Utilities have been lying to us about gas stoves since the 1970s
Highlights: A study this summer found that using a single gas stove burner on high can raise levels of cancer-causing benzene above what’s been observed from secondhand smoke.
A new investigation by NPR and the Climate Investigations Center found that the gas industry tried to downplay the health risks of gas stoves for decades, turning to many of the same public-relations tactics the tobacco industry used to cover up the risks of smoking. Gas utilities even hired some of the same PR firms and scientists that Big Tobacco did.
Earlier this year, an investigation from DeSmog showed that the industry understood the hazards of gas appliances as far back as the 1970s and concealed what they knew from the public.
It’s a strategy that goes back as far back as 1972, according to the most recent investigation. That year, the gas industry got advice from Richard Darrow, who helped manufacture controversy around the health effects of smoking as the lead for tobacco accounts at the public relations firm Hill + Knowlton. At an American Gas Association conference, Darrow told utilities they needed to respond to claims that gas appliances were polluting homes and shape the narrative around the issue before critics got the chance. Scientists were starting to discover that exposure to nitrogen dioxide—a pollutant emitted by gas stoves—was linked to respiratory illnesses. So Darrow advised utilities to “mount the massive, consistent, long-range public relations programs necessary to cope with the problems.”
These studies didn’t just confuse the public, but also the federal government. When the Environmental Protection Agency assessed the health effects of nitrogen dioxide pollution in 1982, its review included five studies finding no evidence of problems—four of which were funded by the gas industry, the Climate Investigations Center recently uncovered.
Karen Harbert, the American Gas Association’s CEO, acknowledged that the gas industry has “collaborated” with researchers to “inform and educate regulators about the safety of gas cooking appliances.” Harbert claimed that the available science “does not provide sufficient or consistent evidence demonstrating chronic health hazards from natural gas ranges”—a line that should sound familiar by now.
Capitalism is such shit…
It really is…it’s outlived it’s usefulness and needs to go the way of the horse drawn carriage.
It's more the sociopaths running the companies that are shit. They don't give a damn about the people they exploit and the harm they cause. And every institution's got their share of them, not just businesses.
And they're in the positions they are because of capitalism. Capitalism dictates you should exploit as much as possible to increase profits.
Thank you. I tire from excuses for capitalism.
More specifically, they are in them because of human nature. Those who don't care about others gravitate towards positions of power. That is not exclusive to capitalism. Any hierarchy is prone to sociopaths rising to positions of power. They seek them no matter what the economic system is.
In other words, power corrupts. People without power who get power inevitably start to act like sociopaths.
But feel free to blame capitalism if you like. It is the cause of many problems with our society. Any change that decreases its power should be welcomed at least in the context of American society.
It isn't exclusive to capitalism or caused by it, but it is exacerbated by it. It is a system that rewards the worst parts of humanity. I never claimed it to be the cause, only part of the issue.
If it's inherent to hierarchy, how about we work to remove as much hierarchy as possible. That's my preference.
There are other forms of political economies without hierarchies. I once thought human nature was the problem like you, until I discovered David Graeber. David Graeber dismisses the notion that humans are inherently selfish. Society and culture shape our selfishness due to material needs. Capitalism shapes society and culture.
The recommended book The Dawn of Everything looks interesting. I'll have to add it to my reading list.
Would you mind giving some examples of them?
I was using human nature as a catch all term for how humans act on a population wide scale in our current society. I think the term status seeking fits better than selfish. Status seeking behavior is essentially seeking power within a hierarchy. It often is selfish, but isn't necessarily.
Most people in a society and in an organization aren't status seeking or selfish, but those few who are status seeking are rewarded by the going up the hierarchy faster relative to their peers.
Anarchism.
That's a political system not an economic system.
There are a wide range of economic systems that I would be broadly categorized on 2 factors.
For example, the US would tend towards a privately owned, market economy in most sectors.
On the other hand, Norway (or Vietnam to a degree) would trend towards a socially owned, market economy.
An example of privately owned, planned economy would be China. However, China would probably claim to be a socially owned, planned economy. I classify it as privately owned because of the authoritarian control the government has over assets and people.
These are broad generalizations of economies that do not apply to every sector of each economy.
I don't think it's going away ever. We need regulations that require companies to have greater, more powerful ethics oversight. Launching fake research like this should be criminal.
It's like everything is lies or something, that sure is surprising in a world where the only important thing is money. It's like its an inevitable consequence or something. Like we shouldn't have organized our society this way
fuckin shocking
I was told that the free market would naturally remove any bad actors... I guess we just have to deal with half a century of collateral damage before that happens.
That's when they roll out the "it's not really a free market" argument.
Within one hour of your comment. As if summoned...
Half a century? This kind of thing has been going on much longer than 50 years...
Was basing it on that from OP.
Of course these fundamental issues with capitalism are inherent to the system, and in general, began long before 1972.
