Utilities have been lying to us about gas stoves since the 1970s
Utilities have been lying to us about gas stoves since the 1970s
They took a page out of Big Tobacco's playbook, a new investigation confirms.
Highlights: A study this summer found that using a single gas stove burner on high can raise levels of cancer-causing benzene above what’s been observed from secondhand smoke.
A new investigation by NPR and the Climate Investigations Center found that the gas industry tried to downplay the health risks of gas stoves for decades, turning to many of the same public-relations tactics the tobacco industry used to cover up the risks of smoking. Gas utilities even hired some of the same PR firms and scientists that Big Tobacco did.
Earlier this year, an investigation from DeSmog showed that the industry understood the hazards of gas appliances as far back as the 1970s and concealed what they knew from the public.
It’s a strategy that goes back as far back as 1972, according to the most recent investigation. That year, the gas industry got advice from Richard Darrow, who helped manufacture controversy around the health effects of smoking as the lead for tobacco accounts at the public relations firm Hill + Knowlton. At an American Gas Association conference, Darrow told utilities they needed to respond to claims that gas appliances were polluting homes and shape the narrative around the issue before critics got the chance. Scientists were starting to discover that exposure to nitrogen dioxide—a pollutant emitted by gas stoves—was linked to respiratory illnesses. So Darrow advised utilities to “mount the massive, consistent, long-range public relations programs necessary to cope with the problems.”
These studies didn’t just confuse the public, but also the federal government. When the Environmental Protection Agency assessed the health effects of nitrogen dioxide pollution in 1982, its review included five studies finding no evidence of problems—four of which were funded by the gas industry, the Climate Investigations Center recently uncovered.
Karen Harbert, the American Gas Association’s CEO, acknowledged that the gas industry has “collaborated” with researchers to “inform and educate regulators about the safety of gas cooking appliances.” Harbert claimed that the available science “does not provide sufficient or consistent evidence demonstrating chronic health hazards from natural gas ranges”—a line that should sound familiar by now.
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Capitalism is such shit…
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It's more the sociopaths running the companies that are shit. They don't give a damn about the people they exploit and the harm they cause. And every institution's got their share of them, not just businesses.
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I don't think it's going away ever. We need regulations that require companies to have greater, more powerful ethics oversight. Launching fake research like this should be criminal.
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Because any other form of government did (and does) not have the same problem to an even greater extent?
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Capitalism is not a form of government. It is an economic system.
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Whataboutism
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It's like everything is lies or something, that sure is surprising in a world where the only important thing is money. It's like its an inevitable consequence or something. Like we shouldn't have organized our society this way
fuckin shocking
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I was told that the free market would naturally remove any bad actors... I guess we just have to deal with half a century of collateral damage before that happens.
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It's that neoliberalism is a lie. Neoliberalism which strated in the 70s with financial capitalism and then deployed fully with Reagan and Thatcher boosted disregulation to make all of this (profit before everything else) possible. Capitalism is a part of neoliberalism, but neoliberalism is more than just capitalism and free market. The fact is that both neoliberalism and capitalism have to be strongly regulated at best.
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That's because 20% of what you read on Reddit is bullshit and 99.9% of what's on Lemmy is bullshit - this post included.
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I hear a lot that gas is cheaper for heating and I took that as the truth for a long time. A while ago I did the math though, and for my house is would have been nearly the same annual power bill if I replaced my 90% gas furnace and water heater with electric units. Although the price of gas is far more economical for heating, there's a monthly gas usage fee that's a flat rate. If you go all electric, you don't pay that, and over the course of a year, I didn't heat enough for the lower gas price to offset the flat fees. If instead of a regular electric furnace and water heater, they were heat pumps, electric would have been much cheaper than gas.
This certainly would depend on your local prices and weather and how well your house is insulated, but if you need a new furnace, I'd do the math over a year to see if gas is still the most financially attractive option, especially if you can install an air or ground source heat pump.
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Heat pumps are so stupidly efficient that my coworker didn't believe it, even when I showed him how it worked, lol. They are the SSDs of heating and cooling, particularly ground source ones. I had an apartment with one and loved the $60 summer power bills. God, it was fantastic. $60 for the AC, hot water, gaming PC, washer/dryer/dishwasher, oven, and lights.
...And no worries of a gas line leaking or carbon monoxide poisoning.
