Are Gas Stoves Causing Asthma? | Hacker News Reader

Are Gas Stoves Causing Asthma?

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This whole "debate" is so manufactured.

Frying creates particles that you don't want to inhale, so you need extraction regardless of whether you use gas or induction/electric.

The correct question is "should you ventilate a hob" and the answer is _obviously_ yes.

The article discusses this and says active charcoal air filtration is better than a hood. Which raises at least one eyebrow but maybe I shouldn’t be so skeptical.

The asthmatics can switch to cooking on glorified hot plates if that makes them happy while the rest of us can continue cooking with our woks over gas.

The rules are constantly being tweaked to appease the 0.01% at the expense of everybody else and it's getting a little frustrating.

It's creating new asthmatics from the pool of not asthmatic people. It's not about the already asthmatic people

I will take any bet that the pool of folks with asthma and susceptible to asthma from stoves is outstrips the amount of people who cook with woks and would benefit from gas over induction by a significant margin. Not to mention the public health costs…

Wok users might be rare but gas stove lovers are plenty.

But do they actually get better performance out of a it then induction? That's why OP mentioned woks they are one of the rare things that is somewhat better on gas vs induction.

Why do you care? Let people do what they want!

1. Maintaining gas infrastructure leaks methane which is a terrible greenhouse gas. Burning it emits co2. 2. As numerous other and the original article states there are numerous public health effects. This is both costly to public health systems/insurance providers meaning we all pay for it. Morally the other occupants of your household may not have a say (children). Renters won’t have a choice in the matter either. This is especially salient since apartments often lack proper ventilation.

Grifter tactics will ultimately fail. Stop pretending you care about people with Asthma. You only care about your “green” politically motivated agenda. Stop hijacking climate for political control. Stop pretending you’re doing it because you care about others. You and what you argue for is pure selfish and dictatorial.

Or gas stove fans can blast away from bottle gas hobs in their own home while the rest of society reduces the number of people who develop asthma. Everyone is paying more in health insurance and taxes to tackle negative externalities from the whims and preferences of a small minority and it's getting a little frustrating.

Where does this line of thinking end? Banning unhealthy food and alcohol? Forcing everyone to get proper exercise? Perhaps a perfectly balanced tasteless meal powder created for own good.

I’d rather pay double for health insurance and die young than live in your perfect nanny state.

Gas stoves are furnishings that stick around for decades through owners that negatively affect the users, third parties, and the environment.

If the claims are true, it seems like gas stoves practice has negatively impacted the respiratory health of a substantial number of children who didn’t buy the stoves. If it was overwhelmingly adult purchasers and leaders being negatively affected, it would be one thing, but it seems like you would have significantly less paediatric asthma patients community wide if gas stoves were just banned or at least more stringently regulated.

The problem is, there is very weak scientific evidence of these links and yet here we are swinging the legislative ban hammer already.

There are very legitimate reasons to prefer gas stoves. They're not just in apartments because "LOL screw teh Poorz!!! Let them die of the ASTHMAS!!!"

Gas heats up considerably faster, allows for more rapid cooking temperature changes, is considerably cheaper to operate in many localities, and is actually relatively clean burning compared to most fossil fuels. Go see what any world class chef outfits their kitchens with. It's almost always gas.

There's an ulterior motive here. Why not just legislate that gas appliances be properly vented? Surely if gas stoves were as dangerous as they say the elites would not outfit their kitchens with them. None of this sudden war on gas appliances passes the smell test.

> Gas heats up considerably faster, allows for more rapid cooking temperature changes, is considerably cheaper to operate in many localities, and is actually relatively clean burning compared to most fossil fuels. Go see what any world class chef outfits their kitchens with. It's almost always gas.

Resistive stoves are faster than gas though less responsive. Induction ranges beat the pants off both gas and resistive on basically all dimensions. The only thing induction can't do well is tasks that specifically involve an open flame ie charring pepper skins, the wok hei flavor, etc. Most of these can be reproduced by buying a $10 blow torch or using a propane grill instead.

I have seen little testing of this, but I think the specialized wok induction stoves (looks like a big bowl, into which you lower your wok) can easily produce heat comparable to all but the "jet-turbine" gas burners nobody in the West are allowed to use anyway. Example: https://www.webstaurantstore.com/images/products/extra_large...

But that's not for your regular home kitchen

Gas is relatively clean-burning, but in cooking the vast majority of the energy is released out into the air rather than going to heating the vessel. So I don't have figures on this, but I think even coal power from the grid sent through an induction cooktop would be much cleaner than blasting natural gas in your home kitchen. So if you add in the climate perspective, that's another reason to at least encourage a shift.

Nothing is so weak as a slippery slope argument

Seriously! Next people are going to suggest we should prohibit pregnant people from drinking and smoking...

Unintuitively unhealthy behavior actually saves on medical costs because the vast majority of medical care costs comes from old age related care, which unhealthy people are far less likely to reach. Both obeseity, and especially smoking, actually saves tons of money in healthcare because those people tend to die right around retirement age just before medical costs start skyrocketing. It has been researched quite significantly and at best/worst unhealthy people average out to the same cost as healthy people, but more often are shown to cost less.

Giving children asthma is the reverse of the mechanism you’re highlighting, though

Why do they put deer crossing signs on busy highways? It’s such a terrible place to suggest deer cross the road.

Yes, that’s an example of a clear misunderstanding of what’s going on.