It's that neoliberalism is a lie. Neoliberalism which strated in the 70s with financial capitalism and then deployed fully with Reagan and Thatcher boosted disregulation to make all of this (profit before everything else) possible. Capitalism is a part of neoliberalism, but neoliberalism is more than just capitalism and free market. The fact is that both neoliberalism and capitalism have to be strongly regulated at best.
You might want to reread das Kapital. Capitalism and neoliberalism are the same.
They should, or at least a brief summary of it. I am not going to begrudge someone for not wanting to dive into such a dry dense tome. But Marx as someone who studied sociology has many astute analysis and critique of the inherent social dis-functions and toxicity of capitalism.
But so many of us, in the United States especially have been beaten over the head with mccarthy-ist propaganda since birth. As well as intense indoctrination to treat Leninism as a representation of all socialism. When that almost couldn't be farther from the truth. Leninism much like fascism is much more tied to totalitarianism* or authoritarianism than it is to any particular socioeconomic model.
I hear a lot that gas is cheaper for heating and I took that as the truth for a long time. A while ago I did the math though, and for my house is would have been nearly the same annual power bill if I replaced my 90% gas furnace and water heater with electric units. Although the price of gas is far more economical for heating, there's a monthly gas usage fee that's a flat rate. If you go all electric, you don't pay that, and over the course of a year, I didn't heat enough for the lower gas price to offset the flat fees. If instead of a regular electric furnace and water heater, they were heat pumps, electric would have been much cheaper than gas.
This certainly would depend on your local prices and weather and how well your house is insulated, but if you need a new furnace, I'd do the math over a year to see if gas is still the most financially attractive option, especially if you can install an air or ground source heat pump.
Heat pumps are so stupidly efficient that my coworker didn't believe it, even when I showed him how it worked, lol. They are the SSDs of heating and cooling, particularly ground source ones. I had an apartment with one and loved the $60 summer power bills. God, it was fantastic. $60 for the AC, hot water, gaming PC, washer/dryer/dishwasher, oven, and lights.
...And no worries of a gas line leaking or carbon monoxide poisoning.
I heard that geo heat pump installation cost is very high. Did you do the math to see how many summers of $60 energy bills it will take to recuperate initial investment?
Geo heat pump install is indeed very high. But air source heat pumps (both heat pump water heaters and heat pumps for heating/cooling) don't have that issue and have similar performance, except in extreme climates where geo outperforms.
They perform similarly in terms of heating a cooling ability, but ground source heat pumps are much more efficient. It's still a tough sell though since the installation costs are huge.
Modern air source pumps work down to -17 degrees Farenheit even without resistive heaters. It's something to consider, but it's not a concern for most people.
Even in extreme climates, air source can have resistive heaters built in for emergency heat. Doesn't save you nearly as much money, but it will keep your house warm when the temperature drops to -38f for a week or so. :)
It worked quite well when I was living in Montana.
Oh, it would take quite awhile to recoup, and air source is much cheaper to install than ground source. Pays itself back over the decades. Right now (and for the next 10 years or so), the federal gov will give you a kickback if you swap your furnace for a qualifying heatpump, up to 11k USD. The installation might be $30k, but a qualifying heatpump covered under that program will save you a serious chunk of change. And as long as you do maintenance on them, they should last for a very long time.
My apartment had them built in as it was all new construction. I miss that place!
One thing to deeming before you out one in: whether you have good insulation and good windows first. Those will go a long way in saving you $$$ on your energy bills regardless of what you are using to heat and cool your home.
I believe the cost of an electric heater was a lot higher even after using available rebates. Hopefully the prices go down or rebates increase and it becomes a more viable option
Gas stoves are easier and more comfortable to cook, but if this study is true im definitely going electrict next.
try induction stoves. they require certain pans (magnetic so test with a fridge magnet if it sticks you good) but its got INSANE temperature control on the high quality units. like, if something starts boiling and you don't want that you adjust down and it almost instantly stops boiling. the only thing to watch for is getting a unit with variable power not duty cycles. this is a great counter top unit for trying it out tho!
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00GMCAM2G
Just got an induction cooktop and almost cried turning it from high to low and watching it stop bubbling almost instantly
Have you tried to cook in a electric stove? I personally hate them. I just turn the exhaust on.
Technology connections informed me of this long ago! And it makes perfect sense. But almost every house I go in has a gas stove because apparently people think it’s better or nicer or “more professional” or whatever.
I find this crazy. I live in SE USA and I've never even seen a gas stove outside of camping. When everyone was "freaking out" online about the gas stove ban, I was just confused.
Haha! I go in about three houses per day for work and the majority will have gas. Also SE US. Although I’ve never had one in the places I’ve lived so if not for work I’d never have seen them either.
There’s a certain wealth line where they all have gas stoves. Look up the Wolf 6-burner gas range. Not something you find in a 3-2 home.
