-15% of US homes use gas stoves, with 47 million stoves.
-Of total US natural gas consumption, 2.8% is used for residential cooking.
-Residential use of natural gas is 15% of overall usage.
-Cooking with gas thus emits .2% of US carbon emissions.
At Lloyd's costs of installing his stove:
-Converting to US dollars: $2520 to install new stove
-Extrapolated to overall US, it would cost $118 billion to save .2% of US carbon emissions
If each stove weighs 200 pounds, you'd have 9.4 billion pounds of stoves to haul away and melt down, taking further carbon emissions, not to mention the embedded emissions of making and transporting the new stoves, as well as eventually pulling out all the gas lines and recycling them, and also mining the copper for all that heavy-duty new wiring and other power supplies.
Is the the best usage of resources?
My apologies if this data is inaccurate, but I'm pressed for time today and couldn't do multiple searches. But, this conveys my general concern.
We switched from a gas range to an electric induction range last month. I'm an excellent and avid cook and I'm completely delighted. It's a very cool piece of technology and EXTREMELY responsive. And a lot simpler to use and clean. If women and men who actually cook were driving the conversation, and had the chance to try induction, there would be no argument for keeping gas. Granted, we had enough electric capacity to add a circuit for it and our pots and pans worked for induction burners.
Same experience here. My wife and I both cook a lot. Induction is far better than the gas we learned to cook on. Anyone building a new house or new kitchen is foolish not to install induction.
-15% of US homes use gas stoves, with 47 million stoves.
-Of total US natural gas consumption, 2.8% is used for residential cooking.
-Residential use of natural gas is 15% of overall usage.
-Cooking with gas thus emits .2% of US carbon emissions.
At Lloyd's costs of installing his stove:
-Converting to US dollars: $2520 to install new stove
-Extrapolated to overall US, it would cost $118 billion to save .2% of US carbon emissions
If each stove weighs 200 pounds, you'd have 9.4 billion pounds of stoves to haul away and melt down, taking further carbon emissions, not to mention the embedded emissions of making and transporting the new stoves, as well as eventually pulling out all the gas lines and recycling them, and also mining the copper for all that heavy-duty new wiring and other power supplies.
Is the the best usage of resources?
My apologies if this data is inaccurate, but I'm pressed for time today and couldn't do multiple searches. But, this conveys my general concern.
So I read the study and figured out that they spent a lot of time and effort to come up with:
"In contrast to the results for fossil fuel combustion, all 7 induction and 12 electric coil and radiant stoves that we measured had zero NO2 emissions (i.e., emissions were statistically indistinguishable from zero; see Fig. 2 and table S3)."
and
"The dominant factor predicting NO2 exposure in our analysis was the total amount of gas or propane burned. "
Gee, who knew???
And we're back to completely sealing a kitchen up with plastic to get some their results:
"We calculated NO2 and CO2 emission rates from gas and propane combustion by measuring the increase in NO2 concentration through time in sealed kitchens of known volumes...Where necessary to estimate emissions factors (but never when measuring concentrations), we created enclosed kitchen partitions by closing the kitchen’s doors and windows, closing off open spaces with plastic, and placing fans in each kitchen to mix the air (being careful not to disturb the flame)."
You're tilting at windmills. 19,000 deaths / 2,854,838 deaths per year (CDC) = 0.665% of all US deaths MIGHT be attributable to gas stoves. MAYBE, as even the study admitted:
"Exposure to NO2 outdoors has been associated with statistically significant increases in all-cause adult mortality, though quantifying its direct effect is challenging because of potential confounding with exposure to co-occurring outdoor pollutants such as particulate matter in automobile exhaust and other combustion sources"
"Our estimated health consequences of gas and propane stove use are large. We found that gas and propane stoves may contribute up to 19,000 adult deaths annually in the United States"
I don't call a death of 0.560% due to gas stoves anything but a rounding error, especially with the test sample size (per the CDC, a death rate of 3,390,029 in 2020):
" 50 additional homes (over 70 total homes when including measurements of propane and electric stoves), bedroom NO2 concentrations in six houses for 8 hours during and following stove use, and NO2 emission rates from propane stoves. We validated the CONTAM model by comparing our modeled and measured NO2 concentrations in a set of 18 test houses of various sizes and floorplans,"
Gee, who would have guessed this:
"These estimates likely overestimate the health and cost burdens attributable to NO2 because of additional pollutants found in traffic-related air pollution...(ii) that estimates of pediatric asthma attributable to stoves do not fully account for confounding variables and could be too high;"
And that their testing was done in rather air-polluted locals to begin with:
"They included both apartments and single- and multistory detached homes in the following locations: San Francisco Bay Area, CA; Los Angeles, CA; Bakersfield, CA; Denver, CO; Houston, TX; New York City, NY; and Washington, DC."
