Natural gas cooking stoves used in more than a third of U.S. households are likely facing federal regulation, if not a total ban, because of the potentially harmful emissions they have.
U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commissioner Richard Trumka Jr. told Blomberg Monday that his agency is investigating the potentially bad pollution caused by gas stoves in the nation, and that “any option is on the table,” including regulations or an outright federal ban.
“This is a hidden hazard,” Time reported he told Bloomberg in an interview Monday. "Products that can’t be made safe can be banned.”
Although many cooks prefer using natural gas as opposed to electricity for cooking, recent studies show the stoves emitting dangerous pollutants including nitrogen dioxide, carbon dioxide, and “fine particulate matter” at levels the Environmental Protection Agency and World Health Organization deem unsafe, potentially causing respiratory illness, cardiovascular problems and cancer, Time reported.
The report said that one recent study by the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health found that more than 12% of childhood asthma cases in the nation can be attributed to gas stove leaks and emissions during cooking.
“There is about 50 years of health studies showing that gas stoves are bad for our health, and the strongest evidence is on children and children’s asthma,” Brady Seals, a manager in the carbon-free buildings program at the nonprofit clean energy group RMI and a co-author of the study told the news outlet. “By having a gas connection, we are polluting the insides of our homes.”
A Harvard report from September 2022 estimated that children in homes where gas stoves are used are 42% more likely to suffer from asthma, based on observational research, and could see their symptoms worsen from the nitrogen oxide which is also emitted.
According to a Smithsonian Magazine report from February 2022, the emissions are also proving bad for the environment and contributes to climate change.
That outlet reported that a recent Stanford study found the methane emissions from gas stoves in an estimated 40 million American homes are roughly the same as carbon dioxide emitted by 500,000 gas powered vehicles in a year.
“The mere existence of the stoves is really what’s driving those methane emissions,” that study’s author Eric Lebel, a research scientist with PSE Healthy Energy, said in the article. “We found that over three-quarters of the methane emissions from stoves are emitted while the stove is off. So, these little, tiny leaks from the stoves, they really do add up.”
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