I grew up in a rural area, hence the no gas. I now live in a metro area and maybe it's just my friends, but I've really never seen one. They always sounded dangerous to me.
Outside of this (and the utility fucking up, sending too much pressure, and blowing up a bunch of houses) they're perfectly safe. Millions of homes around the world have gas service and incidents are very rare.
But given the health implications of just normal operation, I'm still not going to get a gas stove in the future.
I'm just here to let you know that in some rural areas, bottled gas is/was the viable solution.
Are there any restaurants that use electric stoves?
I think this is mostly because it is what cooks are used to. The ones who go to culinary school learned on gas stoves, and the ones who learned on the job also mostly learned on gas stoves.
Gas stoves aren't the best option anymore. Induction stoves heat up much quicker and offer much finer heat control, but they are a bit more expensive, and many of the cooks would have to relearn how to make some of the stuff they are used to cooking.
So not only is it what cooks are used to, but it would require an investment from the restaurant that most aren't willing to look into. Gas stoves last for many many years, so it's not like they break down and need replacing regularly, either.
I've never been in a restaurant kitchen. Can't tell you.
It's just nicer to cook on gas. Electric is a pain in the ass and generally less efficient time-wise. Induction apparently solves a lot of issues, though.
Induction solves all of the issues.
Shit, what one do you have? My family has some stupidly expensive one, and the goddamn electric pilot lights get dirty and fail to click off for about 30-50 seconds.
This is also their second gas stove in about 12 years. I only wanted electric because theirs was such a bitch to deal with all the time. :P
Even old school electric burners typically heat water to boiling faster than gas.
Gas is more responsive, but induction comes close. Some of the new induction burners have fake flames to indicate how high the output is visually.
Induction stoves are still pretty expensive, and resistance electric stoves suck ass.
Do they? I’d check out Technology Connections videos on the subject. A couple more seconds to boil water is worth not inhaling whatever junk byproducts of combustion.
Induction is cheap as shit nowadays, and faster, so no-one should install new gas stoves. When renovating I ripped out my gas line.
HOWEVER I completely disagree with Alec on resistive electric stoves being "fine". They're terrible. They have ENORMOUS thermal inertia. He says "just move the pan off the heater", but that doesn't take into account that just getting a pan to the correct temperature is much harder on resistive electric. It takes forever to heat up an empty pan, but if you wait until the food is cooking to turn down the heat, it's already too late and your food will be overcooked. Frying an egg is the worst, by the time that the pan is hot you gotta kill the heat entirely or the egg will be burnt so there is no margin for adjustment. Ugh. With induction it's so much easier, you can just adjust the heat based on how the egg is frying and the pan will actually cool down or heat up enough that the egg will come out alright.
I mean sure depending on ventilation and personal opinions on air quality then resistive may be favorable over gas, but if I'm honest, if induction didn't exist I'd probably take my chances with cancer.
You know I wonder to what extent that is about people having old electric stoves that have bang on bang off resistive electric coils rather than like, a tuned consistent current coil that heats up and stays hot at a temperature. Cause the bang on bang off coil is probably going to have more thermal inertia, or, you'd want more thermal inertia, for a more consistent heat. I dunno about the thermal inertia of the coil in general, though, I've definitely cooked on shitty enough electric stoves that just an egg, butter, and a nonstick pan will cook for like 3 seconds, go back to being off for a minute, and then the coil will heat up and cook the egg for another 3 seconds, which is fuckin crazy, that shit blows.
Boiling water isn't what id try to sell a gas stove on. If you're a hobbyist cook you develop hobbyist, non essential task opinions.
I bet 95% of people could happily use electric and never even wonder about alternatives.
The last 5 want the features and cook pans used with gas, to get the hobbyist results they are after.
To that I say go for it, but be aware of the risks.
Limited sample size, but Technology Connections did a great video where gas wasn't even particularly better at boiling water. It looks like it should be because FIRE, but you get into a mess of needing to very carefully match pots to burners.
Also, look in to an electric kettle for water. Even a shitty american voltage kettle is awesome relative to putting a kettle on the stove.
For discussion, I always use an electric kettle to start water for pasta and similar.
I also love TC and have seen this video.
The hobbyist cook angle is qualitative though, if a home cook wants to emulate restaurant style there's just no comparison.
For acknowledgement, I always do the same thing with the kettle.
I also love TC, and have seen this one too!
And, if that wasn't enough, I even agree with you on the last part.
Now, what do we discuss?
I am comfortable arguing about any topic of your choice. I won't let the possibility of my not being familiar with it reduce our sport.
Eh. Unless you ACTUALLY get a restaurant grade set up (not just the expensive stuff with Bobby Flay branding), that tend to actually need real range hoods and so forth, you are, at best, cosplaying being a restaurant chef. At the consumer grade, the BTU differences are mostly a matter of branding over technology. And the responsiveness is almost universally beat by induction.