And not a large sampling size on stoves, either:
"Our measurements included 24 gas, 9 propane, and 14 electric stoves for which we previously reported benzene emission factors "
Yes, I know I'm skipping around a bit in the study, but when you look at these admissions, I have to wonder if they are trying to do real science or forward an agenda. Really, having to state that the electric and induction stoves have no emissions?
They certainly do - but never admit that the emissions have been outsourced elsewhere. Just like electric cars, if one is to be truthful, ALL electric devices have emissions somewhere...
...as well as embedded carbon - but no mention of that, Lloyd!
I will confess that the Sciences site was down yesterday and I wrote the post from the Stanford press release first, then finally read the study this morning, and not as closely as you did, good finds in here. I may add a few qualifications.
I have to admit - I speed-readed it twice looking for "questionable" methodology and determined results as well as plain stupidity (yes, we KNOW that, other than air pollution from the cooking food, inductions don't emit emissions, so why use that as a flagrant comparison).
Thanks for throwing the "good finds" in my direction.
My biggest beef with the study is with the ultra-small sampling and then trying to gobbledygook it all up with all kinds of measurements and math to make it look better than what it is. Sure, a lotof work was done in creating it but too much went unsaid of WHAT was being cooked, time of burner usage, number of burners used at a time, the power of each burner...you get my drift.
...and how many people seal up their kitchens to cook. That one bit caused the most derision when this whole foolferall started when this "ban" first started in the attempt to justify gas ranges instead of just being honest and stating "we, the govt" are going to take all fossil fuel usage away from all you rubes - we know better than you what's best for you".
And they repeated it. And tried to make it a racial/economic issue instead of just dealing with the Dang Science instead of making those groups being oppressed by gas range usage (yes, I caught the political side of "the study" as well.
what confused me about the racial/economic issue is that most poorer people don't have gas stoves; as the map shows, gas stove usage skews to richer people and coastal and urban areas that got gas earlier.
It's been known for quite some time now that peer-reviewed "science", especially in the online-only published arena, has been rife with blatant inaccuracies, remissions, undocumented edits, and outright fraud. Yet we have a number of prominent voices out there screaming, "TRUST THE SCIENCE!" Except who's watching the scientists to ensure they're doing **science** and not activism?
I've been saying for years that the 97% "consensus" is almost exclusively pencil-pushing grant-chasing money grubbers who live in a publish-or-die world and a thirst for distinguishing one's self out of the many myriad "climate scientists" to gain even more notoriety and, of course, cold hard cash. When confronted with the many examples of retractions, revisions, and fraud being published under the guise of "peer review" they inevitably gaslight and question whether or not I'm a scientist. When I tell them I am, but not in climate science, they scoff and say, "I'll trust the 'experts' in the field" ... but if the experts aren't so expert in what they're doing, ESPECIALLY IN FOLLOWING THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD, then it's not I who has the problem.
These same people took the vaccine without question, name-called and chastised anyone who did not, believe their government without question, and think that republican democracy is inherently evil. There's no reasoning with these people because they have nothing between their ears to be reasoned with.
I could just as well as you, pick on heart disease or cancer as the basis of death rates as a bulwark against your choice of death sources. And it still would be a rounding error...
...and that would still be wrong of me to try to do that sleight of hand.
You're trying to shoehorn "context" - and your examples are invalid as they are not germane to the post's topic.
Yes, it IS a rounding error when compared to total deaths. The problem is that too many people are trying to reduce Life's risk to zero and aren't worried about the cost of doing so nor the impact on other people's normal lives.
