Thanks, I’ll be keeping my relatively low-tech gas fired stove.
Enjoy the asthma.
Edit: Just be aware that there’s a concerted, ongoing campaign by the fossil fuel industry to astroturf for gas stoves.
I hope you have proper ventilation for your electric stove, too.
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Attacking other users violates the lemmy.world TOS. Removed.
I do have proper ventilation, but “proper” ventilation – short of a laboratory setup – doesn’t exist for piping methane (95% of what “natural gas” is along with carcinogens like benzene) directly into your kitchen and then combusting it to produce nitrogen dioxide. You should not be using a gas stove if you care about your respiratory health or the respiratory health of your family.
Edit: this user is literally just making shit up at this point. Below, they cite this article as evidence that fans adequately reduce PM2.5 and NO2 emissions. Let’s break down what this article is actually about, because I believe they expect other users not to read it knowing or simply not caring that it doesn’t do that whatsoever. This article is about if running the fan after cooking helps reduce harmful indoor pollutants. As you can see from the abstract, it makes no assessment as what “adequate” would be, but we can continue into the article itself, which immediately reads as follows (I emphasize that I’ve read the entire article, and at no point do they claim that the pollutant levels even when following best practices are acceptable for human health):
Cooking is a significant source of indoor pollutants. High emissions of particles from cooking activities have been reported in many studies [1–9]. Kearney et al. [5] found that about two-thirds of the 100 Canadian homes studied had higher contributions of ultrafine particles (UFPs) from indoor sources (mainly cooking) than from the entry of outdoor UFPs. Wallace et al. [10] found that cooking was associated with an increase of a factor of ten in the concentration of UFPs and an increase of a factor of three in fine PM 2.5 . Wheelet et al. [8] reported that during the dinnertime cooking period, indoor UFP and PM 2.5 concentrations exceeded their daily mean values by, on average, 160% and 60%, respectively.
For homes with natural gas cooking stoves, higher residential levels of nitrogen dioxide (NO 2) are an additional concern [11,12]. A recent simulation study [13] found that gas burner use may routinely lead to NO 2 concentrations that exceed the 1 h U.S. ambient air quality standard of 100 ppb and follow-up measurements found that the threshold was exceeded by moderate burner use in four of nine homes in which experiments were conducted [14].
Many studies, both experimental and simulation, have demonstrated that kitchen exhaust fans can reduce cooking-related air pollutants [14–21]. However, the efficiency of exhaust fans to capture cooking-related pollutants can vary widely based on a number of factors, including equipment type, size and location, exhaust flow rate, exhaust ducting, installation details and use behavior [15,19,22,23].
Use behavior is an important factor to maximize effectiveness, especially for those who are not able to purchase a higher performance unit or make improvements to the installations, such as renters.
You should not be using a gas stove if you care about your respiratory health or the respiratory health of your family.
That is not the conclusion of the article to which you linked. Rather, it acknowledges that cooking exhaust fans are an effective mitigation. If you follow the link in the relevant paragraph, you get to an article that references many papers covering the effectiveness of exhaust fans. This one clearly demonstrates that exhaust fans that adequately remove pollutants from cooking, including PM2.5 and NOX, are available on the market for residential use.
It doesn’t at all say that; it notes that you should be using an electric stovetop but that vents can reduce the exposure.
If I already have a gas stove, what steps can I take to reduce the risks?
If you have the means, you can replace your gas stove with an electric one. The Inflation Reduction Act provides rebates of up to $840 for purchasing new electric appliances, including stoves and cooktops. (Eligibility varies by state and income level.)
But if you can’t afford to buy a new stove or if you rent an apartment and can’t change the appliances, experts note that there are still things you can do to reduce your exposure risk.
If your stove has an overhead vent, you should use it every time you cook—and ideally it should vent to the outside. “You should always turn that exhaust fan on anytime that you’re using your stove, no matter if you’re just boiling water,” says Eric Lebel, a senior scientist at PSE Healthy Energy, a nonprofit research and policy institute in Oakland, Calif. “Even if what you’re cooking doesn’t smell, if that flame is on, you should have the exhaust on to help reduce the concentrations of the off-gassing, or those [nitrogen oxide] by-products, in the kitchen.”