Don't get me wrong. I am a sicko with a propane burner in his backyard for when I want to make a night out of my stir fry (or season some cast iron/carbon steel).
But I've had gas burners and electric burners over the decades and have even had the opportunity to cook in restaurant kitchens on occasion (the joys of being friends with people having millennial weddings...).
Speed to boil water is not at all the selling point of gas.
It's speed and precision of temperature control.
Coils stay hot. When you turn the gas off, the heat is off RIGHT NOW. When you turn it on it's on RIGHT NOW.
Many coils pulse full heat to simulate different heat levels. Gas gives you very precise control over exact heat levels and it is instantly responsive to change.
I'm not here to argue about the possible health concerns, I don't know anything about that and would need to read more. But people who argue electric ranges are just as effective as gas simply haven't cooked as much. I'm certain of this because I used to think that too until I switched to gas. Gas is plainly better.
I've heard great things about induction and maybe that's the way I'll go next. Not sure yet. I'm certainly curious.
You’ve got the precision factor backwards. Gas is a clear loser on that.
When you have knob levels 0—9, if you set the knob to 3 on electric you get exactly ½ the heat energy that you get from level 6. It’s perfectly linear. This is not true in the slightest with gas. A gas flame is non-linear as you go from 0 to 9. All you can do is eye-ball the flame and guess. Even when you have a flame size in mind, it’s not reproduceable because you’re still eye-balling it every time. You can’t trust the levels on a gas knob either because they’re so non-linear that you can get a big flame difference in certain points along the scale.
Gas also has less precision of control because of the reduced range at both ends. The lowest possible gas setting is still too hot for some tasks. So the best you can do is manually mimic the pulsing of electric by turning the burner off and reigniting periodically. The highest temp on gas is also less than the highest temp electric can achieve.
The only “precision” task that gas wins at is at the zero (off) level, and speed, AFAICT, which is related to precision. Both of those factors can be discarded for the most part when comparing induction because it adjusts temp demand fast enough.
I appreciate your well mathed response, but this is a classic example of using a numbers argument where the eye test should prevail. It's like people who play fantasy sports and argue that advanced stats prove a player who sucks, is actually good.
I don't at all think in the terms you are thinking of when I cook. I'm not looking at the flames. I'm not looking for "exactly half" when I drop the temp. I'm cooking, and watching the food I make react. Sometimes I need to raise or drop the temp just a tiny bit, and I can do that with excellent speed and resolution of change with gas. Electric pulses do not offer this. Every electric stove I have ever used is absolutely terrible at making small quick adjustments of heat. I am not thinking about the exact percentage by which I want to raise or lower it, and getting concerned about whether it's exactly right. I'm not concerned about the linearity of change (although honestly if I'm thinking of it, my gas stove's heat range feels fairly linear to me). I am doing this by intuition or feel, and by watching what I'm cooking to see that it is doing what I want.
Also I have no idea what you mean about gas being too hot at its lowest setting. I have never encountered this in many years of cooking. Mine goes low enough that I can keep a sauce warm without stirring without it sticking. I have however, many times encountered food that scorched because the electric coils stayed hot for 15 minutes after being turned off.
Ultimately, I probably incorrectly used the word precision. Someone who is a superior wordsmith may be able to direct me to the correct verbage.
Induction stoves get cheaper and cheaper every year.
Also? It is mostly just the old exposed metal coil resistive stoves that were horrible. You know, the one we all had growing up where you had to poke the coil with a fork until it made connection again so that it would heat up.
Pretty much any glass top resistive electric stove (so anything made in the past two decades or so?) is fine. Very easy to clean, much less prone to damage, and gets pretty hot pretty fast. You aren't getting "wok hei" for all the cantonese stir frying you do but... you aren't getting that with a gas stove either unless you have an ACTUAL restaurant setup (no, not just the expensive options at the Lowes) which tend to have very specific ventilation requirements too.. If you want to go all out with your wok, get an outdoor propane burner.
Now, I do actually think the drawback to resistive heating staying hot is a lot bigger than "just pick up the pot". Not when I am making a weeknight meal for myself. But when I am cooking a larger meal for a date night or having friends over and am using multiple burners? I don't really have anywhere to put the pot. But that is also incredibly "first world problems" of "I have too much food"
I actually prefer the coils. The glass-top ones are never as easy to clean as they claim, and the glass between the burner and the pot reduces heat transfer and causes them to heat up even slower. With the coil-type the pot is resting on the heater, which means maximum heat transfer via conduction.
Another problem is that the cooktop stays very hot after you take it off the heat. With gas and induction the heat stops instantly, but I've burned a lot of food because I misjudged how long it takes for a resistive burner to cool down. And the glass tops are again worse because they have a lot more thermal mass than a coil.
