U.S. safety agency to consider ban on gas stoves amid health fears | Hacker News Reader

U.S. safety agency to consider ban on gas stoves amid health fears

bloomberg.com

82 pointsjackallis214 comments

The thing I find shocking is how many US homes I've been in that have a gas stove AND "fake" oven hood (essentially it filters and recirculate, instead of venting outside, which does little to nothing for gas fumes).

If they decide against outright banning them, there must be a push during inspection to associate a gas stove with a real oven hood, and ideally some consumer education that: "Gas on, vent fan running" or similar.

If a gas stove was invented today, if you compare it to regulation for other gas appliances (specifically how the fumes are vented), it would almost certainly have an interlock wherein a hood turns itself on to auto-vent outside.

The purpose of the "fake" kind is to filter basic stuff like grease out so that it doesn't coat your walls. The filter in it is very basic, but if you look at one that has been used for a while, it is usually covered in a thick coat of grease. That's grease that didn't go somewhere else.

It's definitely not as good as one that vents outdoors, but it's not worthless either.

But that’s secondary when it comes to gas stoves. The primary purpose of a proper venting hood is to vent carbon monoxide so that it doesn’t build up to dangerous levels in the home. Carbon dioxide, particulate matter, and other combustion byproducts are also very important to vent to maintain indoor air quality and promote good health, but CO can outright kill everyone in the house with acute exposure.

The risk of CO from a gas hob should be trifling - at least, by comparison to a boiler.

gas boilers usually vent to the outside.

I always just assumed that the “vent fan” over my gas stove actually, you know, vented. After reading your comment I became suspicious of my fairly typical setup and, sure enough, when I turn on the “vent fan”, it’s being blown out of the top of the unit. Wtf.

I never made the connection that the thing is so loud not because of the fan but because the exhaust air is being forced through a relatively narrow area between the front of the unit and the front of the cabinets above it.

I learnt that when I bought an air monitor (airthings) and see VOC+CO2 spike after cooking. It's way worse when using the oven.

I find it fascinating how different the cooking is in Europe vs. US. at least in my limited experience. I've seen multiple apartments across Italy where the kitchen is a small, separate chamber with a door where the resident will get a skillet red hot, drop a piece of meat on it, and open the window. This would be unthinkable in the US - it would set off every single smoke detector in the house. Maybe it's not cause and effect, but just an emergent state - it's difficult to do this here so on average it doesn't happen? Or people tend to have grills outside for this sort of thing? I don't know.

In our house the stove is located centrally and I dread to think how we could retrofit an exhaust for a true venting hood. All we have is a fake hood with a grease filter above the stove.

This is common in Asia also. My wife was shocked that open kitchens were the norm in the USA since most homes in China have a small door-separated kitchen next to a window for venting. The fact that we don't have a real outdoor vented hood is not ideal for cooking Chinese food, but the cost is a lot (not to mention the limit on CFM for vented if you don't want to also invest in makeup air).

This whole thing set me into planning a kitchen reno that would switch from gas to induction, but that would require a panel upgrade, and the cabinets would need to be redone to add outdoor venting....and even then we'd only get 400 CFM without a costly makeup air system...and then we need to have a new place for our microwave...dominos to a $150K kitchen reno...things I wish I knew better when buying a house.

> ...the kitchen is a small, separate chamber with a door where the resident...[can]...open the window.

I don't know why this arrangement is so rare in the USA. It should be standard.

Ooh boy, I bet you could do an entire sociology PhD on this topic if you wanted.

We just built a house with the very opposite. Kitchen is the center of the home. I want to be able to cook and converse with people in the dining room or the living room. I want to be able to clean and watch the kids do homework.

Anyway, part of the sociology aspect of this is that cooking has moved from something your servants did, to something that your wife did, to something that is acceptable for high status people to do.

This was called 'Wohnküche'(Kitchen to live in), and enabled by things like 'Kachelofen'(Masonry stove) in Germany, but died out about 100 years ago. Or at least anything built after WW2. The Russians with their colder climate pushed this to the extreme with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_stove where the thermal mass and ducts also heated the room instead of only being used for cooking.

This is interesting. If I understand correctly, European housing evolved from open to closed kitchens during the same period that American housing went in the other direction.

A friend of mine in Korea has an apartment with both solutions. There is a large kitchen area open to the dining/living area, and also a sliding glass door separating a second complete (but small) kitchen with a large window to the outside.

It used to be very common - lots of Victorians in SF were originally laid out like this for example. Most remodels will covert to an open floor plan though because it’s less isolating and claustrophobic for the cook.

Personally I just avoid cooking smoky foods because setting off the smoke detector calls the fire department after a few minutes which costs $1000.

Cook the stuff that’s easy at home. And go out for the rest.

Where do you live? I’ve never heard of either of those things happening!

Highrise apartment. The alarm starts beeping and you get something like 5 minutes to turn it off before it evacuates the level and calls the fire department.

In the few years I have lived here, no one has ever got that far but I have set it off and had to wave the smoke away before.

It's probably some sort of apartment that has a centralized smoke alarm. Your average battery powered smoke alarm you buy yourself.

Building code nowadays only allow building A+ energy efficiency homes here (Lithuania) which forbids using vented extractors - only filtered ones.

Classic government overreach.

From the "peer reviewed" research only about 20% of households live in households where the gas stove is used with proper ventilation.

In other words, about 80% of households that have gas stoves use the exhaust improperly or not at all, yet only 13% of childhood asthma is attributed to gas stove. Simple Bayesian reasoning suggests that most of those are because people are not using their exhaust. Even if inductive stoves were used exclusively, cooking food that results in burning without exhaust is bad for you.

Rather than a ridiculously excessive ban, why not just tell people to use their stove and exhaust properly, or have new installations include an automatically turned on exhaust to the outside of the house? Monoxide sensors are already a thing smh.