Unfortunately, many people don’t use their vents. They work best when they’re running at full blast, which can be pretty loud, and the filter should be changed about every three months, Kephart says. And some overhead vents merely recirculate the air back into a room. If you don’t have a “ducted hood” that vents to the outside, you can open a window and run a fan to increase ventilation, Lebel says. Portable air purifiers may also help, Kephart says, although they don’t completely remove the NO2.
it notes that you should be using an electric stovetop but that vents can reduce the exposure.
In the text you quoted, it says that you can replace your gas stove, not that you should. That’s a far cry from what you originally said: “You should not be using a gas stove if you care about your respiratory health or the respiratory health of your family.”
Why did you edit your reply like this instead of making a new one to me?
You originally claimed that proper ventilation was not available for residential applications. The paper I found, indirectly referenced by the article you shared, lists three models that were all capable of keeping NOX exposure under the the 1 h U.S. ambient air quality standard of 100 ppb. That is the relevant standard and it’s mentioned in the text your quoted from the article. Any fan that can beat it is objectively adequate and all three models that were tested did so consistently.
100 ppb is not the relevant standard, holy shit. 💀 The World Health Organization – the relevant authority on public health here – sets air quality guidelines around pollutants like NO2, wherein “[e]xceedance of the air quality guideline (AQG) levels is associated with important risks to public health.” These guidelines set the standard at 10 μg/m3, which is essentially 5 ppb. Likewise, they set the 99th percentile amount at about 20 μg/m3, or about 10 ppb.
And then we get to the following facts: 1) if they do completely mitigate the hazard as you describe, plenty of people are not adequately using the fan. It’s a simple fact that gas and propane stoves are attributable to around 50,000 current cases of pediatric asthma (up to 200,000 by some counts) and thousands of annual deaths. Of course, however, they don’t completely mitigate it. 2) As noted in the article, using the built-in fan literally perfectly as intended resulted in a concentration of 15 ppb, which is 1.5x the WHO’s 99th percentile limit. 3) The article notes: “our results suggest that manufacturer specified flow rates alone may not provide sufficient information” about their efficacy, meaning that even if you were willing to pay hundreds of dollars to upgrade the fan which 99.99% of people aren’t, good luck without a laboratory setup figuring out which ones aren’t still well past safe NO2 levels even when run as directed. 4) No amount of NO2 is good for you. 5) NO2 isn’t the only pollutant let off by gas stoves; NO2 is thought to be responsible for only a quarter of pediatric asthma cases caused by gas stoves. 6) The article suggests that “in homes with gas ranges levels were generally between 5 and 12 ppb [of NO2]” (2–5 without) which as defined by the WHO is definitely unhealthy.
I agree that no amount of NOX exposure is completely safe, but per the EPA and the WHO, some amount of exposure is safe enough. Otherwise, there’s no point to specifying exposure limits. Per the link you provided, the WHO guidelines for NO2 exposure are 10ug/m3 (5.316ppb) for one year and 25ug/m3 (13.291ppb) for 24 hours. The EPA standard is 100 ppb for one hour and 53 ppb for one 1 year. None of the tests in the Dobbin paper showed concentrations greater than either of the EPA limits. The best performing fan that was tested kept concentrations under the WHO yearly limit, which was not exceeded for more than about 45 minutes with either of the other fans. That is in spite of the fans not meeting the CFMs claimed by the manufacturer.
Indeed, people might not properly install or use their exhaust fans, and there should be regulations and enforcement to improve on that, but that’s just the way it is. Regarless of stove type, you need an exhaust fan for protection from particulates anyway. So if you have a gas connection, you might as well get a gas fired stove since it provides a superior cooking experience at a lower price point with fewer electronics.
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Removed, civility. The whole bit about attacking other users applies to their implied families as well.
Hopefully the knobs are on top