Induction solves all of these problems, though. Heat is controllable and instant, and the cooktop cools down very quickly.
The glass in-between makes them heat up much faster, it is the whole point actually. It is IR transparent, so only the heating element itself has to heat up to get things started. Then only a bit of insulation (next to no mass) has to heat up to get things to nearly 100 %.
I have also never heard or seen this glass being harder to clean than any other type of stove, which are a pain to clean in comparison.
The glass is definitely more of a pain to clean. It's easy enough to get stuff off, but visually you can see any streaks or missed corners much more than an enamel stovetop.
Sucks less ass than cancer.
It is getting better, we got ours for a little more than $1,000, but electric stoves are dirt cheap. 1/3rd to 1/2 the price.
Induction stoves are not expensive at all.
Well it is "better", but it isn't (as this article highlights) better.
Even against an induction stovetop though, it's only better in some niche situations, otherwise I'd say the induction stovetop is better, especially because it can't set stuff on fire.
Acklutally, up until recently gas has been far cheaper than induction. It was leagues better than electric. Even today unless you are spending a lot more on a new stove and probably upping running costs; it's expensive to move to conduction when gas stoves last for basically forever. It's also quite regional to natural gas areas where it's been cheaper than electricity.
If you want to sear meat at high temps, a powerful gas stove is still today going to outperform a induction.
I'll gladly spend a little more time in front of a stove that isn't actively killing me.
Or doesn’t allow itself to cook off in a multi-home-leveling explosion. Gas lines going is never fun.
And that's your choice. Just don't pretend like there isn't a valid reason so you can make fun of hillbillies.
What are you going on about? Who am I making fun of? There's sound evidence that gas stoves emit harmful pollutants.
I was curious about temps, according to this induction gets much hotter than gas. Wouldn't that be much better for searing?
Gas stoves usually show up in colder places where homes would be heated with gas, and in older cities. 240V electricity was dangerous early on, and homes were usually already hooked up to gas networks for heating.
Nope, that is a myth.
For me it was Climate Town.
It's been time to switch to induction stoves for a long time now, they are basically better in every way that matters.
How are they with temperature regulation? I think that's a big holdback for a lot of people. A gas burner gives consistent heat output at the set level, while an electric burner cycles on and off, resulting in a wider temperature range.
ETA: Wow, WTF? Downvoted for asking a legit question. Are we Reddit now?
They're probably more consistent than gas. Provided your cookware isn't moved on the surface, they provide a constant energy output that is a simple linear equation of energy in - losses = energy out. Period. Induction elements "cycle" on and off -- hundreds or thousands of times per second. They don't work like a radiant electric stovetop at all. There is no human perceptible duty cycle.
Fancier models like Bosch and some of the new GE Profile/Cafe ones can even wirelessly communicate with special cookware that has a temperature sensor built in, and deliver you absolute parametrically controlled temperature output at a specific temperature down to the degree, with computer controlled precision. It doesn't get any better than that.
One thing I don't like about induction is that I don't feel like a cool chef tossing the pan. I have to just let it sit there, and if I pick the pan up it beeps at me and turns off. Plus there's no fire.
It's safer but definitely way less fun.
Mine will wait around five seconds before beeping at me. That usually gives me enough time for whatever flamboyance I'm attempting.
But you're right that moving the pan away from the surface basically disconnects it from the heat source. Mine will noticeably warm a pan from about half an inch away, but no further.
I wish I could test drive a stove before I buy it. I've just been using a cheap induction cooktop and it's so bad I'm sure a full-size stove would be better, but I don't want to drop a couple grand plus rewiring my house to find out the stove I bought sucks as bad as this cooktop.
But damn can it boil water fast.
If you're paying a couple of grand for one you're probably looking at a premium unit. Or your local dealer is overcharging. The Frigidaire FCFI3083AS lists for $1199, a lot of retailers have it for less. Samsung's model is a bit cheaper still, but don't buy a Samsung appliance.
What don't you like about the cooktop? And what brand is it?
They sell single burners. That use a 110. You can use it for water boiling and use the range for bugger meals
I feel like there's gotta be a costco-like store that does that. I certainly would want the same thing.
Must be hard to braise.
See unfortunately what you're describing here are good induction stoves, which is not the majority of what is on the market.
I've seen far too many of the bad kind, with duty cycles measured in the tens of seconds. Your 7/10 on the dial could be - like a non-inverter microwave - something in the neighbourhood of 7 seconds on / 3 seconds off. At that point they can actually be worse to use than old halogen glass cooktops, which at least remain hot during the off part of their thermostat's cycle.
This is not even just cheap no-name crap either, have witnessed it with big-name-brand in-bench stovetops with four-figure pricetags.
If you're doing something like poaching eggs (which typically calls for a wide, flat pan), you'll actually see the water starting and stopping boiling in a cycle as it switches. Absolutely terrible.