Instead, we'll have a bunch of inductive stoves (which are great, by the way), that are substantially more expensive than their equivalent gas stoves, and the government will continue to lament the small marginal increases in housing year after year after year.

"Classic government overreach."

Lol, the other side of this political football is republican states banning cities from banning gas stoves.

https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/17/politics/natural-gas-ban-pree...

That’s right, forcing you to stop forcing others to do things still means that you’re the tyrant.

Well sure. They're for States' Rights, not Cities' Rights!

What do you mean "other side"? That's overreach too.

Surely you can see how induction would become much, much cheaper with mass production and adoption after this ban comes into place.

Cheap to retrofit, no emissions, no fossil fuel use. Induction is pretty much better in all conceivable ways.

I personally am switching from a propane range to a induction cooktop as we speak, but saying induction is cheap to retro fit is definitely a stretch.

My scenario is an unfinished basement below the kitchen and a really short electrical run.

Materials:

Induction Cooktop $900 (We are switching from a range to a cooktop, the cheapest induction range I know of is around $1100)

25ft 8/3 Romex wire: $153

So over 1k just in materials. I plan on wiring everything myself but if someone is not able to do that probably add another $500 for an electrician to do it. Finally that cost can balloon quickly depending on how accessible the install is and the distance.

My quick comment left off some of the context that was in my head. The retrofit part of this was referring to the ban on gas stoves being about fumes/pollutants in the household air.

If you didn't have an externally venting vent hood, then retrofiting a vent hood would be more expensive that installing an induction top, I'd wager.

It definitely depends on the situation. Most likely if we had kept our current range getting a properly range hood would have been the cost of a new hood and 6 feet of insulated duct. If I went with a cheap hood that would be under $100. But if the floor joists ran a different direction in our house it could easily balloon to hundreds of dollars for an install.

What the cost, including insurance, both for the work and afterwards, for a gas run? $2k for some home work is nothing.

Sure it'll become cheaper, but it still would be more expensive than a gas range. A gas stove is very simple. Furthermore the use of gas heating per the study are in the coldest places - the same places that are using fossil fuels to heat anyway, even with new construction.

This is not to say that we shouldn't move towards induction and heat pumps, but doing this under the guise of safety is disingenuous. The real issue is improper cooking procedure.

If the government wants to encourage emission free heating and cooking they should simply offer rebates, which some counties are beginning to do.

And the gas stove still works during hurricanes.

Couldn't induction as well, if you have solar panels and maybe a battery in your house?

Assuming you can afford solar panels and a battery and they are not damaged in the storm and you don't go too long without sunny weather and ...

Most of that applies to a gas generator, even moreso.

The generator you use once every year, but the gas regularly goes stale; are you really going to want to go refill it and hand crank it in a hurricane when the auto start didn't kick on? And you're hoping it, its ventilation, its fuel supply, and it's wiring aren't damaged or flooded.

One advantage that gas stoves have is that they don't need electricity to cook, so if your batteries or generators fail, you can still prepare a meal while you wait for the power to be restored.

Yeah but couldn't you just... run a biodiesel generator to recharge your batteries?

You would need a lot of batteries. My induction top draws about 3kw when going strong.

My car has 77kWh of batteries, so it could power that stove for 24 hours straight.

Most grid-tie inverters need the grid to function.

So does $10 camping gas stove

Induction has already taken over the low budget range. There is no reason to have a gas stove anymore other than inertia and ignorance to the health risks.

> no reason to have a gas stove anymore other than inertia and ignorance to the health risks.

Or preference for a superior cooking experience.

Agreed. Just remodeled my entire kitchen and the only thing I kept was the gas Viking range and ovens. When the best restaurants have been using these across the board for decades I might consider it but I’ll be dead then.

That is also why I'm on the fence. I'm getting into wok cooking on top of that and am fairly skeptical of the induction experience.

Proper wok cooking requires gas, don’t let anyone convince you otherwise. Flat bottom woks will nearly always warp at high heat, rendering them nearly useless on non-gas cook tops. There is a reason most asian home cooks and restaurants use gas stove tops.

Sorry for the late reply, yeah, I mean, the only configuration I can imagine then is if I went induction for my main cooktop when I do my reno, and then had a portable butane stove for wok cooking exclusively. It could make sense, I'm just not even sure I want to do that.

Right now I've a recirculating hood (absolute garbage) so my main focus is going to be switching that out for a proper vent

My preference is fine heat control without having to remove the pan from the cooktop (which induction does better than gas)

How universal is this fine control? I was under the impression that lower cost induction cycles on/off at a noticeable duration.

The low end ones suck but the high end ones are good. I try to avoid cooking in that ultra low cycling end though

I'd call that BS because imaginary...

My lived experience is imaginary, does that make me imaginary? But I think therefore I am, so I'm not imaginary, yet my lived experience is imaginary. Is this like imaginary numbers where it is really just a poor descriptor for whatever it is you are asserting?

Naa. I know cooking with gas from a long time ago. Also with normal electric stoves. I just think there is nothing better than induction fields ATM. Maybe you had bad ones? It's fast, it enables precise and dynamic control, it doesn't stink, it's easy to clean, and whatnot else. Cooking with gas is an obsolete thing, like computing with punchcards. Maybe your electrical installation is insufficient, or you tried suboptimal(for induction) pans, pots and kettles? Dunno.

Edit: I'm aware of phrases like https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/now+we%27re+cooking+wit... btw.

Still makes no sense anymore, except for camping, maybe.

The best restaurants use gas stoves. Maybe when they switch, I'll change my mind.

You'll be waiting for an economic reason for the restaurants, not because gas is better. [1]

When Eric Ripert, the chef of Le Bernardin, renovated the kitchens of his Manhattan apartment and Hamptons beach house, he nixed the gas, instead choosing sleekly powerful induction cooktops by Miele and Gaggenau. “After two days, I was in love,” Mr. Ripert said. “It’s so much more precise than watching a flame. You can really focus on your cooking and pay attention to what’s inside the pan, not what’s underneath it.”