The purpose of the article is to keep the drumbeat of invalidating the use of gas ranges by ANYONE by those that have no personal interest in those people (e.g., why should a bureaucrat tell me what I can, of my own free will, use to cook my meals?).
Nobody is forcing you to get rid of your gas stove. Rather, there is some evidence that gas cooking is harmful. You can choose to accept that evidence or not.
Over the years, some public health advances, like vaccines, have saved millions of lives. Others have saved fewer, but are still beneficial. Induction cooking is superior to cooking on a gas cooktop. There's no good reason not to install induction in a new kitchen.
Although there hasn't been an outright national ban on gas appliances, it has been done at a local level - see Berkley, CA. In that case, though, the Judiciary threw it out.
However, like CA's CARB and NJ DOE, new or changed regulations ARE efffectively doing the banning as legislative cowards refuse to put their names on voting records. Change the regs to make it harder for manufacturers to comply AND make their products more expensive IS a ban by regulation.
So why is it YOUR business what kind of stove someone a thousand miles from you is using? Or anyone else's, for that matter?
Why is it YOUR business concerning the risks that someone takes on for themselves? If you believe that it is, why aren't you advocating for alcohol prohibition as alcohol kills FAR more people, via accidents, stupidity, and disease, than gas stoves.
>>"Rather, there is some evidence that gas cooking is harmful."
There's also well-documented evidence pointing to the inherent danger in drinking too much water, but we're not out in the street stomping our feet about how Nestlé is killing us with their version, are we?
Yes that's satire, because this whole topic demands a cheeky response. The extent of that harm is front and center; since most poor people cannot afford a separate gas bill, this isn't a classist argument to make about "helping the most vulnerable in our community" and as those more wealthy homeowners with gas stoves also live in larger houses, to what extent is the perceived harm to them?
Furthermore, since MOST harm resulting from cooking comes from 2.5PM particulate matter, and since ALL cooking produces 2.5PM particulates, WHY THE RUSH TO BAN GAS INSTEAD OF ALL INDOOR COOKING? Because I can tell you, this is an ideologically driven witch hunt by the watermelon greens to totally eliminate all fossil fuels from the world (well, in the developed world at least, so we can be more like the poverty-stricken in India or Africa.)
>>”but when you look at these admissions, I have to wonder if they are trying to do real science or forward an agenda.”
Of course it’s agenda driven “science”. They start with their desired conclusion and massage the methodology and data to “prove” how awful gas stoves are, while inconveniently ignoring that reality doesn’t match up with the risk for anyone willing to take the time to read the paper.
Lloyd could do his readers a service by looking closely at the study and even critiquing it. For instance, exposure to combustion by-products depends greatly on cooking habits and ventilation.
Has Lloyd written about the economic costs of replacing his own stove--including installation and disposal of his old one? This would be interesting.
Kitchenaid stove: C$2850. Wiring 240 volt line from panel (service was big enough) C$600. Disposal: free, a guy in a pickup truck came by and wanted the metal.
If gas stoves are primarily a health issue and not a carbon emissions one, then the fix is straightforward--a federal law stating that any homeowner or resident has the right to install an externally vented range hood regardless of any ordinances (e.g. historical preservation) to the contrary. Don't like someone drilling a 8" hole in their wall for a vent cap? Too bad, it's not your house!
A few years ago a Colorado researcher spoke to a Passive Buildings Canada AGM about kitchen emissions in Passive Houses. As I recall (I couldn't find the article), emissions in a PH need to be more positively and powerfully ventilated to reduce cooking pollution in the house, mainly because a PH is designed to NOT be leaky, unlike (probably) the houses tested in the article LA references. This would be especially relevant if a gas stove were used - but who would put a gas stove in a PH anyway?
Another observation - as a regular watcher of HGTV renovation shows, it is noteworthy that almost all kitchens have new, massive gas stoves. As Lloyd noted, it probably has to do with sponsorship...
Crazy! So I appreciated your mention of appliances in small dwellings.
