Gas stoves are more hazardous than we’ve been led to believe (2020)
slate.comThere was a bunch of articles about this in 2020.
After looking into the data my conclusion is the threat is overblown (big surprise), a large part of it is from cooking of any kind (heating produces particulates) and that if you take some basic precautions (open a window, use vent fan) the risk is very low.
Exactly. These are opinion pieces with scary headlines. Almost nothing to back them up. Also strange to talk about developing countries having problems. They usually have chimneys. Hydrochlorides are there because of pans coated with them that burn them off. Guess what, they still end up in food no matter which heating you would use. So the problem is pans, not the heat. Cooking with fire is Lindy. And there is no other way to make rotis, tatziki (char the eggplant) and other things without fire.
I am from one of those developing countries. A chimney won't help you very much when everybody around you is burning coal/wood/plastic/rubber/bitumen for heat and it's 300 µg/m³ outside. The common suggestion to "open a window" reads like a joke.
Tzatziki is great on eggplant (charred or otherwise), but I've never heard of eggplant being an ingredient in Tzatziki.
Maybe you're thinking of baba ganoush, which is a dip with a charred eggplant and tahini base. I've made it with eggplant broiled in the oven, and it's fine, but I'm sure the taste is different if they're charred over a flame. (Even though you discard the charred shell either way.) That said you could easily accomplish that with a kitchen torch, the kind also used to finish creme brulee or (if you have a big torch) sous vide meats.
A kitchen torch doesn't have enough energy, but one could use an electric or a wood, charcoal or gas grill. There is no way any state is going to take BBQ away from Americans.
There's also a Balkan variation of baba ganoush without tahini, just cooked eggplant, onion and sunflower or olive oil. It's boringly called 'eggplant salad' in my country. The Greek version is very similar and BBQing the eggplant makes even tastier. Another variation of this dish also exists in the Carribean, where it's called baigan choka.
BBQ grills are done outdoors though. They’re not particularly relevant
There are kitchen torches (Searzall) that are more powerful than most home gas ranges.
You must be from Romania =)
Although i agree that gas cooktops have several advantages in cooking non westernized meals, rotis can definitely be made on induction. Been making them since many years now.
got a recipe/walkthrough? I love me some roti, am tired of paying for the stuff made in the big oven/cooker things though. I have an induction cooktop already.
Make a soft dough with flour (ideally whole wheat), water, salt. Kneed thoroughly. List of sit for about 1/2 hour, in a bowl, covered with a cloth. Make smallish balls of of the dough. Dust a flat, hard surface with left over flour, roll into a thin disk of even thickness. The size is less important than the evenness in thickness.
Heat a pan, until a small amount of ghee/butter melts when placed on it. Place the roti on the pan, and cook each side. You will know that it is done when the roti slightly puffs up.
True skill is in making rotis which stay soft in a hotbox.
That last part is definitely not true. You can char stuff with any heat. I use an electric broiler.
It is extremely common, even default in the US in my experience, to not have vent fans not actually... vent. As a renter, I don't really get a choice in the matter.
Opening a window significantly is also pretty unfeasible most of the year.
Do you also have a gas stove? I’ve lived in lots of places that have unvented blowers but none of them had gas. Would be against code in almost every city in America.
Yep, gas stove unfortunately. I can't speak to code, but most people I talk to share this experience -- I assume there's grandfathering at play.
It's just illegal and no one complained or enforced.
I just looked it up and section M1503.1 of the 2018 International Mechanical Code has an exception for range hoods which allows most to be used ductless. Some states, CA for example, don't allow this but the majority of states just follow the IMC code.
Where I am, it's called non-conforming and, unless there's a complaint, it doesn't become a problem until you pull a building permit AND a Building Official notices.
How much maintenance do those fans require to keep working well? I feel like the common thing is to basically not touch them, and they get pretty gross and don't seem to do much.
Edit: I got downvoted for this? I feel like I've seen a lifetime of these fans being decades old and in poor shape. I think you folks are vastly overestimating how many people clean those or replace the filter.