He hasn’t yet converted his restaurant kitchens.

“It would be a big expense to replace stoves that still work well, but, if the gas stove broke, I’d consider it,” he said, adding that he thought his cooks would adapt quickly. “After a few days, they’d all love it.” That is just what happened with the chef Justin Lee of Fat Choy in Manhattan, although he wasn’t expecting it.

When he opened the Chinatown restaurant in September 2020, there was no gas hookup. “Most restaurants wouldn’t open without gas, but we couldn’t wait,” he said, “so we had to find our way with electric.” It was a lot easier than he had anticipated, and he’s come to prefer induction for its consistency at high and low temperatures.

On the gentlest setting, he confits garlic and other ingredients for his XO sauce without having to watch it. “You can walk away, and it won’t ever burn,” he said.

“For us, it’s a workhorse,” he said. “It can boil water in minutes, which, for cooking noodles, is significantly faster than gas.”

Mr. Lee discovered other advantages over the summer: His kitchen did not get as ferociously hot as it would have with a gas stove, and the absence of open flames also led to a decrease in burns.

1. https://archive.ph/FvGfg

I take it you run a rack for your desktop computer at home?

What makes you think you have the same constraints at your home kitchen as a restaurant?

The thing is, you don't need the equivalent of a rack for cooking with induction.

There are countless things like these https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffsb&q=Induction+stove&iax=images&...

I tried such a single 'hot plate' out of curiosity when they were on offer at ALDI for €29,90 more than 10 years ago. And my mind was blown.

The only limitation I can think of is that your wall outlet should be able to deliver 2000 to 2500W, for a single coil. So one such outlet, for one such coil. Or three phase alternating current for the range. But the same constraints apply to normal electrical stoves.

Mobile 'single coil' systems like that are still available cheaply.

I’d imagine the food probably tastes better at peteradios’s place.

Could be. OTOH taste is subjective :-)

Just to settle the matter, I recently cooked a meal so terrible we had to throw it away, and we are fairly conservative with our food supply. Nevertheless my gas range performance was superb.

That's the opposite of what would happen. Competition pushes down prices. If gas is eliminated it reduces competition, pushing up demand and prices for induction.

It would increase the supply and variety of available induction models, since there would be so much new market to capture, thus driving down price of induction ranges.

During the transition period when homes need to switch over, the prices of induction stoves would go up with the increased demand. It would only be after all of the gas stoves have been replaced that induction stoves would need to reduce prices to prevent a sales volume collapse.

Will never use one unless I’m forced and I know others who feel the same. Induction are for people who don’t cook. So what’s the point. You can not cook on the older stoves and save energy used in swapping out for a new appliance. Think if the energy cost in replacing a large fraction of American cooktops, for no good reason.

"Induction are for people who don’t cook."

Well, that's a bullshit claim.

Seriously. Total bullshit claim.

I know plenty of people that think they can cook with their nice gas stoves and don't have a grill or smoker or know what sous vide is.

If I went to one's house and they had neither method available, I could easily say "they don't cook". And it would be a more fair statement than "induction are for people who don't cook".

Not very fair though.

I know people that can cook with just a skillet on any heat source. Ones that only use a grill or smoker. Ones that mostly use an oven. Some that mostly use slow cookers.

Plenty of people worldwide that can cook and don't give a shit about ANY type of oven or stovetop style or technology.

It’s so well known that it’s absurd to even try to argue the point: https://www.thedailymeal.com/cook/5-reasons-top-chefs-prefer...

Watch a cooking show sometime. Better yet, ask an actual chef.

Neither you nor the person you responded to need to take the tone y'all are.

Anyway, that article you linked references electric, not induction just FYI

That is from 2014, so probably before or just at the beginning of the induction craze. It only mentions 'electric', so probably normal electric or something like https://www.schott-ceran.com/en/benefits

That is a comparison of apples to oranges, and does not apply to induction vs. gas. With that it is the opposite. Yes, induction is even faster than gas, and more precise, while way more convenient because the only thing getting hot is the pot or pan. You even can put a sheet of paper below the pot, it will be brown, but only from the residual heat radiating out of the pot. It won't burn!

Btw. the chefs in cooking shows around here do induction :-)

Simple bayesian reasoning is not the same thing as "finding out the real causes of and working fixes for real world cases of harm attributed to gas". It's like a software developer saying "that's easy, just ....." about anything with technology. It's always easy in theory. And it's always more complicated in practice.

Sometimes I’m amazed that gas stoves aren’t regulated for fire safety much more heavily:

Gas stoves quickly ignite any kindling near the flame. Electric (radiant) stoves can ignore things but it’s slower and there’s more shouldering first. It’s hard to start a fire with induction, especially temperature controlled induction, although the latter is not widely deployed.

A child or careless adult can easily turn a stove on by accident. A gas stove left on is an extreme hazard. An electric stove left on is a mild hazard. An induction stove left on is only a hazard at all if there’s cookware on it, and it’s the safest of the three.

A gas stove that’s on but not burning will release explosive gas. I’ve never seen one with a credible safety feature to prevent an explosion.

Not to mention:

Gas stoves are incredibly inefficient. Electric is pretty inefficient too. Induction is highly effective.

And gas stoves apparently pollute quite badly. Sure, a good vent will mitigate it, but then you need makeup air to avoid other issues, and you still lose conditioned air.

Induction is very cool but what sucks is touch flat buttons on the top surface of most induction stove top that either trigger when you spill something or don't trigger when your fingers are wet. Why can't we just keep the knobs that worked for decades and combine that with the new tech?

This is what prevents the "average person" from going with something new when they are in the market for a replacement.

There are induction cooktops that have knobs. I believe one of the Frigidaire professional models has knobs on it. I think the main reason why induction cooktops typically don't have buttons is because it allows the surface to be used like more countertop.