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I believe the cost of an electric heater was a lot higher even after using available rebates. Hopefully the prices go down or rebates increase and it becomes a more viable option
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Gas stoves are easier and more comfortable to cook, but if this study is true im definitely going electrict next.
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try induction stoves. they require certain pans (magnetic so test with a fridge magnet if it sticks you good) but its got INSANE temperature control on the high quality units. like, if something starts boiling and you don't want that you adjust down and it almost instantly stops boiling. the only thing to watch for is getting a unit with variable power not duty cycles. this is a great counter top unit for trying it out tho!
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Have you tried to cook in a electric stove? I personally hate them. I just turn the exhaust on.
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Electric costs about 3x as much in my experience, and it is extremely dry and uncomfortable. Definitely need a humidifier if you're using electric
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https://youtu.be/fmd0pMKxjhA?si=dRObkdpvaU8wRzpE
Please explain by what physical mechanism electric heat can remove water from the air.
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Technology connections informed me of this long ago! And it makes perfect sense. But almost every house I go in has a gas stove because apparently people think it’s better or nicer or “more professional” or whatever.
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I find this crazy. I live in SE USA and I've never even seen a gas stove outside of camping. When everyone was "freaking out" online about the gas stove ban, I was just confused.
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It's just nicer to cook on gas. Electric is a pain in the ass and generally less efficient time-wise. Induction apparently solves a lot of issues, though.
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Induction solves all of the issues.
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Even old school electric burners typically heat water to boiling faster than gas.
Gas is more responsive, but induction comes close. Some of the new induction burners have fake flames to indicate how high the output is visually.
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Shit, what one do you have? My family has some stupidly expensive one, and the goddamn electric pilot lights get dirty and fail to click off for about 30-50 seconds.
This is also their second gas stove in about 12 years. I only wanted electric because theirs was such a removed to deal with all the time. :P
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Induction stoves are still pretty expensive, and resistance electric stoves suck ass.
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Induction stoves get cheaper and cheaper every year.
Also? It is mostly just the old exposed metal coil resistive stoves that were horrible. You know, the one we all had growing up where you had to poke the coil with a fork until it made connection again so that it would heat up.
Pretty much any glass top resistive electric stove (so anything made in the past two decades or so?) is fine. Very easy to clean, much less prone to damage, and gets pretty hot pretty fast. You aren't getting "wok hei" for all the cantonese stir frying you do but... you aren't getting that with a gas stove either unless you have an ACTUAL restaurant setup (no, not just the expensive options at the Lowes) which tend to have very specific ventilation requirements too.. If you want to go all out with your wok, get an outdoor propane burner.
Now, I do actually think the drawback to resistive heating staying hot is a lot bigger than "just pick up the pot". Not when I am making a weeknight meal for myself. But when I am cooking a larger meal for a date night or having friends over and am using multiple burners? I don't really have anywhere to put the pot. But that is also incredibly "first world problems" of "I have too much food"
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It is getting better, we got ours for a little more than $1,000, but electric stoves are dirt cheap. 1/3rd to 1/2 the price.
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Induction stoves are not expensive at all.
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Well it is "better", but it isn't (as this article highlights) better.
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Even against an induction stovetop though, it's only better in some niche situations, otherwise I'd say the induction stovetop is better, especially because it can't set stuff on fire.
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Acklutally, up until recently gas has been far cheaper than induction. It was leagues better than electric. Even today unless you are spending a lot more on a new stove and probably upping running costs; it's expensive to move to conduction when gas stoves last for basically forever. It's also quite regional to natural gas areas where it's been cheaper than electricity.
If you want to sear meat at high temps, a powerful gas stove is still today going to outperform a induction.
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I was curious about temps, according to this induction gets much hotter than gas. Wouldn't that be much better for searing?
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Gas stoves usually show up in colder places where homes would be heated with gas, and in older cities. 240V electricity was dangerous early on, and homes were usually already hooked up to gas networks for heating.
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For me it was Climate Town.
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It's been time to switch to induction stoves for a long time now, they are basically better in every way that matters.
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How are they with temperature regulation? I think that's a big holdback for a lot of people. A gas burner gives consistent heat output at the set level, while an electric burner cycles on and off, resulting in a wider temperature range.
ETA: Wow, WTF? Downvoted for asking a legit question. Are we Reddit now?