They're basically char filters, so if you wipe them and change the filters every 6 months or so you're good.
I'd be surprised if the average change time is any less than 5 years though.
Very little maintenance is required but not zero. If it gets gross, wash it.
You need to clean the filters regularly so they don’t become a fire hazard due to oil buildup; the better ones should have some kind of reminder system and will have filters that are dishwasher safe.
I had a blower that recirculated with a gas stove in NYC, in a newish (2008 I believe) building.
New construction in NYC bans gas stoves.
The last 2 houses I have lived in both had gas stoves and unvented blowers. Both recently built.
In new construction people are installing those microwave vents that literally do nothing except blow the air out the top of the microwave. It’s not totally worthless but it’s next to worthless.
Then the cabinets above the microwave get coated with a sticky layer of polymerized(?) oil - even quicker than they normally would. It's gross.
New construction person in B.C. here.
We use them all the time and if they're not vented properly, we don't get occupancy. The HVAC designer or Engineer on the job wouldn't have it any other way.
Microwaves can vent if you hook up its vent to a duct, cheap construction doesn't do that if they can get away with it.
Yes and no, while I suppose you could technically attach a vent to the top half of the microwave and route it outside the upper vents are absolutely not designed for that and you would have the most awkward ugly installation that blocks your upper cabinet doors. So yes the reason for these units is 100% penny pinching and cheap construction but better construction alone won’t fix the problems with these microwaves.
"you would have the most awkward ugly installation that blocks your upper cabinet doors"
No, you route it through the cabinet and if you don't want it to look ugly then you build a chase around it. I usually don't since the chase takes up more room, and no one really cares as it's in the cabinet.
And yes they are designed for venting outside, that's what these are for: https://www.homedepot.com/p/Master-Flow-3-1-4-in-x-10-in-x-7...
We’re talking about two different kinds of microwaves. There are the ones you describe where the vent is inside the upper cabinet, those are designed to be vented outside. Then there’s the microwaves where the vent is in front of the cabinet doors, runs along the whole length of the microwave and blows up at the outside of the upper cabinet doors. There is nowhere you could even route it because anything on top of the microwave to capture it would physically block the doors from opening.
I see many of them that simply vent into the attic. This requires a properly vented attic, and has the downside of introducing moisture into the attic, which can lead to damage.
That said, mobile homes pretty much always vent outside in my experience.
A lot of them do not vent at all. They just draw it up through a coarse filter and out the top again.
Yes, I see those too. I work on houses for a living though and those are not too common, at least around here. I typically might see those in the older houses, or in half assed renovations.
Those fans can be installed in two ways, venting or recirculating. In a recirculation mode you need to keep the filters clean, and they do an _ok_ job at keeping smells out of the kitchen, but if they don't vent outdoors then you need to open a window unfortunately
I'm fairly certain this piece is meant to drum up support for gas stove bans in places like Los Angeles or NYC.
Too coincidental. Certainly inspired by it.
If you really believe that gas is awful for environment, that more solar and thus electricity should be used, you'd find the reasons to justify it even as brownouts threaten the AC for a good part of Summer.
I live in a part of California where the air is bad for a significant portion of the year - no less than one tenth to one quarter of the year. So opening the window wouldn’t save me from particulates & pollution - in fact, it would introduce them. The only solution for us is to not introduce them in the first place.
I'd highly recommend putting together one of these very effective and inexpensive ($40?) air filters. Just taping filters together around a box fan.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corsi%E2%80%93Rosenthal_Box
We used one them during the horrific fires with excellent effect.
Yeah, I can't but think the headline is true, but then leads immediately to, "but not as hazardous as you are now thinking."
On the other hand, here is some actual data a guy took in his kitchen showing that the indoor air quality was as bad as the big wildfires near his house: https://twitter.com/curious_founder/status/14817464603789926...
Can you share some of that data? It seems pretty obvious that burning gas is far worse for indoor air quality than a magnet. Even if there's options to mitigate the danger, they won't always be available or users may just forget to take them. An induction stove is foolproof.