Frigidaire Professional Cooktop: https://www.frigidaire.com/Kitchen-Appliances/Cooktops/Induc...

> don't have buttons is because it allows the surface to be used like more countertop

My induction stovetop gets really angry at me if I place anything remotely near the buttons, be it wood, metal or cloth.

We just bought a replacement for a gas stove, out of concern for fumes and some other reasons. When I asked about controls that are not touch buttons I was told that is hard to find. The other point is that induction models were much more expensive (for our choices, 4k vs 1k).

This is an unconventional but excellent option:

https://www.breville.com/us/en/products/commercial/cmc850.ht...

Thanks for the link. I'll note that this single burner costs half again what our four burners plus oven costs, though. I guess I'm just not that interested. But thank you.

This is a fairly fancy induction cooktop for chefs. You can get a simple one for ~$50 -- it won't have the same level of temperature control as this one, but it's also a lot more affordable.

is 1800 watts enough? I see products like this down to even $50 but running off of 120V i'm not really that interested. 1800 watts is not very much unless you're just cooking for yourself or one other.

1800 watt induction boils my coffee water 2x as fast as my natural gas burner next to it.

what's the btu on your ng burner?

On a single “burner”? Yes, it’s more than enough. More only assists in boiling water faster.

I’ve occasionally wanted more power when reducing liquids or when trying to cook wet vegetables in a bit of oil. Otherwise it’s plenty.

Yes, I would consider induction if the UI weren’t absolute garbage. Instead of knobs like every other stove in history they want to add “features” like preset heat level buttons then micro adjustment in a totally different place.

I have these, they control really well with knobs: https://www.gaggenau.com.au/products-list/cooktops/200-serie...

I wish my gas stove had touch controls. It’s so much easier to clean.

Even if you were using electric you need proper ventilation. It's amazing how many people think an electric stove somehow makes a kitchen hood unnecessary.

> A gas stove that’s on but not burning will release explosive gas. I’ve never seen one with a credible safety feature to prevent an explosion.

I've never seen a gas stove that can be on but not burning. The gas doesn't flow unless the burner is either hot or being overridden by the spark generator. If the flame goes out, so will the gas.

Many to most consumer ranges will allow flow of gas without flame. Just turn the knob quickly past the “light/spark” position.

That's not my experience. Perhaps this depends on the level of regulation in a given country.

I spent a few years living in southeast Asia and the stove in my apartment would happily let gas out without a flame! In fact, it didn’t even have a built in igniter, there was an external pen sized spark generator, or a match. We came back home to a heavy gas smell one day in the entire apartment and it was horrifying. The stove is so quiet you can just barely hear it. Thankfully it was humid then and nothing sparked.

> especially temperature controlled induction, although the latter is not widely deployed.

What are you talking about? Even the most basic units are temperature controlled. How else could they work if you operate them in modes where you tap in the desired temperature, and it shows in the display? I've never seen any which didn't have that as an option. Since a decade, or so.

We’re talking about ranges, right?

I’ve seen the hot pot kind that let you set a temperature in ~20 degree increments are are not particularly accurate. I’ve seen the Control Freak, which is quite accurate and precise if the pan is appropriate (mostly flat enough in the bottom). There are a few household ranges that talk to Bluetooth sensors. There’s the Njori Tempo, which doesn’t exist yet.

Beyond that there are bunch of regular induction ranges, on which you set a power level on an arbitrary scale from 1 to 10 or maybe 1 to “boost”.

Maybe it's a regional market thing. I speak from a german POV. But I've seen these things appear in the nearer 'neighborhood', since at least a decade. Also mentions in mass media. Even the stuff you call 'range' has these options, in addition to turning knobs with fixed settings. I started with a single 'hot-pot' and that was/is accurate. Still keeping that as a spare. I mean, just look at the stuff Ikea is offering, AFAICT they all have it. If accurate I can't tell, but I've heard no complaints from people I know, who do have them.

So... shrug?

You'd want a vent cooking on any of those ranges.

Yes, but you don’t have to use it for low temperature cooking.

This whole article smells. Trumka has been a union politico most of his career, not a science or health & safety guy. The paper they cite is a meta-study, and it's curious that the meta is inspiring more action than any of the original papers[0]. That, and the primary researcher is from an "environmental" nonprofit (rocky mountain institute) rather than a health & safety one, and the board of this nonprofit consists mostly of private equity & energy guys[1].

[0] https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/20/1/75

[1] https://rmi.org/about/board-of-trustees/

But what does it smell like - Southern BBQ, fish, lobster, shish kebab, etc.? mmmm!

Smells bad.

Had a similar experience buying an "eco-friendly" crib mattress. "Made with soy", green seal of approval from some eco non-profit. Dig a little deeper, turns out to be made of (flammable, off-gassing, non-biodegradable) polyurethane foam--soybean oil was just the feedstock. Checked out the eco non-profit's website... Turns out everyone on the board is a chemical industry lobbyist.

This natural gas story has the same structure. Fund a non-profit to cherry-pick papers into a new metastudy, bribe a few politicians or an agency head to put the force of law behind it, and as soon as the ball starts rolling, place a few bets, profit.

Last paragraph:

“Ventilation is really where this discussion should be, rather than banning one particular type of technology,” said Jill Notini, a vice president with the Washington-based trade group. “Banning one type of a cooking appliance is not going to address the concerns about overall indoor air quality. We may need some behavior change, we may need [people] to turn on their hoods when cooking.”

Trade groups suggesting personal behavior changes to address systemic issues with the thing they sell are such a standard playbook that I am surprised it still works.

Most gas range manufacturers either already have induction products or can easily enter the market. The barriers of entry are really low, it is not like you are building 3nm microchips. Brand recognition and existing distribution channels favor existing manufacturers. For the investors perspective it looks like a non-brainer decision to stand behind this ban.