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They're probably more consistent than gas. Provided your cookware isn't moved on the surface, they provide a constant energy output that is a simple linear equation of energy in - losses = energy out. Period. Induction elements "cycle" on and off -- hundreds or thousands of times per second. They don't work like a radiant electric stovetop at all. There is no human perceptible duty cycle.
Fancier models like Bosch and some of the new GE Profile/Cafe ones can even wirelessly communicate with special cookware that has a temperature sensor built in, and deliver you absolute parametrically controlled temperature output at a specific temperature down to the degree, with computer controlled precision. It doesn't get any better than that.
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Induction has instant temperature control, combined with the possibility of having lower temperatures than gas allows for.
Additionally, there's no temperature leakage into the room, nor any particles from combustion.
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They are perfect at temperature regulation. I have a little 120v unit that even has a hold @ temperature function. Goes as low as 180 and I think as high as 500°
Remember induction heats the pan directly via induction and thus requires cookware that a magnet can stick to. Otherwise faster, more efficient, easy to control
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Are we Reddit now?
Always have been.
And as others may have said, induction stoves hold perfect temperature, but also require you to use more substantial steel pots and pans to begin with. As such, they won't suffer from poor temperature modulation like older resistive electric stoves with cheap aluminum pans would.
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Just got rid of my gas stove and got induction. I will never cook with gas again. They have way faster heating and temperature control. Any one who says different hasn't used induction.
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A lot of other comments in this chain are getting a single downvote so far.
It’s ok Big Gas/Oil, we know it’s you.
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Consistent heat to that level doesn't matter outside of VERY specific use cases like tempering a ridiculously small amount of chocolate with very little water in the double boiler setup. Oh, and you have like pure aluminum pans, I guess.
Because also? Gas stoves aren't as consistent as people think. Yes, we assume they are because we can see the fire. But various impurities in the line, air in the system, etc and you still get minor sputtering and fluctuations.
All of which... almost never matters. Because even when you are doing the most delicate of baking work: You tend to have a double boiler set up so that the water can maintain the heat during these fluctuations.
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Freaking out because some idiot downvoted you. Are we Reddit now?
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How are they with temperature regulation? I think that’s a big holdback for a lot of people. A gas burner gives consistent heat output at the set level, while an electric burner cycles on and off, resulting in a wider temperature range.
That is not how induction works. The big holdback for people is ignorance about what induction even is. Temperature regulation is instant same way as it is with gas.
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I wonder if the same levels of pollutants are found in restaurants. Most if not all restaurants use gas stoves. The ventilation systems are usually multiple orders of magnitude better than what a typical household would have available.
Having worked in a few restaurants, the vent systems are usually placed above the stoves but the vent itself is kind of high up. It’s definitely capturing the fumes from the cooking process itself, but not clear if it’s also capturing the pollutants from the stove while it’s on.
There definitely has to be some spillage into the kitchen. More than using a laboratory grade ventilation hood but less than the typical gas stove in a typical household.
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Every kitchen I have worked in, those vents are so powerful the head chef could smoke while on the line, and the kitchen didn't smell of smoke. I wouldn't be surprised if those fans are fully circulating the entire volume of air in the kitchen a couple times a minute.
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I think this assumes the restaurant is properly maintaining the ventilation system. I remember a couple of restaurants I worked at the grates were rarely changed out. The one time we did a proper cleaning the fucking things were caked with fat deposits and other crap. Took a power washer and some caustic industrial cleaner to get them to a decent state.
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Usually there's a make up air unit that keeps the pressure in the kitchen positive by pumping more air into the kitchen than what the exhaust fan is exhausting, so yeah the pollutants would have no way of spilling into the kitchen and missing the exhaust, as long as everything is set up properly, including having all fuel burning equipment below the hood.
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You might be surprised by how little airflow is actually required to displace some hazardous gasses.
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According to the American Lung Association, lung cancer diagnoses have risen a startling 84% among women over the past 42 years while dropping 36% among men over the same period. The overall number of cases remains fairly steady.
[...] Approximately 20% of women diagnosed with lung cancer today are lifelong non-smokers (by contrast, only 1 in 12 men with lung cancer have never smoked).
[...] These shocking statistics beg the question why?
"No one knows," says John C. Kucharczuk, MD, Director of the Thoracic Oncology Network of the Abramson Cancer Center at Penn Medicine. "It could be hormonal. It could be attributed to high degrees of exposure to secondhand smoke. Some data suggests that among non-smoking females who develop lung cancer, there are chances of a genetic mutation. At this point, there's no conclusive data."