And I think your point about particulates from actual cooking is probably true too. I think any high heat cooking or deep frying should be done outside if you don't have a powerful vent.
Makes me wonder whether these stories are paid advertising ( by electric stove companies or whomever ) or the journalist had to write something and just winged it. I'm guessing most garbage in media is paid advertising, but who knows at this point.
Even without those precautions, how does the risk compare to commuting to work by car five days a week? I imagine the risk of chronic effects is orders of magnitude less.
My wife and I have allergies and are poor sleepers, as a result I religiously monitor air quality in several points in the home in order to manage the air. I find CO2 ppm over 1000 provides for headaches and poor sleep. Having a modern well sealed home means you rely a lot on an HRV to exchange the air, but sometimes you need to open the windows.
After all the monitoring for years I can attest that the gas cooktop has a massive influence on poor air quality. The vent hood helps, but does not eliminate CO2. Keeping CO2 under ~700ppm in occupied bedrooms takes some work.
For my next house that I'm building now I've put in induction, will never do gas again. Also supersized the vent hood and HVAC systems.
Indoor air quality is such an unappreciated topic in home construction.
do you have a comparison of air quality in your home when cooking using a non-gas stove?
Yes. I have a portable induction plate we use for things like hot pot. I don’t have an apples to apples comparison though. The cooking itself doesn’t influence co2 though it does spike pm2.
Are you putting in a fresh air ventilation system (ERV) in your new house?
Yup. It’s require by code. They’re usually installed at such low CFM that they don’t help a lot against short term blips from cooking though.
Relatedly I found this video on electric kettles vs gas stove efficiency for heating water pretty illuminating too: https://youtu.be/_yMMTVVJI4c?t=763
The summary is that a cheap electric kettle can boil water way faster and with far less wasted energy than a stove top kettle.
That seems pretty obvious from their construction. I don’t know anyone that uses a stove top kettle.
It’s unfortunate that in the US our electric kettles are much slower than in the U.K.
I use both. Stove top kettles are less efficient, but they have a few advantages over electric kettles. They:
- work when power is unavailable (outages, camping, etc.)
- are more or less indestructible
- don't take up counter space
I have one of those big 4L Zojirushi electric kettles that I keep plugged in for 8-10 hours a day. Sometimes I will use the stove top kettle for supplementary boiling water when people in my household are using the electric, or I don't want to start a reboil cycle or take too much at once.
Electric kettle uses the same footprint space as a stove kettle.
Are you suggesting people put their electric kettles on the stove? Or that people place their hot kettles on the counter?
When it's not on the gas stove, it has to go somewhere.
And how does that relate to counter space?
I think it can be spread by word of mouth. I've already converted several friends and family over to electric kettles when they see how useful it is for coffee, tea, even for getting water boiled for cooking.
The big question in my mind is whether the electric kettle itself is the "final form", or if I'll be proselytizing the same people in ten years to get an Asian style hot water heater/reservoir instead.
An induction-friendly stovetop kettle is a pretty great option as well, for those with induction burners. I have found it about as fast as an electric kettle, but it saves counter space, and won't have to be replaced every 1-5 years. Maybe I have just had bad luck with inexpensive electric kettles, but they kept dying on me.
A holiday rental I stayed in had a boiling water tap. It's a small improvement over a kettle, but in terms of improvement there's very little efficiency gains to be had over a hot plate directly in contact with the cooking liquid.
Once you've had one you can't go back. I don't know what the losses are from maintaining the hot water but it's the ultimate in convenience.
We use a Zwilling model at home that's very fast and simple to operate (seems strange to have to say that, but a Cuisinart model in our office is a UI and design disaster).
> with far less wasted energy
Small nit-pick: Electricity generation itself is often very lossy. In the case of fossil sources, the energy waste is just further up the chain (with solar power too, but it matters much less).