I have a le cheapo Frigidaire, and mine definitely doesn't do that. I also have a Summit tabletop single burner induction hot plate kicking around, which I think cost me all of $130 and came with three pans in the box. It doesn't do that, either.
If you've got a recent model that does have a long on-off duty cycle like that, you should name and shame so people know to avoid it. People buying that kind of thing and being turned off by it is just going to slow down the course of progress, here.
Induction has instant temperature control, combined with the possibility of having lower temperatures than gas allows for.
Additionally, there's no temperature leakage into the room, nor any particles from combustion.
They are perfect at temperature regulation. I have a little 120v unit that even has a hold @ temperature function. Goes as low as 180 and I think as high as 500°
Remember induction heats the pan directly via induction and thus requires cookware that a magnet can stick to. Otherwise faster, more efficient, easy to control
They also boil water faster than consumer stoves. My pans are no longer sticky with the un-ignited gas residue. Baking is so much more even as well. I cook the same amount and my power/gas bill is lower than before. Lots of benefits.
Baking in electric is better than gas because one of the combustion products is water, which reduces the drying effect of baking.
It depends on what you’re baking. You wouldn’t want your cake to have a crispy hard crust on the outside, but you would want that with bread and pizza.
It really depends on which induction burner you have. I've got a 120v one with a "temperature hold" function. It varies +/- 30 degrees. Trying to hold chocolate or a cream sauce at a specific temperature always results in burning. Maybe I have a shitty one, but it just cycles on and off at full power at set intervals, and it's nowhere near the consistency I get out of my gas stove.
I really, really hope the stoves out there don't do this sort of thing, and actually just run the induction constantly at reduced output instead of just cycling on and off. But the cooktop is still perfect for boiling huge amounts of water, or getting cast iron rocket-hot for searing.
Just got rid of my gas stove and got induction. I will never cook with gas again. They have way faster heating and temperature control. Any one who says different hasn't used induction.
Always have been.
And as others may have said, induction stoves hold perfect temperature, but also require you to use more substantial steel pots and pans to begin with. As such, they won't suffer from poor temperature modulation like older resistive electric stoves with cheap aluminum pans would.
A lot of other comments in this chain are getting a single downvote so far.
It’s ok Big Gas/Oil, we know it’s you.
All electric are fine. There is no discernible difference by the time it gets to the food. Like I had to be academically informed that this on/off even happened, I had no idea. This is such a ridiculous fake concern that's been created.
I'm sorry, it is unbelievable to me that anyone who has done a good amount of cooking on both gas and old-style electric stoves would say they are equivalent. It simply tells me you do not have adequate experience, or are not observant enough to notice.
I don't mean this as a personal attack. It's just...this isn't an opinion. Gas is dramatically more responsive and precise for heat control. This is objective. If the way you cook does not leverage fine heat control or require quick changes to heat levels, then no you will not notice.
But the difference is stark and noticeable for someone who wants and uses this level of precision.
Out of curiosity, what are you cooking that requires quick changes to heat level?
Completely fair question.
Tons of things require this. Eggs are much easier this way. Anything that needs to be brought to a boil then dropped to a simmer. Anything that needs to not be overcooked but still needs to hit temp. Fish and chicken come to mind. It also just enables fine adjustments while cooking. If I am searing something but realize I crowded the plate and things have started steaming instead, it's easy and fast to turn the heat up one notch.
Granted some of this comes down to what kind of pan you have too. I cook a lot with a carbon steel pan and it's very quickly responsive to heat changes. I have a set of all-clad pans and they also respond relatively quickly. But like, my cast irons obviously don't so it's a bit moot for them.
Compared to coil definitely, but not if we are talking induction. Induction is as responsive as gas for heat control. Of course noone should be buying electric coil stoves in this day and age.
I've heard that from people and I'm eager to eventually have a chance to try one. Our gas stove is under 10 years old and works fine, so a new induction range isn't really on the horizon for us financially.
But I'm definitely interested to try one.
It might come from those cheap portable models. I tried one my mom had and the cycles were very obvious. It was difficult to do anything where I had to hold a temp, even doing a simple simmer was hard because it would go from boiling to nothing repeatedly. Things constantly burned on it due to poor temp regulation. I know it was a shitty model and I expect full size models to be much better, but it was a concern of mine as well.
I do hope to pick up an induction within a year or two. Can't really afford it at the moment though.
That mostly has to do with your cookware. I've got an older electric unit with really distinct power cycling like you say and it's only a problem with cheaper aluminum pans. My good laminated steel pans and cast iron are perfectly consistent because they have a lot of thermal mass so they retain the heat and even out the power cycles into a nice average temperature.
Consistent heat to that level doesn't matter outside of VERY specific use cases like tempering a ridiculously small amount of chocolate with very little water in the double boiler setup. Oh, and you have like pure aluminum pans, I guess.