Consider how many existing households would feel compelled to retrofit to induction, the ability to have differentiated product lines with premium features commanding premium profit margins.

The idea that gas oven manufacturers would not enthusiastically embrace this change reflects a naive and moralistic world view.

Why wouldn't it work? If an automotive trade group suggested that one should not let their car's engine idle in a closed garage and the garage should be open while doing so, the advice would not work?

Education has to start from somewhere, regardless of the source.

Better choice would be to ban gas stoves that don't automatically turn on the hood ventilation. Require the hood to vent outside, require the hood to work automatically, and then you've avoided needing a personal behavior change yet still addressed the issue without banning the cooking method!

So you're saying she's wrong?

Yes. I am saying the whole concept of public health and safety (as well as information security) is based on the observation that you can't just "tell people to change a behavior". It's like saying that electrical rules in building codes are overreach, because people can just avoid touching exposed wires.

OK. So the clause trade groups suggesting is just ad hominem noise. Maybe your point is that making cooking appliances more expensive to improve them in one dimension is worthwhile since it is greater than a person's benefits in some other life dimension.

That's not what "ad hominem" means, and you don't seem interested in discussing any systemic dynamic. I am disengaging, have a great day!

OK. Bye. But use the extra time to find out what ad hominem is.

That's the point, it isn't. Just like reducing your carbon footprint is good for climate change. Is that an effective way of dealing with climate change? No.

The bias of an industry trade group arguing against the ban of their product notwithstanding, it’s a bad argument.

A natural reading of this defense quickly gets bogged down in the squishy ambiguity of corporate ipsum. Banning one type of cooking appliance will address air quality. That’s the whole point of the regulation.

The most charitable reading is that it’s making the perfect the enemy of the good. It won’t solve the problem, sure, but air quality will improve if every single gas stove is replaced.

It's not just the most charitable reading; it's the only reasonable reading. Of course air quality will improve if you force people to buy the more expensive thing. But maybe that's not the best way for everyone to improve their lives or health compared to other ways they could spend that money. There are a zillion things you could require people buy that would make them healthier.

Doing X is not going to address Y in most contexts means that X will not fix Y at all.

> Eliminating materials like concrete or plastic or replacing them with alternatives is not going to address the fundamental problem with human attitudes and our unparalleled appetite for more.

Eliminating plastics will not fix the problem of overconsumption at all.

> However, the introduction of the reverse onus at bail is not going to address intimate partner violence and empower women, at least not meaningfully.

Placing the burden of proof on accused abusers will not fix intimate partner violence at all. “At least not meaningfully” is an important qualifier because otherwise any amount of mitigation of the problem undermines the claim that X doesn’t address Y.

These are the first relevant hits on Google for ‘"is not going to address" -gas’. I excluded some that didn’t seem relevant (e.g. “John Oliver is not going to address”, I am interested in X being a problem not a person).

Now if we look back at the lobbyists’ statement it’s clearly a tortured construction. They are contorting it to mean that doing X will not solve Y 100%.

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20210520-could-humans-rea...

https://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.5245986

Unclear what the value is of this narrow semantic argument using tenuous analogies.

Her point is that there are more reasonable alternatives to improving air quality if people want to keep using gas. You seem to think that spending money on less desirable cooking options is the best way for people to use that money. As if the people proposing this heavy handed approach have considered the cost/benefit for the whole universe of cooks.

Two questions:

What about LP ranges, which are pretty common as well?

What about proper ventilation systems instead? Most people have range hoods that vent into the same room (doing nothing but removing the largest particulates). Why not place exterior vents into building codes, instead of eliminating gas ranges?

You'll pry my gas range from my cold, dead hands. Cooking on fire is, for me, just better than cooking on electric.

Have you tried an induction range? Same power (or more, imo, i was shocked at how quickly I could boil a pot of water) than gas and very small power steps for great and accurate temperature control.

If this ban goes through, I expect induction to take over in the upper range of products. It'll bring the prices WAY down and it'll be much cheaper to get new pots than it is to install a proper outdoor-venting range hood.

Induction has major issues with hot spots, if you are boiling water you don't care, otherwise you might.

Can you recommend a large cast iron griddle that 100% works on induction? That's no joke the biggest sticking point for us right now. The closest we can find is "square frying pan" style. The 2 Lodge griddles are double sided, which isn't guaranteed to work on induction because the bottom surface doesn't sit flush with the glass.

You can't replace pans when there are no induction friendly replacements.

Edit: Edit: Nevermind, I was wrong.

Basically any cast iron pan should work. Also the bottom of the pan doesn't need to be perfectly flush with the glass. I know people who leave silicone mats on their induction cooktops while cooking so that their cast iron pans don't scratch the glass

I believe there is a misunderstanding of the problem. The cast iron griddles of concern are "reversible" and can sit higher above the surface, certainly higher than the effect of a silicone mat[1]. Anecdotes from others who have tried this combination show that success can be hit or miss.

No one appears to make a large, flat bottomed cast iron griddle. If I could find such a thing, we would have already bought an induction stove.

I am not worried about my other cast iron pans.

[1]: https://www.lodgecastiron.com/product/double-play-reversible...

I tried it just now with a countertop induction hob (I don't normally use it, it's for when I run out of burners on the tiny stove my current apartment has) and a similar reversible griddle[1], and it heats up without issue. Both sides work fine.

[1] https://www.lodgecastiron.com/product/chef-collection-revers...

I still don’t think that should be a problem. The electric fields will still be picked up by such a wide surface area.

Does the bottom of the pan really not go above 500-600F on an induction stove? Seems quite cold compared to gas. Or is the silicone particularly heat resistant?

Max temp is going to vary wildly depending on the size of the pan and its ability to shed heat.

The "fuck you boil now" burner on my gas stove won't get a large aluminum part above 450f but a tiny little 120v plug in resistance hot plate will get small steel parts glowing orange like the element.