A generator powering the grid for the electric company is going to capture a far greater portion of the fossil fuel energy than the gas range in your kitchen. There will be some loss transmitting electrical power from the generator to your house, but usually less loss proportionally than than energy wasted above a gas range. As you suggest, climate-neutral renewable sources make up a tiny portion of most power grids, but that will likely change in the coming years.
This is the same reason that EVs still win on overall efficiency, even if your electrical supply is fossil fuel based. You get to take advantages of efficiency in scale.
It’s probably pretty close to a wash. A gas stove is about 40% efficient.
A good combined cycle has power plant is about 60%, transmission is about 90%, and an induction stove is about 85%. That gives a net efficiency of 46%.
So that's better if you're sourced by gas, and _way_ better if you're sourced by a renewable method? Looking at the national grid [0] in the UK, 40% of our energy came from gas, and most of the rest is renewable energy or nuclear. That significantly swings in favour of electric kettles.
Well you have to consider the margin. If you change out your gas stove, where is the extra bit of electricity going to come from? Probably gas, although they may build some more renewable if enough people switch.
A gas stove is one of the last things that should be converted, because heat is the most efficient use of fossil fuels.
In general, any conversion of heat energy to mechanical or electrical energy will have a fairly low efficiency, so switching an energy source in a way that adds such a conversion will have at best a small benefit.
On the other hand, switching from a gas to an electric car requires an extra heat->mechanical conversion step at the power plant, but it removes a heat->mechanical conversion step in the car, so in general this is a favorable trade.
You can also get a favorable trade in home heating if you replace a gas furnace with an electric heat pump, or a gas water heater with a heat pump water heater, because the heat pump can get effectively well over 100% efficiency.
> the energy waste is just further up the chain
Just because both are "lossy" that does not mean at all the losses are of comparable magnitude.
So, actual question: "You need X amount of gas in a power plant to generate enough energy for 1000 households to heat their water with induction" vs "You need Y amount for the same number of households using gas stoves". What is the ratio between X and Y? You claim it is about 1. Is it? Or much larger than 1 or much smaller than 1?
What about compared to putting a cup in a kitchen microwave?
Microwave ovens are not as good as electric kettles, but still better than gas stoves.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/29/climate/nyt-climate-newsl...
"an overall efficiency [of a gas stove was] only 30.5 percent"
"The microwave was a bit better; it clocked in at about 43 percent efficiency."
"[Electric kettles] hit 70 percent efficiency."
Absolutely. Personally I do many other things besides boiling water with the stove, and I agree a kettle is a better way to do that. At least for smaller amounts of water; you’re not making pasta for 4 in the kettle.
This assumes you (everyone) live(s) in a building whose circuit breaker won’t trip when you plug in said kettle.
And it can cost a pretty penny to get a building up to this standard.
If an off the shelf kettle is popping a circuit breaker in your house (absent some other load on the circuit), there’s a reasonable chance that’s a fire waiting to happen in a faulty wiring connection somewhere.
Many cheap older apartment in Japan has poor 30A/100V power contract. Even the equipment is fine, 12A electric kettle may cause circuit braker down if they use other electronics.
Yeah, if you exceed the total load, then obviously the breaker is going to trip (that's why I added the "absent other loads" qualifier)
Old buildings aren't really the subject at hand, though[1]. Ideas about replacing standard cooking appliances are aimed at new construction and renovation. If you can afford to put in an induction range, you can surely run a wire for it.
[1] Though it must also be pointed out that older housing stock tends very strongly to be electric anyway. Gas cooktops have always been high end devices. People renting buildings in old urban neighborhoods never installed them.
I never thought of gas as being high-end. Is it because in existing construction it takes a lot more work to run pipes versus pulling a few wires through the wall?
Fast electric kettles are fast due to their high power draw and efficient design. It should be possible to find a kettle that just draws less power. It will be equally power efficient just slower and less burdensome on your breakers.
I think this may get the cause of health issues like asthma at least partially wrong. Perhaps natural gas plants a part, I don't know, but it tends to be used in cooking much more often in more densely populated areas which also happen to be in closer proximity to polution-producing industries.
