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Gas Stoves Called Out for Indoor Pollution Risk in New Study
By: Hellen Zaboulani
Researchers are increasingly pointing a finger at gas stoves as a troubling source of indoor pollution.
On Friday, researchers at Stanford University published a new study focusing on how much Americans may be exposed indoors to nitrogen dioxide, which comes from burning coal and gas. The gas stove being called out as one of the biggest contributors to indoor pollution. As reported by the New York Times, short-term nitrogen dioxide exposure has been linked to asthma and other respiratory conditions.
The new research shows that exposure from typical gas stove use, often exceeds the safe benchmarks set by both the World Health Organization and the United States Environmental Protection Agency. In the longer term, using gas or propane stoves translates into breathing in about 75% of the nitrogen dioxide levels deemed safe by the W.H.O. within their own homes.
The research also notes that disadvantaged households are more adversely affected, as gas spreads more easily in smaller spaces. People living in homes smaller than 800 square feet were exposed to four times more nitrogen dioxide in the long term than people in homes larger than 3,000 square feet, the data showed. Black and Latino households were exposed to 20% more nitrogen dioxide, in comparison with the national average.
“We’ve done a really good job in this country of reducing outdoor pollution,” said Rob Jackson, professor of earth system science at the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability and a principal investigator in the study published in Science Advances. “But we’ve ignored the risks that people face indoors. And that’s the air that we’re breathing most of the time.”
Health experts say that the health risks posed by gas stoves are significant, and its not just for the cooks, but easily migrates down the halls in an apartment building. “There really is no safe amount of exposure to these toxicants produced by gas or propane, or any fossil fuel, outside or inside,” said Kari Nadeau, chairwoman of the Department of Environmental Health at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
As per the Times, the Stanford study estimated that long-term exposure to nitrogen dioxide from stoves was likely causing up to 50,000 cases of asthma in children. The Stanford data was obtained by taking direct measurements of nitrogen dioxide emissions and concentrations at some 100 homes across San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York City and other major U.S. cities, and by using indoor air-quality monitoring and epidemiological risk calculations to estimate exposure and health consequences.
While this is hardly the first time officials have spoken about the health hazards of gas stoves, there
are many who oppose making policies to ban gas stoves. Some cities and counties already sought to curb the use of gas stoves, at least in new constructions, as part of a transition to cleaner forms of energy. Per the NY Times, in the past few years, over 140 cities and local governments have made efforts to restrict gas hookups in new buildings or have taken other measures to end the use of natural gas in new buildings, but these efforts have been challenged in court.
“It isn’t ideal to tell people, they have to rip a perfectly good gas stove out of their home,” Dr. Jackson said. “But requiring new homes to install electric stoves, which the study found had virtually no harmful emissions, made sense, he said. “Otherwise, we’re putting dirty polluting infrastructure into the next set of homes, and it will be there and 50 years. No one benefits from that.”