Ahhh didn't realize they were reversible like that. Makes sense that those would cause issues.

> Why not place exterior vents into building codes, instead of eliminating gas ranges?

If you make a law thats says "only allowed gas stoves eith exterior ventillation", you will be 90% of the way to banning them.

The ordinary domestic extractor is not able to get rid of majority of the No2 and other emissions

Not what I thought. Can you please provide more information?

I do not live in the United States, but these measures are difficult to understand.

In the East Asian country where I live, most people cook with gas. Induction is becoming more popular, but there is no alternative other than gas for high-heat cooking. (And we use charcoal outdoors.)

I understand that there are concerns about using gas in the kitchen, but it can be improved with proper maintenance. For example, in our country, gas safety is checked through home visits twice a year. Natural gas is very safe. Even my car runs on LPG. The life expectancy of My country citizens is 83.4 years, more than 6 years longer than that of the United States.

It is excessive regulation for the state to regulate cooking means. Why not go against the government? How much do you think life expectancy would increase if gas was banned? Wouldn't it be the first thing to do to regulate guns, drugs and fentanyl?

I don't think I've ever been inside a US home with adequate ventilation around the gas stove. Most places I've rented have only had internal filtered vents, usually with aged, unclean proprietary filters you couldn't swap out if you wanted to. Among those houses with external vents, most are too small, or don't have enough pull to keep air quality decent in the kitchen while cooking.

I used to really like gas stoves, but between the monthly hookup cost and the air quality issues, I'm happy with my current electric stove instead. Maybe once I buy a place, instead of renting, I can finally get induction.

I can confirm that our stove indeed does vent to the outdoors in the US. It is on an external wall and you can feel the air coming out when the vent fan is on. It is possible that in apartments the vents may only be filters and not external vents. That seems like a question for the building codes.

A number of people in Buffalo, NY, recently lost power for several days due to a blizzard. The city had to clear snow with front-end loaders and dump trucks, which took about 4 days. Without power, many apartments had no heat (no way to run a blower motor for air heat, electronic control of the boiler, heat pump, or other electric-dependent heating). A number of people were able to survive by heating pots of water on gas stoves and letting it sit to get a bit of heat. Not the use of gas you want to have, but invaluable if it's all you've got!

Having some camping sized cooking gear in your emergency bag seems like a good precaution if you have cold winters. Does seem like the apartment communities could be doing more to take care of their residents during storms though.

Yeab unfortunately liquid hydrocarbons are the only way to store large volumes of energy in the 21st century.

I bet there would be a lot of money in inventing some other means.

Less about storage, and more a convenient coincidence that transferring gas via underground pipeline is substantially safer than above-ground pipeline, and thus gas companies pay the extra to bury the lines. Electric can be run underground, but the danger of above-ground lines isn't nearly as high as gas would be so electric companies (at least in this area) run overhead lines which are vulnerable to storm damage.

God forbid we regulate sodas, cigarettes, junk food though. Those deadly gas stoves are definitely a top priority and a menace to our society !! "health fear" lmao give me a break

What a coincidence that this is being considered only after a war broke out with gas being at the forefront... Not that I mind honestly, it needs to be supplanted asap, but still...

the US doesn’t really import natgas.

The EU does.

this is a proposed ban for the US.

Yes, but the EU would immediately follow suit.

The age old story of the EU lagging behind the US in regulation. (snort)

What is the EU marketshare on stoves? As an importer, could EU natgas already have a premium attached that reduces any impact from regulation?

Sneak a gas stove ban past the public when they are angry about high natural gas prices?

More like, gas is harder to get (Russia) so to keep profits and an appeased consumer, you redirect the issue and get them to switch themselves.

Related ongoing thread:

I measured the pollution from my gas stove - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34316613 - Jan 2023 (69 comments)

Also:

Gas stoves are more hazardous than we’ve been led to believe (2020) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31630946 - June 2022 (122 comments)

What a gas stove ban means for restaurants - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31603850 - June 2022 (592 comments)

My best estimate is gas stoves decrease life expectancy by 53 days on average - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30275953 - Feb 2022 (117 comments)

How bad is my gas stove? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29935939 - Jan 2022 (520 comments)

Cities try to phase out gas stoves but cooks are pushing back - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27874912 - July 2021 (481 comments)

Experts are sounding the alarm about the hidden dangers of gas stoves - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25332332 - Dec 2020 (343 comments)

Subsidize air-filters as a short/medium term solution, because this also solves the issue of plastic dust being breathed in from all the fabrics, carpets, appliances, couches, rugs, shoes, shirts, etc.

As a resident in a newer condo build, I’d just like windows that open more than 2”.

I have a corner unit where the windows on one side don’t open at all.

I guess it cuts down on their building-wide HVAC expenses by treating the building as airtight and thinking filtration and powered-venting will solve all problems.

Mini hrv is like $200

Air filters are incapable of filtering out NO2.

PM2.5 Air Filters do not remove the gasses and VOCs released from burning natural gas.

They could incorporate desiccant column subsidy: https://www.clariant.com/en/Solutions/Products/2020/11/09/21....

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221260901...

Maybe their hearts are in the right place—I certainly don't like unhealthy fumes. But making the ability to heat food contingent on the seamless function of international semiconductor supply chains could have unintended consequences.

I don't believe for a second that this has anything to do with safety. There is an imprudent war on fossil fuels going on in this country, that is well intentioned but poorly thought out.

And to frame this as a DEI issue is just icing on the cake.

I wish it was like a real war, I'd be rich just from making ebikes!

We spent over 3 trillion on war in Afghanistan, manifacturers of weapons made a killing!

We also made decisions in days that would destroy lives of millions. Today installing a single wind turbine take 4 years of consultation and planning approvals.

So np, its not a war, not by mpney spent, not by decisionmaking authority

I hear exploding e-bikes are the coming thing in the Ukraine - and you're already halfway there!