Because also? Gas stoves aren't as consistent as people think. Yes, we assume they are because we can see the fire. But various impurities in the line, air in the system, etc and you still get minor sputtering and fluctuations.
All of which... almost never matters. Because even when you are doing the most delicate of baking work: You tend to have a double boiler set up so that the water can maintain the heat during these fluctuations.
Freaking out because some idiot downvoted you. Are we Reddit now?
I wonder if the same levels of pollutants are found in restaurants. Most if not all restaurants use gas stoves. The ventilation systems are usually multiple orders of magnitude better than what a typical household would have available.
Having worked in a few restaurants, the vent systems are usually placed above the stoves but the vent itself is kind of high up. It’s definitely capturing the fumes from the cooking process itself, but not clear if it’s also capturing the pollutants from the stove while it’s on.
There definitely has to be some spillage into the kitchen. More than using a laboratory grade ventilation hood but less than the typical gas stove in a typical household.
Every kitchen I have worked in, those vents are so powerful the head chef could smoke while on the line, and the kitchen didn't smell of smoke. I wouldn't be surprised if those fans are fully circulating the entire volume of air in the kitchen a couple times a minute.
I think this assumes the restaurant is properly maintaining the ventilation system. I remember a couple of restaurants I worked at the grates were rarely changed out. The one time we did a proper cleaning the fucking things were caked with fat deposits and other crap. Took a power washer and some caustic industrial cleaner to get them to a decent state.
Usually there's a make up air unit that keeps the pressure in the kitchen positive by pumping more air into the kitchen than what the exhaust fan is exhausting, so yeah the pollutants would have no way of spilling into the kitchen and missing the exhaust, as long as everything is set up properly, including having all fuel burning equipment below the hood.
Kitchens need to be kept under negative not positive pressure, typical make up air units supply 85% of the airflow of the exhaust. Source, I used to design HVAC systems and have done multiple McDonald's restaurants.
You might be surprised by how little airflow is actually required to displace some hazardous gasses.
From: Penn Medicine
So... is the mystery behind women's lung cancer solved? Lovely if so (/s).
Tried to see if this data was backed up at the ALA website. Didn't look like it.
https://www.lung.org/research/trends-in-lung-disease/lung-cancer-trends-brief/lung-cancer-mortality-(1)
Actually, if looking at it from the 80s it looks like that might be accurate. But this graph tells a different story.
Sounds like a pretty clean answer to it unfortunately
Aight. I must be missing something huge here.
Here's the formula for burning methane:
CH4 + 2O2 → CO2 + 2H2O
Are there other chemicals in the gas that don't combust? Or don't combust completely?
EDIT: Jesus Christ I'm an idiot, and y'all upvoted this?! The end product is water and carbon dioxide. Better than straight methane in the atmosphere, at least in the long term, but damn I'm stupid sometimes.
It seems that the main problem is the existence of benzene in the natural gas. It's not an additive; it exists in crude oil and comes through in the final product after cracking and refining. I haven't been able to find anything showing the exact method for which benzene acts as a carcinogen, but there are several studies that show a strong correlation between benzene exposure and leukemia.
Benzene is also in gasoline, so it's also recommended that you don't spend a lot of time huffing gasoline.
You’re not the boss of me.
Paint cans are still fine right?
Benzene is what's called in intercolating agent. Essentially it can slip into your DNA strands between the base pairs, and hang out there so to speak. When your cells attempt to replicate DNA where benzene has sidled on in, it can cause errors in the replication. When cells build up enough DNA errors it can cause cancer.
Edit: this is an incorrect explanation, I was confusing benzene's method of toxicity with ethidium bromide's. Benzene metabolites are what's toxic, usually due to oxidative damage.
Oh shit - thanks! I appreciate that. So how is it that benzene is able to get in there in the first place? Is it just because it's non-polar? Or is it more that it activates certain pharmacophores on cells due to its shape, and is brought inside?
It seems I was actually wrong, sorry about that. I was thinking of agents like ethidium bromide, and assumed benzene was similarly toxic due to it's planar structure. It seems it's actually the metabolites of benzene that cause cancer, usually through oxidative damage:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1469747/
Thanks for that! I really appreciate you.
Yes, natural gas contains a whole bunch of stuff that isn't pure methane. It would be impractical and expensive to try and seperate out only the methane.
I assume there are contaminants or products of incomplete combustion.
LOL, you're killing me Smalls. That's exactly what I was asking.
Not sure about what happens with the chemical they add to make the gas smell.
Is this natural gas or LPG
Natural gas. Although it wouldn't surprise me if both have the same issues.
Yeah, pretty much whatever you burn it's going to produce some compounds that aren't good, unless maybe you're running off of hydrogen or something which no one is. Pretty much always it's some kind of carbon containing compound.
Even then, you're going to get NOx. The atmosphere is 70% nitrogen and with high enough temperatures, some will always react with the available oxygen.
