Highlights: A study this summer found that using a single gas stove burner on high can raise levels of cancer-causing benzene above what’s been observed from secondhand smoke.
A new investigation by NPR and the Climate Investigations Center found that the gas industry tried to downplay the health risks of gas stoves for decades, turning to many of the same public-relations tactics the tobacco industry used to cover up the risks of smoking. Gas utilities even hired some of the same PR firms and scientists that Big Tobacco did.
Earlier this year, an investigation from DeSmog showed that the industry understood the hazards of gas appliances as far back as the 1970s and concealed what they knew from the public.
It’s a strategy that goes back as far back as 1972, according to the most recent investigation. That year, the gas industry got advice from Richard Darrow, who helped manufacture controversy around the health effects of smoking as the lead for tobacco accounts at the public relations firm Hill + Knowlton. At an American Gas Association conference, Darrow told utilities they needed to respond to claims that gas appliances were polluting homes and shape the narrative around the issue before critics got the chance. Scientists were starting to discover that exposure to nitrogen dioxide—a pollutant emitted by gas stoves—was linked to respiratory illnesses. So Darrow advised utilities to “mount the massive, consistent, long-range public relations programs necessary to cope with the problems.”
These studies didn’t just confuse the public, but also the federal government. When the Environmental Protection Agency assessed the health effects of nitrogen dioxide pollution in 1982, its review included five studies finding no evidence of problems—four of which were funded by the gas industry, the Climate Investigations Center recently uncovered.
Karen Harbert, the American Gas Association’s CEO, acknowledged that the gas industry has “collaborated” with researchers to “inform and educate regulators about the safety of gas cooking appliances.” Harbert claimed that the available science “does not provide sufficient or consistent evidence demonstrating chronic health hazards from natural gas ranges”—a line that should sound familiar by now.
Capitalism is such shit…
It really is…it’s outlived it’s usefulness and needs to go the way of the horse drawn carriage.
What is the better solution? What country has implemented something better than capitalism?
Marx figured it out 160 years ago. Spend some time and learn about it. Did the Wright brothers have to fly in a plane before they built one?
Well if no one else has done something, it clearly can’t be done, right?
The main alternative is, instead of focusing on wealth accumulation, focus on societal betterment.
Feudalism is such shit.
What is the better solution? What country has implemented something better than Feudalism?
You, with a time machine, probably.
A system that fully accepts environmental realities and works against the wholesale ecocide of the planet as it’s first tenet. The rest is kinda whatever at this point. It could be a resource based economy or some sort of mixed planned/free market. Just gotta make sure that invisible hand doesn’t strangle us all in our sleep, ya know?
Capitalism is industrialised greed, it keeps the wheels turning, having people forever chase shit that they don’t need for the sake of feeling better than the man stood next to them. What an inspirational ladder to climb.
You’re under the misunderstanding that it works.
Everyone’s gonna be like, oh the USSR, or venezuela, or whatever type of fully nationalized country that’s got embargoed to shit and has either gone under or has gone the way of cuba and just kind of lives with it. And I’m not gonna waste your time trying to convince you about how all those countries are actually great or yadda yadda ya. Instead, I wanna turn you on to a couple neat things. First, would probably be the Zapatistas, who are a pretty cool kind of anarchist group that tends to function well mostly independent of the mexican government. Kind of hard to find information on them, but they’re neat and I think outside of the general preconceived notions that people have against the idea itself, it’s hard not to empathize with opposition to the mostly corrupt and totally fuckied mexican government. There’s also, for your consideration the Mondragon Corporation, a co-operative that employs 80,000 people and rivals the size of probably a mid-sized country. If you’re just taking issue with power structures themselves, rather than the monopoly on violence or the borders said to define a country as different from a corporation, than that’s kind of an interesting counterpoint to like, global capitalism. Kind of ironic that they’re, you know, a corporation, but then the structure of the corporation is different enough as to call into question whether or not the insane wealth disparities of corporations that americans are generally used to are required. But then, the surrounding stuff also has some problems, because the corporation itself has been criticized for employing contract workers, much like a state might employ immigrant labor or outsourced labor, reaping the rewards but giving none of the benefits, kind of creating an internal sense of “nationalism” in the corp. But then, I suppose, let us not let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Because any other form of government did (and does) not have the same problem to an even greater extent?
Lol that you’re being downvoted.
Everyone knows there were never any cover ups under Communism! RBMK reactor? Completely safe, comrade!
/s
Mostly because communism is not a form of government, but an economic system. A communist economy can be run by a democratic government or an authoritarian one. Same as capitalism.
Some communist economy governments were terrible, others weren’t so terrible, but all of them were sabotaged every step along the way of changing their economic systems by Capitalist interests.
That could be pretty easily described as state-owned capitalism… Position in the party was your capital, influence, and authority all rolled into one conveniently bribed package. You could describe the whole USSR as a nation-state megacorp… Make the borders open and do better marketing, and it might as well have been called Soviet Energy Corp. Although, if we go full corpo-fuedal, that’s probably not far off the mark
They even had the global trade and horrific externalities down - remember how everyone started to starve, and how their weapons were always disappearing onto the black market? It was all sold off - it all got shipped overseas and sold so a party member could have a nest egg stored in Switzerland. They even did the whole “Irish potato famine” thing where they kept exporting food while people starved
I seriously have no idea what Lenin was smoking… He built a government that took all of the downsides of capitalism, and focused them in one convenient institution. It’s the perfect government system you’d make to manage humans if you’ve never actually met a human or seen a government before
It seems to me that centralization is the key problem with every modern system… Big just has a way of going bad
It’s more the sociopaths running the companies that are shit. They don’t give a damn about the people they exploit and the harm they cause. And every institution’s got their share of them, not just businesses.