There are real wars happening all the time because of fossil fuels as well as a lot of dealing with horrific petrostates which inflict misery on everyone because of our dependency on fossil fuels.

What you're talking about is the home front of that war. Agree on framing it as DEI is largely non-sense but I'm curious what you specifically mean by poorly thought out.

I live in Oakland. There have been many luxury towers built in Oakland in the last few years. The strangest thing to me is that all of them boast about having gas ranges. Always seems a bit surprising that gas is still considered more luxury than electric (induction even)?

Ahh yes, switch everyone to electric power when everything is going green and the rolling brown/blackouts are spreading across the nation and world.

No thanks, let's keep our gas.

"In a letter to the agency in December, lawmakers including Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey and Representative Don Beyer of Virginia, both Democrats, urged action and called gas-stove emissions a “cumulative burden” on Black, Latino and low-income households that disproportionately experience air pollution. "

Most of my life I've live in homes with gas stoves, I'm white, what does race have to do with it? I'd guess > 90% of the entirety of stoves in Texas are gas.

The Democrats have to bring race-based politics and IdPol in to everything.

But I think the bigger issue is whether current users even want to make the switch, since gas is often cheaper than electricity.

This slowed down adoption of induction cookers a lot in the UK for example.

I grew up cooking on gas stove. The house I'm in now came with an ancient coil electric range (1979 harvest gold color model). I can't wait to redo the kitchen to put back in a gas stove again.

I also looked into induction, but only my cast iron skillet would work -- the stainless steel cookware I have apparently is the non-magnetic type (a magnet doesn't stick to them) so they won't work with induction.

Induction is great though, just replace the old stuff.

It's very fast and so much easier to clean. I wouldn't want to go back to gas really.

"Just replace the old stuff" doesn't work very well when all the manufacturers have outsourced to China, which produces unsafe cookware. Eliminating all non-stick cookware to avoid forever chemicals was hard enough.

I'll keep my gas range with real vent hood, thank you.

All Clad is made in the US:

https://www.all-clad.com/d3-stainless-7-piece-cookware-set.h...

> Induction is great though, just replace the old stuff.

Not all "old stuff" has an induction compatible replacement. Induction does not work for everyone, even if you're willing to replace all of your pans.

You have it backwards. The Dems aren’t bringing race into it, they’re framing the issue in a way more likely to garner support from their fellow Democrats and base who care about helping marginalized communities.

You see this a lot with Supreme Court cases where the legal teams form their arguments specially to be persuasive to a specific swing judge.

What's the term for someone who is motivated by putting things into a racial context? A racist?

It's like you tried to find the worst faith interpretation of what I said.

A: You have a group of people who, broadly speaking, are motivated to address systemic racial and economic inequality.

B: You will have better luck getting someone on-board with your piece of legislation if you frame it in the context of an issue they care about.

A + B: Hello senator, this bill I'm proposing about gas ranges will help address systemic racial and economic inequality because...

The idea that you think A is talking about a group of racists is quite literally insane.

"People are being harmed!"

"Yawn, what color are they?"

"White."

"Oh that's a serious issue then!"

Here's a different article that links to sources to support the claim: https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2020/5/7/21247602...

==============

Lower-income households are more likely to have more people living in smaller spaces, with less ventilation. That puts them at greater risk of unsafe NO2 exposure, as does the heartbreaking practice among low-income homeowners, uncovered in several studies, of using their gas stoves as a source of heat to supplement weak or broken furnaces.

Lower-income, African American, and Hispanic children already suffer asthma at higher rates than the national average, mainly because they are more likely to live near sources of outdoor air pollution (like roads and industrial facilities), which makes them more vulnerable to sources of indoor air pollution. Another 2018 study found that asthma costs the US $82 billion a year in “medical expenses, missed work and school days, and deaths,” all of which fall disproportionately on the most vulnerable.

I believe the keyword here was "disproportionately". No one is denying that many white people also own gas stoves or for that matter breath exhaust fumes from a nearby highway or have an unfortunate encounter with a police officer or any number of commonplace societal ills. As a corollary, no one is suggesting to apply a fix to non-whites only.

How many low income people can afford Viking ranges? They are ubiquitous in wealthier households, at least those with good taste.

How many of those have exterior stove vents? Probably a disproportionate number given the installation cost.

Maybe exterior vents should be required? Does cooking on electric not impact indoor air quality?

Compared to burning gas, no. Burning natural gas produces a lot of byproducts of that combustion - many of which are not healthy for humans in concentrations produced by gas burners - which is why it's a problem.

It does. The difference is what they're both contaminating air with. You can improve air quality from cooking food using common PM2.5 filtering (e.g. "fake vent hoods", air purifier, furnace filter, etc).

Natural gas, when burned, releases gas/VOC byproducts that PM2.5 filters cannot remove and while Activated Carbon can remove some of it, it doesn't scale well enough to be a solution (just in terms of cost alone, but also in terms of Activated Carbon's lifecycle).

I'm all for outdoor vents to be clear, even for electric/induction. I'm just pointing out that natural gas cooking has all the same downsides as any other food cooking does but with a whole host of additional ones that are far harder to mitigate.

Can you quantify this?

And, how does it compare to say water heaters and other sources of indoor gas use?

My understanding is that it’s a negligible concern. So I’d love actual numbers if you have them or know where I can find them.

> And, how does it compare to say water heaters and other sources of indoor gas use?

They're required to vent outside.

> My understanding is that it’s a negligible concern.

You're responding to an article saying that it isn't a negligible concern.

So no?

It doesn't feel like you're trying to have a good faith discussion. There's no point in my restating what the linked article says nor multiple of the other sources provided all throughout this thread.

I’m truly interested in data about the relative quantity of no2 produced by stovetop vs other sources. If that information is contained in the featured article I missed it.

