Cooking Air Quality
jefftk.com
jefftk.com
if you have compatible cookware, definitely try it out, you can get an external induction cooktop from Ikea for like $60. if you don't, get some and switch because the cooking process is so much more enjoyable.
you know how when you're sauteing something and you wanna get a good sniff because it's smells amazing, only to get your eyebrows singed and a lungfull of half combusted propane? with induction, you get nothing but the smell of your food, without the excess wasted heat. also, it's fast on the big eye I can boil water insanely fast, I honestly didn't know it was possible to boil water that fast.
and I can say this all only as a happy customer who paid my own money, not as a paid advertisement, UNLIKE the gas industry which has been pushing this shit through influencers and marketing for decades. [1]
[1] https://youtu.be/hX2aZUav-54 [Climate Town - It's Time to Break Up with Our Gas Stoves 21:27]
I dare say, something is wrong with your stove if any of this is even half true. Either that, or people need to learn to cook.
This article is about the particulate being released from the items inside the pan. Such as fats/oils burning... which will happen no matter what style pan or range top you use.
I switched recently to induction and I'm very happy. I did have to relearn some cooking habits, of course, because induction is so much faster and more powerful than gas. The instant temperature change is super handy, too. Gas is relatively fast, too, but still slow compared to induction.
It's amazing to me to see us careening towards a future of doubling, tripling, or even quadrupling every household's electricity usage - but we're not doing anything to ensure the capacity is there to handle the demand. Every new power plant, dam, nuclear, etc is met with fierce opposition...
Induction uses a tremendous amount of electricity, and is expensive to operate. So are the other current trendy items, such as heat pumps and electric vehicles.
We have no way to support all this, even if they were objectively better (and the fact that there is debate around this subject proves just the opposite).
It's also strange to see the duality of complaining about things like bitcoin wasting electricity, while we also advocate for massive increases in consumption everywhere else.
For now, Induction ranges are a thing for those privileged enough to be able to afford them, all the peripherals required to operate them (cookware, etc), and operational expenses.
The other underlying question is about the conversion efficiency of, e.g., natural gas to electricity to heat (generation station -> house -> induction stove) vs directly burning gas at the stove. And the answer is -- induction often wins out, because gas stoves are pretty inefficient (they let a lot of heat energy bypass the pan). And it wins from an indoor air quality perspective. Where it may not win is cost, depending on the relative prices of gas and electricity where you live. But full electrification of your house allows you to save the costs of the monthly gas hookup and may reduce insurance costs.
> save the costs of the monthly gas hookup
For anyone wondering how much a common gas (propane) stove costs: I have a 100 gallon propane tank that cost ~$300 to fill and lasts multiple years without a refill.
My whole-house generator also runs off the same propane tank. So I refill it maybe once a year (where we average 1-2 days without power per year).
One unspoken benefit of gas: it works without electricity.
I hate the inside air pollution, though.
I could see myself maybe trying induction. I could never switch ti electric. Personal preference but when I turn on a stove I don’t have patience to wait for it to warm up.
(My winter time bill is much higher; we heat the house with a gas boiler.)
But there's $174/year of savings available if we went all-electric. Which we won't do any time soon, alas.
There's really no reality where you save $14.50 per month by switching to full electric. Rather, your electric bill will skyrocket.
Are you also running your heat off the tank? Because it sounds like your parent isn't.
If you really wanted to cut down on energy used by households then the single biggest thing is making sure all homes are properly insulated to cut down on both heating and cooling.
Electric vehicles are an actual concern, but the issue there can be largely mitigated by making sure they're primarily charged off peak which is also something we have done for a long time with electric water heaters.
That's right; this is all with an electric range.
However, gas is just fine and these problems are way overblown.
Not sealed off homes with simulated cooling or heating.
J. Kenji López-Alt, who recently literally wrote the/a book on wok cooking, would disagree:
* https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/01/j-kenji-lo...
See also Jon Kung, a professional chef (at least before going YT full-time):
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ooNzRrHA9VY
A video from Yale Appliances (Boston, MA) who sell both gas and electric:
The source that sells cook tops doesn't claim "it's just as good" or even provide any evidence of it being as good. You can in fact use a wok on any cook top, it doesn't mean the results will be good.
Induction can be good, but it's very expensive and uses enormous amounts of electricity.
There is nothing wrong with natural gas - other than it's trendy to push electric currently. There's no future where everyone can afford to buy/replace one, or even operate them.
Yes, both gas and electric. See also their video "Induction Cooking: Pros and Cons - Part 1":
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AduTdSF3_go
And "Induction vs Pro Gas Cooking: Pros & Cons":
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hoWqMTUBT_4
> Induction can be good, but it's very expensive and uses enormous amounts of electricity.
Currently more than resistive electric, and some gas ranges. Define "enormous". Because about two-thirds of US households already use electricity as the cooking fuel source:
* https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=37552
And induction would probably use it more efficiently since the energy goes directly to the pan. So if more folks switched from the coil-resistive electric stoves they most likely already have to induction there would be a net reduction in energy use.
> There is nothing wrong with natural gas - other than it's trendy to push electric currently.
And the fact that it's highly inefficient, throws oodles of heat into your kitchen, and methane is a greenhouse gas (GWP>>1)—but besides that Mrs. Lincoln…. See also perhaps Adam Ragusea on his own gas stove:
Incorrect. He states certain foods and flavors will not work with induction or would be difficult without gas in the article itself. He suggests workarounds like a propane stove or butane torch, but he never claims you can replicate those flavors with induction.