I built a backyard cottage and I put a two-burner induction cooktop (220 V so it works really well) and then a microwave and for the oven — a Breville counter-top oven/toaster/ air fryer. (I tested out the Breville in my house and for 1-2 person household it’s entirely adequate. in fact, it’s easier to use than my 30” gas oven/stove.)
Anyway, it never even occurred to me to put a full size 4 burner range and oven… But I would bet you most people who design these tiny houses have never lived in one.
I spent week in a 20 foot RV (it was fun!) and designers of RVs also make similar mistakes. A 3-burner stove top in a 20’ RV!!??
I tried to read the article that was the source for Linda Peterat's assertion that hearth deaths were "'a principal cause of death among women, second only to childbirth'” but was unable to access it. Simply from a common-sense perspective, however, this claim seems dubious during a period when disease and malnutrition were endemic. Not being a historian with access to academic journals, this is not a hill I want to die on, but one article disputing this claim that popped up during a cursory Google search was interesting:
Some quick internet searching for this data:
-15% of US homes use gas stoves, with 47 million stoves.
-Of total US natural gas consumption, 2.8% is used for residential cooking.
-Residential use of natural gas is 15% of overall usage.
-Cooking with gas thus emits .2% of US carbon emissions.
At Lloyd's costs of installing his stove:
-Converting to US dollars: $2520 to install new stove
-Extrapolated to overall US, it would cost $118 billion to save .2% of US carbon emissions
If each stove weighs 200 pounds, you'd have 9.4 billion pounds of stoves to haul away and melt down, taking further carbon emissions, not to mention the embedded emissions of making and transporting the new stoves, as well as eventually pulling out all the gas lines and recycling them, and also mining the copper for all that heavy-duty new wiring and other power supplies.
Is the the best usage of resources?
My apologies if this data is inaccurate, but I'm pressed for time today and couldn't do multiple searches. But, this conveys my general concern.
We switched from a gas range to an electric induction range last month. I'm an excellent and avid cook and I'm completely delighted. It's a very cool piece of technology and EXTREMELY responsive. And a lot simpler to use and clean. If women and men who actually cook were driving the conversation, and had the chance to try induction, there would be no argument for keeping gas. Granted, we had enough electric capacity to add a circuit for it and our pots and pans worked for induction burners.
Same experience here. My wife and I both cook a lot. Induction is far better than the gas we learned to cook on. Anyone building a new house or new kitchen is foolish not to install induction.
Some quick internet searching for this data:
-15% of US homes use gas stoves, with 47 million stoves.
-Of total US natural gas consumption, 2.8% is used for residential cooking.
-Residential use of natural gas is 15% of overall usage.
-Cooking with gas thus emits .2% of US carbon emissions.
At Lloyd's costs of installing his stove:
-Converting to US dollars: $2520 to install new stove
-Extrapolated to overall US, it would cost $118 billion to save .2% of US carbon emissions
If each stove weighs 200 pounds, you'd have 9.4 billion pounds of stoves to haul away and melt down, taking further carbon emissions, not to mention the embedded emissions of making and transporting the new stoves, as well as eventually pulling out all the gas lines and recycling them, and also mining the copper for all that heavy-duty new wiring and other power supplies.
Is the the best usage of resources?
My apologies if this data is inaccurate, but I'm pressed for time today and couldn't do multiple searches. But, this conveys my general concern.
So I read the study and figured out that they spent a lot of time and effort to come up with:
"In contrast to the results for fossil fuel combustion, all 7 induction and 12 electric coil and radiant stoves that we measured had zero NO2 emissions (i.e., emissions were statistically indistinguishable from zero; see Fig. 2 and table S3)."
and
"The dominant factor predicting NO2 exposure in our analysis was the total amount of gas or propane burned. "
Gee, who knew???
And we're back to completely sealing a kitchen up with plastic to get some their results:
"We calculated NO2 and CO2 emission rates from gas and propane combustion by measuring the increase in NO2 concentration through time in sealed kitchens of known volumes...Where necessary to estimate emissions factors (but never when measuring concentrations), we created enclosed kitchen partitions by closing the kitchen’s doors and windows, closing off open spaces with plastic, and placing fans in each kitchen to mix the air (being careful not to disturb the flame)."