My understanding, from something I’d read previously, was that no2 was not a big concern, and that amongst sources of no2, gas ranges were less of an issue than heaters and water heaters.

What I know is that no2 is higher outdoors. I just wonder if the danger isn’t being overstated, relative to other dangers.

For the record I favor a law requiring venting in rental units and new home construction. I wish that was what got passed because it seems like the health impacts of nonventilated cooktops of any sort, including electric, is a larger concern.

I suppose it's possible to infer that Black and Latino folks in the US tend to be lower-income and thus they tend to live in smaller homes (more inhabitants per sqft) and perhaps thus have worse indoor air quality overall compared to their White or Asian counterparts.

But yeah, I still don't think it's necessary to bring race into it. If your science holds up and gas stoves are significantly linked to childhood asthma, you've got a good argument for phasing them out. If the science doesn't hold up, then you don't.

But the low income housing is also typically more drafty too, isn't it? So that would lead me to believe that there would be less indoor pollution built up from the range. Unless it is turned on for heating purposes (i.e., boiling a pot of water to get humidity in the air, etc).

Drafts do not move quickly (or evenly). A "drafty house" could still take an hour or more to exchange all that air.

I’m fairly certain that I’ve yet to visit an upper middle class household without a high end gas range, albeit hooded. Surely this disproportionally affects the foodies and amateur chefs of the world.

Got to ban it for everyone to be fair.

I think the operative word is “cumulative” — there are probably communities where there are other sources of pollution and gas stoves are a layer on top of already bad air quality.

With that said, electric alternatives can be a fire hazard in their own right if the home’s electrical is sub-par.

I’m guessing any law just tries to phase them out over time but existing ones are grandfathered in (which means low income families will be at the tail end of the adoption curve)

Overall a good idea but it’s going to be like de-leading gasoline it’s not going to be some immediate triumph of environmental justice.

> electric alternatives can be a fire hazard in their own right if the home’s electrical is sub-par.

I guess it’s possible, but they’re usually on a dedicated circuit and it’s incredibly rare for someone to turn all burners on max and preheat the oven simultaneously, and plug something into the accessory socket.

240V really does solve a lot of problems (and a lot of multi-residential buildings only feed 208V into 240V appliances, effectively derating them).

(All of the above is from the North American perspective of course).

The point is those communities have higher rates of asthma and pollution exposure, and banning gas stoves (might) reduce it, by reducing the risk for everyone.

That's easier to do than fix the underlying problem that causes that increased asthma risk.

That sentence made me lose some of my braincells

I think it's a tad silly but you can buy a butane burner for like $30 from your local Chinese grocery and butane bottles are like $3.

what a coincidence this article was just 4h ago linked here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34308734 and is similar policymaker influencing pseudo science conflating correlation and causation...

https://archive.md/HkO2p

Here's another article that seems to be a summary of the Bloomberg article (but without the paywall) - [0]

The ban under consideration seems to be a ban on the sale of new gas stoves, although I don't think the article actually says that explicitly.

[0] - https://financialpost.com/pmn/business-pmn/us-safety-agency-...

That's usually how these things go. No one is going to everyone's house to remove their stoves, regardless of how accurate the claims of their dangers.

Instead, they abolish the sale of new gas stoves and, as the old ones stop working with age, eventually they disappear altogether.

I believe that's how there's still old buildings with an asbestos treatment or old water pipes made out of lead kind of all over the place. It was widespread at first, then the issues became known, then they were forbidden from being sold, and eventually the existing old ones are replaced as opportunity allows.

Since low income people don’t occupy new construction, and given that gas stoves last for many decades, this is legislation that won’t have any impact for another 20 or 30 years? Besides the impact on wealthy foodies who want good stovetops in the kitchen remodels?

Important clarification.

Gas without exhaust is terrible, of course. I don't know why american built such houses.

or they can recommend people to install vents that actually works?

That’s far more expensive than upgrading your stove to induction.

How can you claim such a thing. Most microwaves can vent outside, but theyre not doing it. Not much is needed other than a saw and a outdoor vent hood.

is it? We mostly cook food in oils, and those smokes are also dangerous. Thus, Vents are essential.

Lastly, I think we pay more in electric stove due to elastic pricing.

I visited a retirement (with assisted living option) recently and thought, wow, this old conduction coil stove, picturing 1 of the measurements for my own grandmother's independence was her leaving the stove on.

My induction single burner has both a visual (touch) interface with audio cues, it has a built in timer, it automatically shuts off when it overheats, it's rapidly cool to the touch, it has a pan removed alarm, it has a built in fan.

I think between the distractions (cell phone, TV) and baby boomers, these are a lot safer than gas or conduction.

Anecdotally, having recently gone from conduction election to gas, it's weird to realize not only can my tools melt, but they can actually burn if they get too much flame up the side.

Electric stoves still use electricity produced by coal.

Not where I live.

About 40% by coal here in Colorado.

Ouch

Wha?

Chefs will be up in arms.

This is just more Biden veiled attack on fossil fuels pushing electric stoves and ovens. Fuck the Democrats I just bought a full on wood fired oven and stove from the Amish. My back up being a Propane stove oven and electric once I am fully photo voltaic off the grid.

I really hope they do this. This sort of overreach will galvanize push back.

I moved into a brand new house of which the only stovetop option was gas, in part because of marketing dollars from our local monopoly granted utility.

Why was induction not an option? And now to upgrade, I'm going to have to have a 240v line installed to the location.

You chose to buy it that way. Why didn't you make installing a 240v plug a concession in the contract?

You can definitely get 120v induction cooktops. There's no need for 240v.

i do have a single burner induction unit, but to have 5 or 6 burners you need more watts from 240

Running 5-6 burners concurrently is definitely a bit of a niche case, and would probably justify the higher amperage socket. But it's important to note that it's niche, most folks won't use more than 2.

So you should have bought a different house? Or what?

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