From: Penn Medicine
So... is the mystery behind women's lung cancer solved? Lovely if so (/s).
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Tried to see if this data was backed up at the ALA website. Didn't look like it.
Actually, if looking at it from the 80s it looks like that might be accurate. But this graph tells a different story.
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Sounds like a pretty clean answer to it unfortunately
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"Make no mistake, radical environmentalists want to stop Americans from using natural gas. The Consumer Product Safety Commission’s proposed ban on gas stoves is the latest egregious scaremongering by the Far Left and their Biden administration allies. I am pleased to partner with Senator Manchin in this bipartisan effort to stop the federal government from issuing regulations that put the interests of the Green New Deal before the well-being of American families,” said Senator Cruz.
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We tried voting him out, we really did. Coincidentally, he beat Beto by a very small margin while there was a small percentage of voting machines that reportedly flipped votes for Beto (I think they would flip them to Cruz, and if you didn't double check all your votes before casting them, then a Beto voter could have inadvertently voted Cruz)
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Aight. I must be missing something huge here.
Here's the formula for burning methane:
CH4 + 2O2 → CO2 + 2H2O
Are there other chemicals in the gas that don't combust? Or don't combust completely?
EDIT: Jesus Christ I'm an idiot, and y'all upvoted this?! The end product is water and carbon dioxide. Better than straight methane in the atmosphere, at least in the long term, but damn I'm stupid sometimes.
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It seems that the main problem is the existence of benzene in the natural gas. It's not an additive; it exists in crude oil and comes through in the final product after cracking and refining. I haven't been able to find anything showing the exact method for which benzene acts as a carcinogen, but there are several studies that show a strong correlation between benzene exposure and leukemia.
Benzene is also in gasoline, so it's also recommended that you don't spend a lot of time huffing gasoline.
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Benzene is what's called in intercolating agent. Essentially it can slip into your DNA strands between the base pairs, and hang out there so to speak. When your cells attempt to replicate DNA where benzene has sidled on in, it can cause errors in the replication. When cells build up enough DNA errors it can cause cancer.
Edit: this is an incorrect explanation, I was confusing benzene's method of toxicity with ethidium bromide's. Benzene metabolites are what's toxic, usually due to oxidative damage.
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Yes, natural gas contains a whole bunch of stuff that isn't pure methane. It would be impractical and expensive to try and seperate out only the methane.
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I assume there are contaminants or products of incomplete combustion.
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LOL, you're killing me Smalls. That's exactly what I was asking.
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Not sure about what happens with the chemical they add to make the gas smell.
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There is some nitrogen in the air. In any combustion in the air, there is gonna be a small part of the nitrogen in the air reacting with the fuel, instead of oxygen. Why this happens when there are oxygen present? Idk. Entropy or something.
I'm a complete novice when it comes to chemistry though. So I might be completely wrong.
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Is this natural gas or LPG
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Natural gas. Although it wouldn't surprise me if both have the same issues.
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The interesting part in the NPR article is:
As the scientific evidence grew over time about the health effects from gas stoves, the industry used a playbook echoing the one that tobacco companies employed for decades to fend off regulation.
This is the case in each industry from tabacco to at the other end Autism for example. People should do their research and look for the quality of the papers and the COI (conflict of interest).
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Most people cannot judge the quality of scientific papers, that's what public regulators are for, but they failed the people there.
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I don't know what the autism industry is. I agree that lots of industries use these tactics, while actively poisoning/exposing their customers to toxins. There is a big problem with the baby formula industry using big tobacco tactics to obfuscate facts about premature infants being killed by their products. Johnson and Johnson has also done this with talcum powder.
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The thing with talcum powder was that it contained a certain portion of asbestos from the talc deposits it was mined from, which was determined to not be financially viable to separate out. So Johnson and Johnson just didn't. Some of their baby powder was found to contain asbestos and they recalled a bunch of it. Then J&J claimed at the time they stopped selling talc based baby powder that this was due to "misinformation" surrounding its product.
Yeah, okay, sure.
The stuff you buy as baby powder now is corn starch based. This was news to me because I used to use the stuff to help mount inner tubes in motorcycle tires. The corn starch based stuff doesn't work for that. Like, at all. I use soap or Windex now instead. No idea how well it works as actual baby powder.
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...autism is an industry??
