Gas utilities used tobacco tactics to avoid gas stove regulations | Hacker News Reader

Gas utilities used tobacco tactics to avoid gas stove regulations

text.npr.org

15 pointsrntn12 comments

I'm not a fan of gas stoves, but lack of cooking area ventilation is the bigger problem. The process of cooking emits a great amount of indoor air pollutants regardless of the fuel source. In the US, recirculating fans (AKA "forehead greasers") are very common, especially in rental units.

I suspect this is true, though I'd love to see a study. I've set off my smoke detector more times than I can count, and there's a sticky combination of dust and oil above my stove.

One reason why I'm not comfortable with electric stoves is reliability. I can still use my gas stove if power goes out. If there is an extended loss of power in my area then a gas stove will allow me to boil water.

I'm speaking as someone who had asthma as a kid. I don't have it now.

The calls for regulation are non-specific. What can I do to make my current gas stove safer? I have a window nearby that I can open and a fan I can turn on, but without knowing where and how the gas travels I can't be sure it helps as much as I want it to.

I wouldn't recommend using a gas stove if you don't have a good way to ventilate.

My backup cooking in case of some long term power failure is a two burner propane camping stove along with a few camp-sized cylinders of propane. That plus I usually have a small pile of firewood and at least 20lbs of charcoal for the grill. If the power goes out for any lengthy period of time I'll be cooking outside.

As for making your current stove better, ensure you actually have a decently strong vent hood that will actually ventilate outside. You'll need to size the blower enough to actually force air out of the house which will vary based on how far the air needs to travel. If your fan is too weak it won't be able to adequately push the air outside at any useful rate.

By fan I meant house fan. I was always told the vent hood was for heat. I've never seen it be useful for smoke.

A well-sized range hood vent fan is going to be your first line of defense though. Its already generally traveling up from the convection on the stove, so ensuring you've got good ventilation there should be the primary ventilation strategy. Plus you're then trying to exhaust the air with the highest percentage of contaminates instead of letting it spread out throughout your house and then ventilate it.

Loads of vent fans are pretty terrible. They're often undersized for their needs or they don't even blow outside. I see a lot of units with only a couple hundred CFM. I have a Vent-a-Hood B200 system that gives 900CFM with both blowers on. It'll clear whatever smoke or particles are coming off my stove. I don't even have a gas grill but its clear how effective it is. Its crazy how much grease it manages to catch, grease that would have otherwise gone all throughout our house and in our lungs.

Same playbook, every time. Documented in Merchants of Doubt by Erik M. Conway and Naomi Oreskes

Indeed, an eye opening book. For those interested, the book[1] tells the story of how a loose-knit group of high-level scientists and scientific advisers, with deep connections in politics and industry, ran effective campaigns to mislead the public and deny well-established scientific knowledge over four decades. These groups denied the truth of studies linking smoking to lung cancer, coal smoke to acid rain, and CFCs to the ozone hole. The book was made into a movie, Merchants of Doubt[2], released in 2014.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merchants_of_Doubt

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merchants_of_Doubt_(film)

Makes you wonder how many other things we interact with daily come from industries that followed this playbook.

I think Gyphosate/Monsanto is an obvious one. As is Teflon and related products. A lot of household cleaners too.

This Wikipedia pages lists several (but not the gas stove one, yet): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tobacco_industry_playbook

In the case of tobacco, there are multiple compelling mortality/morbidity studies contrasting health outcomes for users and non-users. Can someone point me to similar data for gas stoves?

The process of cooking emits a great amount of indoor air pollutants regardless of the fuel source. Does it make more sense to only cook outside?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com