You're tilting at windmills. 19,000 deaths / 2,854,838 deaths per year (CDC) = 0.665% of all US deaths MIGHT be attributable to gas stoves. MAYBE, as even the study admitted:
"Exposure to NO2 outdoors has been associated with statistically significant increases in all-cause adult mortality, though quantifying its direct effect is challenging because of potential confounding with exposure to co-occurring outdoor pollutants such as particulate matter in automobile exhaust and other combustion sources"
"Our estimated health consequences of gas and propane stove use are large. We found that gas and propane stoves may contribute up to 19,000 adult deaths annually in the United States"
I don't call a death of 0.560% due to gas stoves anything but a rounding error, especially with the test sample size (per the CDC, a death rate of 3,390,029 in 2020):
" 50 additional homes (over 70 total homes when including measurements of propane and electric stoves), bedroom NO2 concentrations in six houses for 8 hours during and following stove use, and NO2 emission rates from propane stoves. We validated the CONTAM model by comparing our modeled and measured NO2 concentrations in a set of 18 test houses of various sizes and floorplans,"
Gee, who would have guessed this:
"These estimates likely overestimate the health and cost burdens attributable to NO2 because of additional pollutants found in traffic-related air pollution...(ii) that estimates of pediatric asthma attributable to stoves do not fully account for confounding variables and could be too high;"
And that their testing was done in rather air-polluted locals to begin with:
"They included both apartments and single- and multistory detached homes in the following locations: San Francisco Bay Area, CA; Los Angeles, CA; Bakersfield, CA; Denver, CO; Houston, TX; New York City, NY; and Washington, DC."
And not a large sampling size on stoves, either:
"Our measurements included 24 gas, 9 propane, and 14 electric stoves for which we previously reported benzene emission factors "
Yes, I know I'm skipping around a bit in the study, but when you look at these admissions, I have to wonder if they are trying to do real science or forward an agenda. Really, having to state that the electric and induction stoves have no emissions?
They certainly do - but never admit that the emissions have been outsourced elsewhere. Just like electric cars, if one is to be truthful, ALL electric devices have emissions somewhere...
...as well as embedded carbon - but no mention of that, Lloyd!
I will confess that the Sciences site was down yesterday and I wrote the post from the Stanford press release first, then finally read the study this morning, and not as closely as you did, good finds in here. I may add a few qualifications.
I have to admit - I speed-readed it twice looking for "questionable" methodology and determined results as well as plain stupidity (yes, we KNOW that, other than air pollution from the cooking food, inductions don't emit emissions, so why use that as a flagrant comparison).
Thanks for throwing the "good finds" in my direction.
My biggest beef with the study is with the ultra-small sampling and then trying to gobbledygook it all up with all kinds of measurements and math to make it look better than what it is. Sure, a lotof work was done in creating it but too much went unsaid of WHAT was being cooked, time of burner usage, number of burners used at a time, the power of each burner...you get my drift.
...and how many people seal up their kitchens to cook. That one bit caused the most derision when this whole foolferall started when this "ban" first started in the attempt to justify gas ranges instead of just being honest and stating "we, the govt" are going to take all fossil fuel usage away from all you rubes - we know better than you what's best for you".
And they repeated it. And tried to make it a racial/economic issue instead of just dealing with the Dang Science instead of making those groups being oppressed by gas range usage (yes, I caught the political side of "the study" as well.
what confused me about the racial/economic issue is that most poorer people don't have gas stoves; as the map shows, gas stove usage skews to richer people and coastal and urban areas that got gas earlier.
Knowing that, Lloyd, does it not strike you as either possible or likely that the papers authors are, in fact, pushing an agenda?
Well, there is this - and I've been seeing a lot more references to it:
"Trust The "Science"...That Just Retracted 11,000 "Peer Reviewed" Papers"
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/trust-sciencethat-just-retracted-11000-peer-reviewed-papers
So much for "follow the Science" if you can't trust the Scientists that are trying to BE someone instead of DOING something correctly.
It's been known for quite some time now that peer-reviewed "science", especially in the online-only published arena, has been rife with blatant inaccuracies, remissions, undocumented edits, and outright fraud. Yet we have a number of prominent voices out there screaming, "TRUST THE SCIENCE!" Except who's watching the scientists to ensure they're doing **science** and not activism?