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You have an entire bad industry around autism. It's worse than people think with human rights abuses. The industry produces papers with huge methodology and data issues and COI. Autism Speak is the first relay for this missinformation.
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This is the case in each industry from tabacco to at the other end Autism for example.
Ah, yes. The autism industry strikes again!
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What do you mean about Autism? The vaccine study?
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There is a lot of money dumped by organizations like Autism Speaks into research geared toward "curing" Autism, and running ad campaigns about how Autism is lurking in every corner waiting to destroy your family, whereas other studies demonstrate that neurodivergent folks just need to be treated like human beings to gain access to a meaningful life. This is what I assumed they were talking about when I read their comment.
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Is this natural gas, or propane, or both? The article mostly uses just "gas" but does mention natural gas once.
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Everything I researched was entirely focused on gas stoves being unhealthy, which seems to be the major issue.
Propane doesn't seem to show up in a general search on this topic, and the carbon monoxide levels from mine didnt seem to go up while in use. So I believe it's not as bad or even has the same problems.
That being said.. I think we can also generalize that burning solid fuel in the open inside your house is probably a bad idea.
I also hate open flame stoves for cooking they suck and I'll fight you on that. I'm extremely interested in getting this propane stove replaced with induction.
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Benzene is the major issue. You have the same issue at the gas pump.
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Thanks for linking that!
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Those are the same things.
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Natural gas and propane are not the same thing.
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Natural gas is methane, not propane.
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can raise levels of cancer-causing benzene above what’s been observed from secondhand smoke.
Yeah this is fairly concerning, I usually think of benzene as super carcinogenic. They actually limit how much of it can be used in gasoline for that reason.
I'd probably want to compare benzene content from various sources and consult the OSHA guidelines before saying how bad this is, but there's no doubt in my mind that this decidedly bad. You're getting directly and consistently exposed to the benzene.
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Laughs hysterically in South African... where we now have no choice but to use gas for almost everything because our electrical grid is collapsing due to IMF-approved neoliberal shitfuckery.
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Don't people blame it on
ANSANC short sightedness about banning new powerplants by Escom and failing to expand the grid and ANC's corruption?-
*ANC
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I am very happy with my induction range. I switched from gas just before this info about gas ranges became a thing.
Much less use of handle covers with my cast iron frying pans because it directly heats instead of throwing heat everywhere. Boils water faster than my microwave. And health bonuses too.
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Gas stoves rock. Rather than banning gas stoves, just require that they be installed safely.
The answer here is simple- mandate a range hood with real outside exhaust (not the cheap ones that blow air back into the room). And require a make-up air vent with equivalent capacity.
Maybe require the stove to automatically engage the vent at low speed (near-silent) so when you start a burner the vent runs at like 10CFM or something automatically.
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Yep. I'd rather not have a propane stove, but I live in an area with a lot of power outages. We have a propane generator for backup power. Makes no sense to size to generator to run and induction stove when we can just use our, properly installed, propane stove.
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I just had my kitchen done and asked for better ventilation, provided options. Ended up with a microwave that blows air into the fucking room. And its connected to a vent outside, its just designed to blow air into the fucking room despite that. Contractor was so clueless and products are there to deceive us.
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I think he probably installed it wrong. I've seen a few of these and read the manuals, there is almost always a setup where you have to remove a baffle from the rear output and reinstall that baffle in the front output. Look up the installation manual for your microwave. I would bet money your contractor missed a step.
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Since we got from gas to induction few years back we're totally convinced: it's much more efficient, in the summer the kitchen isn't getting that hot, in the winter the air is better, and after we got the ideal pans and pots, we love to cook on induction. I can recommend cast iron ware like Le Creuset (buy one with metal grip, if you wanna put it in the oven), don't go cheap there, you'll use it often. If you like wok I'd recommend a cast iron one too. It's a joy, we'll never go back, and I was a hard gas advocate before. And yes, dishwasher isn't friendly with cast iron, but it's quickly clean again, much faster than stainless steel etc
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Even better is to have your meals prepared by a professional in a separate kitchen outside you main house. If you can't afford that just have them cook in the galley of your unused yacht.
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I never got this fervent obsession "i mUsT hAvE gAs StOvE, eLeCtRiC iS tHe SuCk wAhHhHh." Geez you think an electric stove killed their puppy or something. Electric is more than fine, it's even better because it's not putting out all that extra heat, nevermind all the pollution, and the noise because you're supposed to run the fan at high (but people never do). Cue the gAs crying below.