The signs are not causing deer to cross, and neither is the stove concern about aggravating asthmatics. Because yes, people who know they have asthma could get an electric stove if they want.

no one is appeasing anyone, the only suggested changes are stopping new gas stove installs in new homes in some states. even then i would imagine it would be trivial to just wait till after the house is built and put one in

induction stovetops are faster and easier to clean anyway, my stovetop is playing up so i'm swapping from gas since it's just better tech anyway

A lot of the exposure probably happens in childhood. They might never have developed asthma without exposure they didn't choose or control.

Plus it's not like people are likely to die because of lack of gas stoves, most likely the opposite because of potential safety features in induction.

I'm not sure how much regulation is appropriate here, but I sure wouldn't want to use gas every day by choice. It looks cool, but it's also pollution in your own house, and if anything goes wrong you might not be able to fix it yourself because of safety and legal requirements.

Are there any studies on how many gas stoves have a properly sized and functioning vent hood over them?

I'd have to go hunt down the numbers again but the studies were claiming something like 12% of Asthma was potentially gas cooking triggered, but it could be 3% if more of them used better ventilation. It was also super common here in Australia growing up in the 90s to have gas stoves installed under the old wood stove Chimney with no active exhaust fan. That's much less common in my city now since we've built a large portion of the total housing stock since then, but it would make sense for kids in the 80s & 90s to have been maybe more affected by this than now. It's also super common in brand new 90s builds just to have a fan in the roof at roof height, the same as you'd have in a bathroom. Only in the 2000s have the rangehoods right above the stove become the standard. Not sure how effective those roof fans would be in practice against these kinds of pollutants.

However, on those new builds that all have rangehoods, here in Australia they are all so loud. Increasingly our building regulations require them ducted and usually out the roof. They cannot deal with the static pressure and sit at 65-70dB and even when they are working, people don't want to use them. That's on the lowest fan speed.

Without any ducting or being ducted out a wall only 30cm or so, they are still kindof noisy but not mind bendingly so. At my brand new house, and those of many others I've asked (it's not just a bad install here) you get a real sense of relief when you turn it off. It's wild.

What upsets me the most about this, is that there are plenty of much quieter solutions that aren't even really that expensive to make. The problem seems to be a combination of having the fan right behind the filter at head height (easier/cheaper packaging) instead of remote in the ductwork, the style of fan commonly used not being great with static pressure and the noise rating not requiring any testing against static pressure even though our building regulations now require that in most cases. On top of that, all the "cheaper" brands just don't seem to care.

There is also engineering that I see other companies do to flatten out the sound curve so the noise is emitted on different frequencies. I don't see any of that kind of design in these products. You see that in MacBook Pro fans and I think my favourite demo was the Zipline drones where they made the drone fans almost inaudible compared to what you normally get on drones with the same technique.. you can see that in practice in Mark Rober's video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOWDNBu9DkU

We have the same problem with bathroom exhaust fans. The major brands all the builders used, you just don't want them on. Similar noise levels though (possibly due to the lack of fine grease filter) slightly different frequency profile. For exhaust fans you can buy much, much quieter models for almost no more money. The Clipsal CEF40 nearly every builder here uses is, at retail, $110-130. The Fanco Luna Pro 200 is about $85.

The same is not true of rangehoods though, most of the entry level brands (Westinghouse, Electrolux, Technika, etc) all seem stupidly loud, and only the real high end brands (e.g. Miele) market and sell quieter models. I've yet to track down a solution in that regard.. b

I wrote to the "wirecutter" of Australia, Choice, to ask that they include static pressure testing in their rangehood and exhaust fan testing - sadly so far only got the typical feedback recorded and have yet to see anything come of that.

In the mean time I purchased a flow hood and using the iPhone NIOSH app am on a mission to document the actual flow, installation situation (length and height of ducting, etc) and the noise level in practice and see if I can find some patterns and make some recommendations to people.

Small pet peeve... I'd love to find some people to find out similar in other countries. Not sure if we just have poor standards, terrible manufacturers here, or what.

Now, all of this aside, you should absolutely be using a rangehood when cooking anything anyway. Cooking produces lots of cruft you're better off sucking out. But it seems not too well argued to be much worse to cook with Gas without a rangehood and factors like this seem to impact people not using them. Those arguing against this research etc mostly seem to go down the path of using ventilation makes it OK.

Remember the narrative a few months ago?

> Don't be a conspiracy theorist! Nobody is coming for your gas stove! Are you paranoid??!

Now all of that has come true. Suddenly NYC has banned stoves. And stoves are causing asthma. Soon we will discover that gas stoves are part of a scheme devised by the devil himself.

Consider the fact that if product of technology X is better than Y, people will automatically switch over to Y. You wouldn't need to force them. If you have to, it means you haven't considered the pros and cons properly.

Two thirds of people living in nyc rent their apartments. Their appliances are selected based financial considerations of landlords, not end user consumer preference.

Do renters have no say in the apartments they rent? If electric stoves are clearly better and that fact is important enough, apartments with gas stoves would find fewer takers, prompting the owners to fit them with electric stoves.

I think very few people make the decision primarily based on the stove provided.

Ok then that means the type of stove is not an important issue. Again, that reinforces the incentive not to make laws about it.

I don’t remember that narrative honestly but I’m sure somebody said that.

Gaslighting (oh no) about the previous narrative is part of it too huh.

TL;DR: Do gas stoves cause asthma? Maybe, inconclusive evidence. Do gas stoves worsen asthma? Yes, for certainty.

Where is the asthma study that compares people who grew up with electric stoves vs gas stoves?

I should have said that gas stoves were more common when the boomers were growing up, and that asthma was less common, or less commonly discussed. But the houses that boomers grew up in were a lot leakier, or if you will better ventilated.

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