And they’re in the positions they are because of capitalism. Capitalism dictates you should exploit as much as possible to increase profits.
they’re in the positions they are because of capitalism.
More specifically, they are in them because of human nature. Those who don’t care about others gravitate towards positions of power. That is not exclusive to capitalism. Any hierarchy is prone to sociopaths rising to positions of power. They seek them no matter what the economic system is.
In other words, power corrupts. People without power who get power inevitably start to act like sociopaths.
But feel free to blame capitalism if you like. It is the cause of many problems with our society. Any change that decreases its power should be welcomed at least in the context of American society.
I’d still rather have a gas stove. IMO the improved experience of cooking with gas justifies the small increase in exposure to air pollution. My general principle is that I drive a car despite how dangerous that is, so I should be willing to take other risks as long as they’re lower than the risk from driving.
(Resistive electric stoves are terrible. Inductive ones are much better. I can see why someone might like them more than gas, but I don’t.)
Worse than secondhand smoke is not a small increase to air pollution
There’s nothing better about gas than inductive, anyone complaining about conductive either has the wrong cookware or a malfunctioning model
I do consider it a small increase, but I suppose that’s subjective and depends a lot on a person’s risk tolerance. Maybe mine is higher than yours.
As for induction stoves: they work quite well. If I was cooking simply because I needed cooked food and for no other reason, I would have no objection to them (and perhaps a preference for them). However, I feel that there’s something deeply satisfying about cooking over a fire and I want that satisfaction when I cook.
I agree. Gas is hands down a better heat source if your primary method of cooking is to sauté and toss or are cooking in a wok. The flame is a tool you can work with. But for most home cooks, it doesn’t make much difference. If you’re just scooting stuff around with a spatula, a hot pan is a hot pan no matter how it got hot.
do I have to take on the climate change risks too even though I had no say?
I think you have to accept risks of that magnitude unless you’re willing to micromanage other people’s lives (and to have your own life micromanaged). If you’re not going to tolerate people who use gas stoves, will you tolerate people who take twenty minute showers? People who heat their houses to 75° in the winter? People who have big lawns?
There’s a point past which protecting the environment doesn’t justify intrusive restrictions of people’s behavior, and IMO banning gas stoves is well beyond that point.
I never got this fervent obsession “i mUsT hAvE gAs StOvE, eLeCtRiC iS tHe SuCk wAhHhHh.” Geez you think an electric stove killed their puppy or something. Electric is more than fine, it’s even better because it’s not putting out all that extra heat, nevermind all the pollution, and the noise because you’re supposed to run the fan at high (but people never do). Cue the gAs crying below.
Obligatory Climate Town Video: It’s Time To Break Up With Our Gas Stoves. It explains why we are, where we are today and what myth the gas industry is pushing to keep gas in our homes and the fugitive leaks in the environment. Can not recommend it enough.
The only real issue is that how environmentally friendly electric is compared to gas depends on how the electricity is made. Gas effectively converts all of its potential chemical energy to heat where it is used. Electricity has to be generated from some process eg. burning fuel, nuclear energy, wind, solar, hydroelectric etc. and if it is primarily generated at coal or gas power plants, maybe 40 to 50% of the potential chemical energy in those fuels are converted into electricity. So if more than about 40% of the electricity you use is generated by burning fossil fuels, you arent really saving the environment by using electric instead of gas. But of course where that pollution ends up matters. In the case of electric, if your power is generated in power plants that burn fossil fuels, the pollution isn’t directly being vented into your house. And those power plants may scrub their exhaust to an extent. i.e to reduce Sulfur Dioxide emissions etc.
Electric + cast iron is my favorite combo, because the heat capacity of the cast iron pretty much cancels out the uneven heat from an electric burner
I’m currently frying with the thinnest stainless steel pan I’ve ever seen from the 70s. Didn’t even know they could be that thin. And there is no problem with the on/off cycle. It’s a made up fake concern from who knows where.
this argument again ?
if you make the grid more reliable or give domiciles batteries then there is no problem with electric cooking these days.
but if you live where there are lots of tall trees and people like the tall trees and the tall trees are nice and keep up the quality of life but the tall trees come done all year round in storms and you lose power for upto 24 to 48 hours at a time repeatedly over and over again year in, year out, then forget your electric stove unless I have a battery to run it.
so we can upgrade our domiciles when they upgrade the grid.
Sound fair ?
This isn’t the argument this article is replying to. For decades gas has been sold as a better alternative and people have forgone electric to get gas just on that alone. They really didn’t need to and just did it to be ‘in’.
False advertising and burying the risks needs to be addressed.
That’s fair
Gas stoves rock. Rather than banning gas stoves, just require that they be installed safely.
The answer here is simple- mandate a range hood with real outside exhaust (not the cheap ones that blow air back into the room). And require a make-up air vent with equivalent capacity.
Maybe require the stove to automatically engage the vent at low speed (near-silent) so when you start a burner the vent runs at like 10CFM or something automatically.
Mandating that someone renovate their entire kitchen to have a gas stove would have worse repercussions than just outright banning them
I vividly remember when they required fire-retardant insulation that every contractor and worker in the biz was up in arms, I can’t imagine how well it’s gonna go for contractors building high-rise apartments that are also required to have strong ventilation systems for dumb stoves
I just had my kitchen done and asked for better ventilation, provided options. Ended up with a microwave that blows air into the fucking room. And its connected to a vent outside, its just designed to blow air into the fucking room despite that. Contractor was so clueless and products are there to deceive us.
I think he probably installed it wrong. I’ve seen a few of these and read the manuals, there is almost always a setup where you have to remove a baffle from the rear output and reinstall that baffle in the front output. Look up the installation manual for your microwave. I would bet money your contractor missed a step.