I've been saying for years that the 97% "consensus" is almost exclusively pencil-pushing grant-chasing money grubbers who live in a publish-or-die world and a thirst for distinguishing one's self out of the many myriad "climate scientists" to gain even more notoriety and, of course, cold hard cash. When confronted with the many examples of retractions, revisions, and fraud being published under the guise of "peer review" they inevitably gaslight and question whether or not I'm a scientist. When I tell them I am, but not in climate science, they scoff and say, "I'll trust the 'experts' in the field" ... but if the experts aren't so expert in what they're doing, ESPECIALLY IN FOLLOWING THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD, then it's not I who has the problem.
These same people took the vaccine without question, name-called and chastised anyone who did not, believe their government without question, and think that republican democracy is inherently evil. There's no reasoning with these people because they have nothing between their ears to be reasoned with.
19000 deaths is close to half of deaths from motor vehicle accidents and around the number of murders by guns. Rounding error?
I could just as well as you, pick on heart disease or cancer as the basis of death rates as a bulwark against your choice of death sources. And it still would be a rounding error...
...and that would still be wrong of me to try to do that sleight of hand.
For completeness, here are the most common causes of death in the United States are:
1. Heart disease (695,547 deaths)
2. Cancer (605,213 deaths)
3. COVID-19 (416,893 deaths in 2021)
4. Unintentional injuries/accidents (224,935 deaths)
5. Stroke (162,890 deaths)
6. Chronic lower respiratory diseases (142,342 deaths)
7. Alzheimer's disease (119,399 deaths)
8. Diabetes (103,294 deaths)
9. Chronic liver disease and cirrhosis (56,585 deaths)
10. Nephritis, nephrotic syndrome, and nephrosis (54,358 deaths)
11, Influenza and pneumonia (51,576 deaths)
12. Intentional self-harm/suicide (48,344 deaths)
13. Septicemia (38,517 deaths)
14. Essential hypertension and hypertensive renal disease (26,593 deaths)
15. Parkinson's disease (25,830 deaths)
16. Pneumonitis due to solids and liquids (19,556 deaths)
17. Chronic liver disease and cirrhosis (18,192 deaths)
18. Aortic aneurysm and dissection (10,234 deaths)
19. Atherosclerosis (8,758 deaths)
20. Cystic fibrosis (1,186 deaths)
There's more, some more and some less in numbers, but it is a starting list.
You're trying to shoehorn "context" - and your examples are invalid as they are not germane to the post's topic.
Yes, it IS a rounding error when compared to total deaths. The problem is that too many people are trying to reduce Life's risk to zero and aren't worried about the cost of doing so nor the impact on other people's normal lives.
The purpose of the article is to keep the drumbeat of invalidating the use of gas ranges by ANYONE by those that have no personal interest in those people (e.g., why should a bureaucrat tell me what I can, of my own free will, use to cook my meals?).
Nobody is forcing you to get rid of your gas stove. Rather, there is some evidence that gas cooking is harmful. You can choose to accept that evidence or not.
Over the years, some public health advances, like vaccines, have saved millions of lives. Others have saved fewer, but are still beneficial. Induction cooking is superior to cooking on a gas cooktop. There's no good reason not to install induction in a new kitchen.
Although there hasn't been an outright national ban on gas appliances, it has been done at a local level - see Berkley, CA. In that case, though, the Judiciary threw it out.
However, like CA's CARB and NJ DOE, new or changed regulations ARE efffectively doing the banning as legislative cowards refuse to put their names on voting records. Change the regs to make it harder for manufacturers to comply AND make their products more expensive IS a ban by regulation.
So why is it YOUR business what kind of stove someone a thousand miles from you is using? Or anyone else's, for that matter?
Why is it YOUR business concerning the risks that someone takes on for themselves? If you believe that it is, why aren't you advocating for alcohol prohibition as alcohol kills FAR more people, via accidents, stupidity, and disease, than gas stoves.
>>"Rather, there is some evidence that gas cooking is harmful."
There's also well-documented evidence pointing to the inherent danger in drinking too much water, but we're not out in the street stomping our feet about how Nestlé is killing us with their version, are we?