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Obligatory Climate Town Video: It’s Time To Break Up With Our Gas Stoves. It explains why we are, where we are today and what myth the gas industry is pushing to keep gas in our homes and the fugitive leaks in the environment. Can not recommend it enough.
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Awesome video. Every time I see something this guy made I am impressed.
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The only real issue is that how environmentally friendly electric is compared to gas depends on how the electricity is made. Gas effectively converts all of its potential chemical energy to heat where it is used. Electricity has to be generated from some process eg. burning fuel, nuclear energy, wind, solar, hydroelectric etc. and if it is primarily generated at coal or gas power plants, maybe 40 to 50% of the potential chemical energy in those fuels are converted into electricity. So if more than about 40% of the electricity you use is generated by burning fossil fuels, you arent really saving the environment by using electric instead of gas. But of course where that pollution ends up matters. In the case of electric, if your power is generated in power plants that burn fossil fuels, the pollution isn't directly being vented into your house. And those power plants may scrub their exhaust to an extent. i.e to reduce Sulfur Dioxide emissions etc.
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Scrubbers at power plants will do way more than the one you won't have at home.
And gas can never be converted.
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Electric + cast iron is my favorite combo, because the heat capacity of the cast iron pretty much cancels out the uneven heat from an electric burner
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'gas stoves' and frying bacon. I love the smell of benzene in the morning. It's the smell of breakfast cooking on a gas stove.
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I'll never fry bacon again unless I don't have an oven to bake it in. Baking it makes far better bacon and it smells great baking in my electric stove.
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I'd still rather have a gas stove. IMO the improved experience of cooking with gas justifies the small increase in exposure to air pollution. My general principle is that I drive a car despite how dangerous that is, so I should be willing to take other risks as long as they're lower than the risk from driving.
(Resistive electric stoves are terrible. Inductive ones are much better. I can see why someone might like them more than gas, but I don't.)
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Worse than secondhand smoke is not a small increase to air pollution
There's nothing better about gas than inductive, anyone complaining about conductive either has the wrong cookware or a malfunctioning model
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I do consider it a small increase, but I suppose that's subjective and depends a lot on a person's risk tolerance. Maybe mine is higher than yours.
As for induction stoves: they work quite well. If I was cooking simply because I needed cooked food and for no other reason, I would have no objection to them (and perhaps a preference for them). However, I feel that there's something deeply satisfying about cooking over a fire and I want that satisfaction when I cook.
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do I have to take on the climate change risks too even though I had no say?
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I think you have to accept risks of that magnitude unless you're willing to micromanage other people's lives (and to have your own life micromanaged). If you're not going to tolerate people who use gas stoves, will you tolerate people who take twenty minute showers? People who heat their houses to 75° in the winter? People who have big lawns?
There's a point past which protecting the environment doesn't justify intrusive restrictions of people's behavior, and IMO banning gas stoves is well beyond that point.
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We don't have a stove, but we do have a gas furnace and water heater. When we were buying the home 2 years ago, the inspection turned up a gas leak in the attic and that almost halted the whole thing. That and the radon gear that was installed and never enabled.
We did get it resolved, but man, it was a super scary discovery.
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Gas leak in the attic? Why would you have gas service in the attic?
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That's where the furnace is. ;)
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Some houses have the furnace in the attic.
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We have an electric stove but a gas fireplace and a gas furnace/water heater. Is that just as bad?
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I would guess the fireplace it just goes out the chimney if there is one, and just as bad if there isn't one
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Gas fireplaces usually work by separate chambers, the burn off/exhaust is drawn out the flue while a fan rotates cool air around the heated box and then back out into the house.
Gas water heaters can leak exhaust into the house if the vent hood isn't properly pulling air out of the house. I recall using a match to test that it pulled the smoke up and out.
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I don't think so, because the benzene source isn't right there in front of you like with a stove burner. The fireplace is probably alright because of the chimney, and the larger worry there would be particulate matter and smoke anyway.
Where does the exhaust from the furnace and water heater go? If it goes through a vent system and then outside it should be fine. It might be fine otherwise even, if it becomes diluted when becoming in the general atmosphere of your home.
Disclaimer, I am not an expert on emissions nor venting. I studied chemistry and chem eng in college, but this isn't my professional field.