> anything with a wok, just doesn’t work with induction
López-Alt, in the article[1]:
> But for most wok cooking, you don’t need it. There’s plenty of homestyle dishes that don’t have that flavor. For my Wok book tour, I brought around an induction wok cooktop. And it works just fine.
> People have this idea that you can’t cook on a wok without a gas flame. But most of the recipes in my book work just fine without one.
So I think it’s totally fair to say he’d disagree. Not sure how you’d get “incorrect” out of that.
Everything has trade-offs. But on the whole, for most people, induction is going to be a step up over gas just purely as a cooking method. The air quality and climate benefits are a bonus.
The article is about cooking food that becomes smoky, which is going to be a huge source of air quality issues even with electric cooking.
> only to get your eyebrows singed and a lungfull of half combusted propane
If that was your baseline then something was seriously wrong with your stove. Also, most gas stoves are natural gas, not propane.
I have always noticed it spiking while cooking, but never worried about it because it wasn't sustained.
I already worry about enough things, so I have to draw the line somewhere I guess.
The biggest thing is, if you have good air quality outside, you need to keep your windows open as much as you can. I'm using sensors on all the windows at my place, and a temperature sensor outside and HomeAssistant, which tells me when outdoor temperature is lower than indoor, so I know when I can open the windows and not use additional HVAC capacity. That keeps indoor air quality in-check.
If you live somewhere with poor outdoor air quality, you likely need a filter to clean your air up at least a little. That can be a standalone air purifier, or it could be as simple as a HVAC filter taped to a cheap box fan. Keep your filters changed every few months, never have to dust again, and enjoy cleaner air. Simple.
Generally, any HVAC system will dry the air quite a bit, but only when it's running, so if you live in, say, Kentucky, it's likely that if outdoor temp = indoor temp at night, you can have your windows open, and when you close them in the morning, the next day's worth of HVAC usage will take care of any additional humidity without much trouble.
The real downside of that is that you'll have to run your HVAC system harder, because dry air feels cooler than humid air.
Unclear how much is due to the combustion of gas vs. also the cooking of food, as others have mentioned. I suspect it’s almost entirely from combustion of the gas. Though, I have noticed that the CO2 levels don’t climb as high if simply boiling water on high heat.
Depends who “you” are, just as for outdoor air quality.
That said, anything that moves people away from gas is progress, I guess. Just would like to see priorities on transportation and heating sectors more than the tiny fraction of emissions that come from stovetops.
Where I am, our electricity during dinner time is entirely from gas power plants, and that electricity costs is several times more than the gas, not including the several thousands of dollars required to run the lines required, if I wanted to convert my range.
I do dream of induction though. Until then, I have an automatic hood fan that turns on whenever the oven is on, and vents to the outside.
Transportation needs to be addressed, sure. The reality is that shifting residential utilities to electric largely shifts the burden to residents. Cleaning up transportation gets a similar amount of pushback but burdens the government with the cost of improvement.
To be fair, parts of California (given that California is leading the anti-gas charge) are actively working on cleaning up transit. But it's slow going.
Just do the math: The average PM2.5 in New York is 12 μg/m3. As this post shows, cooking can easily spike levels above above 500 μg/m3. So if you're exposed to smoky at 12/500=2.4% of the time, that alone equals your ambient air pollution. That's around 35 minutes per day.
If you have an air purifier, this is even more likely to be true true—it's much easier for an air purifier to deal with a slow steady leak of particles from outdoors than to deal with spikes.
I can guarantee you disc brake dust and tire dust are nowhere close to water vapor and oil droplets when it comes to your health
I'll never put a gas stove in a house again, not for the reasons most people cite - radon, fire risk etc - but for the CO2 impact.
There sure is some grade-A scaremongering going on in this thread.
How many people die every year from CO2 poisoning while cooking?
I’m not scaremongering, i just don’t like working with an inhibited brain.
You should, however, do yourself a favor and set your alert threshold to at the lowest 5000ppm
I'd love to record the historical readings in Grafana but it looks like extracting the data is quite an involved process.
https://www.ikea.com/gb/en/p/vindstyrka-air-quality-sensor-s...
It is likely that your predominant air flow is right in that window and right out the fan. You could probably establish a much longer - and more useful - flow if you closed that nearby window and left the dining room window open.
It's not certain - flows and turbulence do weird things - but it's worth trying.
1. https://www.rsync.net/index.html 2. https://www.rsync.net/resources/contact.html
He mentioned it here [0] or in the associated video
Esp dry heat frying like steak in pan
Restaurant cooking has been a part of human habitation for centuries. PM2.5 meters have been with us for decades. We already know the answer to this question.
You're breathing nastier things while walking down the street or entering a car that stayed in the sun for a few minutes and leached plastic fumes
Also wifi enabled which given brand may not be desirable, but I've simply not connected it
It's quite annoying. I'm not worried so much about the health aspects, but the odor of fried foods lingering in the air for hours and days. Fried salmon tastes great, but it's one of the worst offenders.
I haven't rigged up a fan inside a window yet, which would presumably fix the problem. A permanent setup would be an eyesore, a temporary solution inconvenient and rickety.