flow due to constrictions, sharp corners, clogged screens, air flaps, misaligned tubing, undersized fan motors, etc.
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Are you sure that the microwave is an actual cooking device ? (frog here)
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One can get round bottom induction stove tops for works, and up to 8000 watts. Real restaurant power. I use a flat bottom wok on a 5000 W induction top.
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Nope, it is a local decision in the building code. Perhaps that is true in California, definitely not in Maine or Rhode Island
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Or just increase the available grid power by building green energy power generation plants, whichever is best suited for the region.
Why give the energy companies and your neighbors major headaches by overloading a deficient power grid when you can just improve the power grid and have happier customers who don't have to assume the capital costs of electrification.
Delivering sufficient power to homes is the responsibility of the POWER COMPANIES. Not the home owner.
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In the UK, and probably everywhere else, there are specific EV electric tariffs. Mine gives me 6 hours between 23:30 and 05:30 at 7p, and 28p the rest of the time. I’d be insane to charge in daytime, and I don’t cook in the night. My EVSE has a CT clamp monitoring the grid load, and throttles itself to keep it below 60A. Therefore you don’t need to add those loads together. My 42A shower and 32A EVSE almost top out my 80A service alone, never mind cooking and everything else! If I add up all the loads, it’s about 200A, far more than my supply - but it’s never gone beyond 60A, as I don’t cook and shower and charge the car at the same time, and with energy efficient appliances, my fridge, TV, even my XBox barely registers. Even my electric heating is only 12A if I run all of it at the same time, but I never do, due to decent insulation, microzoning, and electric blankets.
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It's pretty rare that panels are truly "full" - ie., with 100% tandem breakers. When I moved in my main panel was "full", but I've since added an awful lot of 240V circuits to it (solar, 2 EV chargers, heat pump hot water heater...) and the electricians just merged pairs of existing breakers into tandem half-sized breakers. Not saying yours isn't totally full, but people mention this a lot and I think a lot of people who haven't actually talked to electricians don't realize how much flexibility there is here!
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How often are you cooking with all burners on the stove, the oven, and charging your EV at the same time? At least in the US you can significantly overprovision circuits, ie., sum of all circuits is fine at 2x or more the main panel breaker rating assuming assumptions of concurrency can be made. You just need to show that these uses don't all overlap near their worst cases.
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Numbers like that sound scary, and are comparable to other options... I get it. But they're also a lie.
Complex issues can't be solved with scare statements to the consumer. "Might..." won't happen to me. Or I can't afford to change it. Or have too many other problems to deal with it.
If it's actually important, spend money to test existing devices and remove them if dangerous. Otherwise this is just a whitewash to clear your consciences. Poor people won't see them in their lifetime.
If more expensive devices solve the problem, figure out why and try to change that (eminent domain works on Intellectual Property too, right? If not, it should).
If lack of testing means bad devices are sold, create regulations to require it.
A sticker the home builder removes isn't going to change anything. Also it pays to realize WHY people like/want gas. Maybe we just need to fix induction devices, and make them the standard. Force ALL cookware to be compatible. Or do we need overhead IR based heating?
Why don't we have devices in our homes to measure indoor air pollution? Sometimes the solution is to just do nothing about the 'possible' sources, since they aren't a problem there. And collecting data on causes of illness should point to what truly is worth forcing.
Why aren't all medical records pooled for anonymity? Oh, because that would assume everyone had health care. Never mind. Living with less pain is a privilege. And we need that profit motive to drive medicine.
Complex issues can't be solved with scare statements to the consumer. "Might..." won't happen to me. Or I can't afford to change it. Or have too many other problems to deal with it.
If it's actually important, spend money to test existing devices and remove them if dangerous. Otherwise this is just a whitewash to clear your consciences. Poor people won't see them in their lifetime.
If more expensive devices solve the problem, figure out why and try to change that (eminent domain works on Intellectual Property too, right? If not, it should).
If lack of testing means bad devices are sold, create regulations to require it.
A sticker the home builder removes isn't going to change anything. Also it pays to realize WHY people like/want gas. Maybe we just need to fix induction devices, and make them the standard. Force ALL cookware to be compatible. Or do we need overhead IR based heating?
Why don't we have devices in our homes to measure indoor air pollution? Sometimes the solution is to just do nothing about the 'possible' sources, since they aren't a problem there. And collecting data on causes of illness should point to what truly is worth forcing.
Why aren't all medical records pooled for anonymity? Oh, because that would assume everyone had health care. Never mind. Living with less pain is a privilege. And we need that profit motive to drive medicine.
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