Health Consequences of Extracting, Transporting and Burning “Natural” Gas. Part 5. Health Risks of Cooking with Gas.
We have seen amazing progress in the past few weeks on raising awareness of the dangers of burning gas to heat our homes and cook our food. The American Public Health Association issued a policy statement (ref) declaring that gas stove emissions are a public health concern. In my home state of Washington, our state building codes council amended the code for single family and small multi family residences to require heat pumps for space and water heating in all new construction. The code also requires the electrical wiring in new homes to be induction stove ready.
Ending the use of gas for heating and electricity generation will have a much bigger positive impact on mitigating the climate crisis than switching to all electric cooktops, but gas cooking is far from benign. We have been conditioned into thinking of gas as “clean burning” and “natural” and most of all efficient by a relentless propaganda campaign by the gas industry spanning decades. This advertising effort was effective in producing profits; currently over half the homes in the United States use gas for heating and/or cooking. But fossil gas, mostly methane, is not “clean” and it is no more “natural” than other fossil fuels.
Indoor air quality is largely unregulated and gas stoves produce toxic pollutants that reach concentrations that would be illegal if found in the outdoor air. With most people spending 90 percent of their lives indoors this exposure risk is very significant. Gas stoves emit several toxic pollutants including nitrogen dioxide (NO2), nitric oxide (NO), formaldehyde (CH2)) carbon monoxide (CO) and small particulate matter (PM 2.5).
Children are at particular risk due to higher respiratory rates and larger lung surface area relative to body size compared to adults. Children living in homes that cook with gas have a 42% higher prevalence of asthma symptoms than children living in homes with electric cooktops (2). In addition to elevating the risk of lung disease in both adults and children, health risks of NO2 and other gas stove pollutants include developmental delay, cognitive impairments, heart attack, stroke, and dementia.
Lower income households and BIPOC households are at higher risk of adverse events related to indoor air pollution (3). Reasons for this include older stoves, smaller living spaces with higher concentrations of pollutants, poorer ventilation systems, and the compounding effects of higher concentrations of outdoor pollutants in neighborhoods that have been “red-lined” by racist real estate practices.
It is clear that the health risks of gas cooking require us to rapidly transition to all electric homes. In the next two parts of this series I will cover what you can do as an individual and what public policies need to be in place to make this healthy transition. For a more detailed review of the scientific and medical literature please see the report on health effects from gas stoves from RMI, Sierra Club, Physicians for Social Responsibility and Mothers Out Front (4)
References
1. American Public Health Association Policy Statements 2023
4. https://psr.org/resources/health-effects-from-gas-stove-pollution/
Prior articles in this series
1. General Overview of the Impacts of Extracting, Transporting and Burning Gas
2. The Direct Climate Impacts of Burning Gas