Yes that's satire, because this whole topic demands a cheeky response. The extent of that harm is front and center; since most poor people cannot afford a separate gas bill, this isn't a classist argument to make about "helping the most vulnerable in our community" and as those more wealthy homeowners with gas stoves also live in larger houses, to what extent is the perceived harm to them?
Furthermore, since MOST harm resulting from cooking comes from 2.5PM particulate matter, and since ALL cooking produces 2.5PM particulates, WHY THE RUSH TO BAN GAS INSTEAD OF ALL INDOOR COOKING? Because I can tell you, this is an ideologically driven witch hunt by the watermelon greens to totally eliminate all fossil fuels from the world (well, in the developed world at least, so we can be more like the poverty-stricken in India or Africa.)
>>”but when you look at these admissions, I have to wonder if they are trying to do real science or forward an agenda.”
Of course it’s agenda driven “science”. They start with their desired conclusion and massage the methodology and data to “prove” how awful gas stoves are, while inconveniently ignoring that reality doesn’t match up with the risk for anyone willing to take the time to read the paper.
Lloyd could do his readers a service by looking closely at the study and even critiquing it. For instance, exposure to combustion by-products depends greatly on cooking habits and ventilation.
Has Lloyd written about the economic costs of replacing his own stove--including installation and disposal of his old one? This would be interesting.
Kitchenaid stove: C$2850. Wiring 240 volt line from panel (service was big enough) C$600. Disposal: free, a guy in a pickup truck came by and wanted the metal.
If gas stoves are primarily a health issue and not a carbon emissions one, then the fix is straightforward--a federal law stating that any homeowner or resident has the right to install an externally vented range hood regardless of any ordinances (e.g. historical preservation) to the contrary. Don't like someone drilling a 8" hole in their wall for a vent cap? Too bad, it's not your house!
A few years ago a Colorado researcher spoke to a Passive Buildings Canada AGM about kitchen emissions in Passive Houses. As I recall (I couldn't find the article), emissions in a PH need to be more positively and powerfully ventilated to reduce cooking pollution in the house, mainly because a PH is designed to NOT be leaky, unlike (probably) the houses tested in the article LA references. This would be especially relevant if a gas stove were used - but who would put a gas stove in a PH anyway?
Another observation - as a regular watcher of HGTV renovation shows, it is noteworthy that almost all kitchens have new, massive gas stoves. As Lloyd noted, it probably has to do with sponsorship...
How tiny is the tiny house in your post? I’m astonished that anyone would put a full-size gas stove in a tiny dwelling.
they do all the time, it seems to be a tiny house obsession to have giant american appliances. I wrote about this earlier: https://lloydalter.substack.com/p/kitchen-bloat-is-everywhere-from
Would these be the same people who drive the big trucks and SUV's?
Crazy! So I appreciated your mention of appliances in small dwellings.
I built a backyard cottage and I put a two-burner induction cooktop (220 V so it works really well) and then a microwave and for the oven — a Breville counter-top oven/toaster/ air fryer. (I tested out the Breville in my house and for 1-2 person household it’s entirely adequate. in fact, it’s easier to use than my 30” gas oven/stove.)
Anyway, it never even occurred to me to put a full size 4 burner range and oven… But I would bet you most people who design these tiny houses have never lived in one.
I spent week in a 20 foot RV (it was fun!) and designers of RVs also make similar mistakes. A 3-burner stove top in a 20’ RV!!??
I tried to read the article that was the source for Linda Peterat's assertion that hearth deaths were "'a principal cause of death among women, second only to childbirth'” but was unable to access it. Simply from a common-sense perspective, however, this claim seems dubious during a period when disease and malnutrition were endemic. Not being a historian with access to academic journals, this is not a hill I want to die on, but one article disputing this claim that popped up during a cursory Google search was interesting:
https://historymyths.wordpress.com/2014/01/25/revisited-myth-2-burning-to-death-from-their-long-petticoats-catching-fire-was-the-leading-cause-of-death-for-colonial-american-women-after-childbirth/
That's fascinating! I have been quoting the Peterat article for years, but will add a link to this.