The infrastructure for running natural gas lines costs money, so it is most economical in these more densely populated areas. Within 30 miles of where I live natural gas is dominant, but further out from this suburb of a major city electric heat and electric stoves are significant more common.
In the near future, I think we will think about indoor air quality (VOCs, PM2.5, High CO2) in the same way we think about smoking.
::stares nervously at unvented landlord special 1970’s stove with multiple pilot lights that is always warm to the touch::
Does no one use a kitchen extractor fan and have a CO monitor in their kitchen?
Everyone should have a co monitor on their gas stove, but a co monitor doesn't measure air quality. If your CO monitor goes off you turn off the appliance, call your gas supplier and leave the room/building.
Does everyone?
OTOH if your power goes out, being able to bake a quiche and not freeze to death is useful.
How are you heating your home? Most methane furnace designs use electric blowers to actually get the heat into the home (at least in North America).
in the texas freeze last year natural gas never stopped flowing even though power was out for about 5 days. I cut the wire to my gas furnace and put a plug on the end. My small 2kw generator could easily run the blower on my gas furnace.
We could still cook food on our gas stove.
We still had hot water from our gas hot water heater (though the pipes eventually froze).
Glad you were able to get by, sincerely.
I've only been to Austin + gotten gas around Amarillo on my way to ABQ, but as someone who's spent most my life in blue dots in red states, it's hard to put into words how angry that entire fiasco made me.
(And I'm someone who nearly did an MFA in Creative Nonfiction... I am very good at describing how I feel, it's a very purposeful exploitation of American libel law -- propaganda is the selective telling of truths, especially paired with our libel laws[1])
Anyways to swing it back to the article/thread:
Were you not able to run a thin stream of water?
I was lucky to have water included in every place I rented up til now, I used to joke if a landlord angers me I can set up a flywheel, but it also meant if it gets cold I'm not worried about cost if I switch it to the warm side and run a thin stream while I sleep or go out for espresso.
During the freeze, my family of four lived in the living room huddled around the gas fireplace. Stayed relatively warm and only needed a C cell to keep the gas flowing.
Hopefully this won't be needed, but if it happens again; keep a trickle of water running in the bathtub/etc. It'll help keep the pipes from freezing.
Why did pipes freeze with furnace fan on generator ?
It had never been below freezing that long since we started recording temperature for large parts of Texas. Thus, home designs often don't bother dealing with the question "but what if its freezing cold for days on end?", so there's no consideration to putting a water line on an exterior wall. We even have tankless water heaters mounted in or on the exterior wall with plumbing only protected by a metal plate if even that.
In places where it does regularly get below freezing for long stretches of time they do try and avoid putting water lines on exterior walls specifically for this reason.
Poor construction of pipes in exterior walls with degraded insulation.
>Poor construction of pipes
I thought it was more about lack of heat + insulation what about a pipe (absent other causes) makes it inherently more prone to freezing?
Did you miss this part?
> in exterior walls with degraded insulation.
I'm in an apartment, so I think it's boilers + then in individual units you can supplement with a heater? It was actually a persistent issue early on the grad students would screw with the knobs, and it's harder to pop a window open in a place like Pittsburgh than the Bay Area.
The power needed to run a small fan is a far cry from what is needed to power a stove and the rest of a household. Battery, generator or even manual power would be sufficient.
>The power needed to run a small fan is a far cry from what is needed to power a stove
Orders of magnitude, I used to have an all electric apartment, using a fan versus AC was a 25 dollar difference or more. I used to do the math, and nursing an iced tea down the road during the hottest four hours of the day, some days, could pay for itself, but that was before the rents skyrocketed as scores of cost indifferent international students moved in just as I was moving out.
(Last I was in the town I'm referencing, it had gone from 500ish walkable to campus to more like 1K and littered with those damn scooters.)
They're talking about gas stoves, which are designed for cooking but can be repurposed in a pinch as an emergency heat source.
They really can't because of the ventilation requirements and the amount of water vapor produced.
Unless your gas supply and appliances have green features that require electricity to function.
