Is it time to ban g

Analysis Public health

Is it time to ban gas stoves? There is mounting evidence
that cooking on gas creates dangerous indoor air pollution and authorities are starting to take notice, finds Madeleine Cuff


FOR many restaurant chefs and enthusiastic amateurs, gas has long been the fuel of choice for stove-top cooking. But this love affair with the fuel could be coming to an end in
the face of growing evidence of the health and climate threat it poses.
In an interview with Bloomberg News on 9 January, a commissioner for the US Consumer Product Safety
Commission (CPSC) hinted that the agency is considering a ban on new gas stoves for public health reasons. Following a backlash from gas lovers, just two days later the CPSC said it
had no plans for a ban.
Yet there are good reasons
to reconsider gas. These stovesproduce nitrogen dioxide and

The impact of gas cookers on climate change is another issue, and
it isn’t just the carbon emitted from the flame that is a problem. Last year, a team found that methane leaking from gas-burning stoves in the US

“One could argue that the risk attached to a gas stove
is likely to be larger than living in a polluted city”

has a climate impact comparable with the carbon dioxide emissions from about 500,000 petrol cars.
The seemingly vast public health risk posed by these stoves
means authorities may be starting
to take notice. In the European Union, particulate matter – pollutants that are also found in traffic fumes – which can irritate lungs and increase the risk of heart disease and cancer. Children and older people are the most vulnerable.
About one in eight cases of childhood asthma in the US are due
to the use of gas cookers, according to a recent meta-analysis of studies assessing the link between these
stoves and childhood incidence of asthma. Based on these findings and survey data on gas stove use, the authors estimated the fraction of
current childhood asthma cases attributable to gas stove use in nine US states (International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, doi.org/jsps).
The 1-in-8 headline figure is
“very uncertain”, says Frank Kelly at
Imperial College London, who wasn’t involved in the work. That is because of the study method of scaling up findings from previous research to population-wide outcomes, he says.
But it is clear that gas stoves are a“major source of indoor air pollution”,
says Kelly, which can exacerbate or even cause health conditions like asthma. “If the household has got an asthmatic child, they will have more
symptoms [with a gas stove] than if