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So my gas stove is bad, but here's a question: what about my gas heater that heats my home. Those things just light fire using gas and then blow air across it to warm the house. Wouldn't this be worse than the stove?
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No, because your furnace should be venting its exhaust outside. There's a heat exchanger that draws interior air through the furnace, taking heat from the combustion but the exhaust and your home's interior air do not mix!
Edit: I should qualify the above. A gas furnace is less bad for your health than a gas stove, because a gas stove is leaving a lot of combustion byproducts in the home's air while a gas furnace shouldn't. There's still a case to be made that anything burning fossils fuels is probably not healthy and isn't good for the environment to boot.
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Gas and oil furnaces have the burning air and the indoor air strictly separated to prevent carbon monoxide poisoning. If you want a deep dive into how it works so you know you're safe - provided you've had it inspected and serviced recently - here's a Technology Connections video.
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If you're taking an actual furnace and not some crazy contraption, those are made so the exhaust goes outside, and fresh air is heated (it's not mixed with exhaust) and then pushed into the ducts.
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That's not how those work. All of the exhaust gasses get vented outside.
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The gas that heats the air and the air that's heated do not mix, Technology Connections has a video on this topic where he shows how a gas fired furnace works
The fumes are vented to outside unless your installation is bad or broken
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What is the concentration of benzene in second hand smoke, or in the kitchen of a gas range?
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Hopefully not a stupid question: would this affect butane stoves, like the ones you use to go camping?
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Butane doesn't break into the same things, but everything that combusts breaks down into smaller things that all constantly keep coming up as bad for us in excess. The location also matters as far as health goes. Camping stove in open air good, not so much inside a tent.
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Found an article/study stating propane does release benzene:
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.2c09289
The isobutane/white gas stuff may too but I couldn't find anything to support that.
If you're ever out in your garage in winter and using those burner tops on a propane tank it's best to have a source of fresh air and ventilation (which of course negates the ability to heat effectively).
e: no stupid questions, lots of internet "researchers" though (myself included)
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If you read the linked report you will find that
The document showed that the trade group was in the process of researching solutions “for the purposes of limiting the levels of carbon monoxide and nitrogen oxides in household air.
This shouldn’t be conflated with ‘they knew about potential cancer risks and tried to hide it in the 1970s’.
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Did anyone expect then to be impartial or a reliable source of health information?
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OP, please remove some of the copied text from the body. Almost the entire article has been reproduced here.
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What's the cutoff? My count is approx 300/800 words are reproduced
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That should be good enough. As long as you are not violating the copyright of the article author, there is no issue (:
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this argument again ?
if you make the grid more reliable or give domiciles batteries then there is no problem with electric cooking these days.
but if you live where there are lots of tall trees and people like the tall trees and the tall trees are nice and keep up the quality of life but the tall trees come done all year round in storms and you lose power for upto 24 to 48 hours at a time repeatedly over and over again year in, year out, then forget your electric stove unless I have a battery to run it.
so we can upgrade our domiciles when they upgrade the grid.
Sound fair ?
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Is anyone trying to ban gas stoves in rural areas? I've only heard of bans in big cities.
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This isn't the argument this article is replying to. For decades gas has been sold as a better alternative and people have forgone electric to get gas just on that alone. They really didn't need to and just did it to be 'in'.
False advertising and burying the risks needs to be addressed.
That's fair
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Convenient that this comes at a time when people are trying to get away from a dependants on expensive electricity to heat everything.
I'll stick to my gas stove/oven vs my electric oven/microwave.
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Convenient? Why is your first leap to some kind of a vague conspiracy instead of "more attention is being paid to ecological issues recently because of systemic ecological disasters, so more things have been found out about common appliances that use fossil fuels, which fuel those disasters?"
It's totally a conspiracy that when more effort is applied towards something, more things happen about that something. Totally.
You can install panels on a roof and never pay a power bill again, man. Depending on where you live, the panels will pay off in 5-10yrs, and last for 30. No one is stopping you from "sticking it" to the electric company, dude.
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Who is trying to get away from electric? Electrification is the future, because it's not reliant on planet-killing fossil fuels (even if much of the electricity today comes from them).
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lol I swear to God Lemmy is so full of absolute unscientific horse shit, it's basically worthless...
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Go look at the Stanford article https://news.stanford.edu/2023/06/16/cooking-gas-stoves-emits-benzene-2/
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Go look at Stanford's funding.
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Head back to Reddit then.
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