Measuring an old gas stove in a tiny kitchen seems suspect, modern homes have kitchens in much larger open spaces. My kitchen is in quite a large great room with 11’ ceilings, in combination with running the fan I have a hard time believing it would cause the same issues as it does in some of the older small apartments.
Vast majority of people do not have large homes to fit large kitchens
"larger open spaces" isn't going to save you unless it is open as in window open
In the USA... here in Mexico gas stoves are in the vast majority of homes.
Gas stoves are an anachronism anyway; good riddance to them.
There has been no better time for electric-only cooking. Air fryers are FAR more energy efficient than ovens, and also cook faster. Sous-vide cookers are cheap and can cook certain dishes to perfection every time. Instant pot style pressure cookers cover most of the rest. And everyone already knows the convenience of microwave ovens.
Unless you're cooking a big roast or bird or cake, most stovetop and oven cooking can be done better with modern tools.
Would you use a microwave, a sous vide apparatus, or an air fryer to make a Chinese-style stir fry? How about an omelet?
I don't think you'll find a single cook who would prefer electric. Literally no one.
The cooks and gas stoves feels a lot like the programmer / gamer with mechanical keyboards debate. There is really _no_ advantage to mechanical keyboards but almost everyone picks them and insists membrane keyboards are unusable.
It doesn't matter what the facts are, its just a personal preference thing at that point.
That's pretty much it. There are properties that make certain technologies slightly better than others for specific things, but at the end of the day it's mostly people wanting confirmation of their preferences.
People love to show off their kitchens for some weird reason (regardless of how much of it they actually need or use), so of course it turns into an audiophile-style argument (cast iron seasoning comes to mind, or those ostentatious "wall of oven-like devices" that some MPs are getting called elitist over). Conspicuous consumption makes people do funny things.
Once the gas is finally gone, you'll see people claiming they knew that electric was better all along. And I suppose I'll be saying that "I liked electric before it was cool, man!"
There's a massive advantage to steady heat though. Electric turns on and off and induction is a little weird because the pan is the heating element, easy to get too hot.
Seriously, find me a chef who prefers electric and I'll eat my shoe.
Easily disproven by comments in this and other related threads.
Once my house has a battery large enough to where I won't end up going ballistic on my energy company for having 24+ hour power outages I am fine with moving away from gas.
But I am not going to live with losing power a dozen times a year for up to a day at a time because a corporation wants my life to be the tip of the misery spear instead of their profit margins taking a hit.
When you "go ballistic" are you verbally abusing a csr in a call center somewhere who already has an unpleasant and difficult job, or finding a way to apply pressure to someone who has some power to improve the situation?
Fitting your username that you would assume OP is verbally abusing someone at a call center.
Where do you live ? Dozen times a year power outage sounds very rough.
Just wait until the bean counters force everyone to only use electricity for energy. Grids will be overloaded and will go out consistently. They will also just turn off your electricity if you do something they don’t like.
By bean counters you mean environmentalist / climate activists convincing politicians ? A common meaning of bean counters - who only cares about money - would never do that.
And if you think general populace in the first world countries will suffer through consistent blackout, I think you are utterly and completely mistaken.
And I think you are wrong too. So what? I’m in my thirties and the climate change was supposed to end the world about 4 different times and now and nothing has happened.
It’s about power and control, period.
Do you read anything, like, at all? Finance plays a _huge_ role in the climate change machinery. Carbon credits, ESG, regulations and more. Thems the bean counters.
Your original assertion:
> the bean counters force everyone to only use electricity for energy.
In carbon credit or esg or other regulations, finance / bean counters serve a means to the end, not the primary motive. Thus, I am disagreeing with this sentence, since bean counters are not who would be the primary movers to make this happen, but rather just an accessory / mean to the end. I.e. bean counters of a typical meaning would generally oppose such.
> Do you read anything, like, at all?
You may want to read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html if you haven't yet. For what it's worth, I like economics and so do read, and I consider myself a proponent of the carbon tax.