I'd expect LPG to have it worse
The interesting part in the NPR article is:
This is the case in each industry from tabacco to at the other end Autism for example. People should do their research and look for the quality of the papers and the COI (conflict of interest).
Most people cannot judge the quality of scientific papers, that's what public regulators are for, but they failed the people there.
That’s what gets me about the “do your own research” parrots. Ok - let me just google it and blindly trust the top SEOd results. That’s what most people’s research is going to be
It’s good advice if the audience knew how to critically evaluate articles, but people don’t even read the articles.
Google Scholar is a thing.
I don't know what the autism industry is. I agree that lots of industries use these tactics, while actively poisoning/exposing their customers to toxins. There is a big problem with the baby formula industry using big tobacco tactics to obfuscate facts about premature infants being killed by their products. Johnson and Johnson has also done this with talcum powder.
The thing with talcum powder was that it contained a certain portion of asbestos from the talc deposits it was mined from, which was determined to not be financially viable to separate out. So Johnson and Johnson just didn't. Some of their baby powder was found to contain asbestos and they recalled a bunch of it. Then J&J claimed at the time they stopped selling talc based baby powder that this was due to "misinformation" surrounding its product.
Yeah, okay, sure.
The stuff you buy as baby powder now is corn starch based. This was news to me because I used to use the stuff to help mount inner tubes in motorcycle tires. The corn starch based stuff doesn't work for that. Like, at all. I use soap or Windex now instead. No idea how well it works as actual baby powder.
J&J hid the fact that there was asbestos in their talc products and even continued to advertise it for use by women in their 'sensitive areas.'
https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/johnsonandjohnson-cancer/
"In 1976, as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) was weighing limits on asbestos in cosmetic talc products, J&J assured the regulator that no asbestos was “detected in any sample” of talc produced between December 1972 and October 1973. It didn’t tell the agency that at least three tests by three different labs from 1972 to 1975 had found asbestos in its talc – in one case at levels reported as “rather high.” "
...autism is an industry??
You have an entire bad industry around autism. It's worse than people think with human rights abuses. The industry produces papers with huge methodology and data issues and COI. Autism Speak is the first relay for this missinformation.
https://medium.com/artfullyautistic/autism-speaks-deception-eugenics-and-abuse-618cf65c094a
Ah, yes. The autism industry strikes again!
What do you mean about Autism? The vaccine study?
There is a lot of money dumped by organizations like Autism Speaks into research geared toward "curing" Autism, and running ad campaigns about how Autism is lurking in every corner waiting to destroy your family, whereas other studies demonstrate that neurodivergent folks just need to be treated like human beings to gain access to a meaningful life. This is what I assumed they were talking about when I read their comment.
Is this natural gas, or propane, or both? The article mostly uses just "gas" but does mention natural gas once.
Everything I researched was entirely focused on gas stoves being unhealthy, which seems to be the major issue.
Propane doesn't seem to show up in a general search on this topic, and the carbon monoxide levels from mine didnt seem to go up while in use. So I believe it's not as bad or even has the same problems.
That being said.. I think we can also generalize that burning solid fuel in the open inside your house is probably a bad idea.
I also hate open flame stoves for cooking they suck and I'll fight you on that. I'm extremely interested in getting this propane stove replaced with induction.
Benzene is the major issue. You have the same issue at the gas pump.
The NPR article is better.
Thanks for linking that!
Yeah this is fairly concerning, I usually think of benzene as super carcinogenic. They actually limit how much of it can be used in gasoline for that reason.
I'd probably want to compare benzene content from various sources and consult the OSHA guidelines before saying how bad this is, but there's no doubt in my mind that this decidedly bad. You're getting directly and consistently exposed to the benzene.
I'd be curious about some of the other variables around that too. For example, how long are they running the stove on high vs how many cigarettes are they burning.
Yeah there's a ton to account for. I'm particularly interested in how it compares against car exhaust
I even wonder what the benzene levels are in ambient air in a city like Bay City Texas or Texas City Texas.
Uh, why those cities? Wouldn't the metro areas like LA, Houston, New York, etc. be better?
They are refinery towns and you can smell things in the air.
Baytown Texas has a bunch of oil and gas industry. I'm a bit afraid to know.
Laughs hysterically in South African... where we now have no choice but to use gas for almost everything because our electrical grid is collapsing due to IMF-approved neoliberal shitfuckery.
Don't people blame it on
ANSANC short sightedness about banning new powerplants by Escom and failing to expand the grid and ANC's corruption?*ANC
What ANC short-sightedness? They're doing what all the rich people wanted them to do, aren't they? Running everything "like a business?" I guess South Africans are now seeing for themselves how short-sighted running "everything like a business" was always going to be, huh?
I am very happy with my induction range. I switched from gas just before this info about gas ranges became a thing.
Much less use of handle covers with my cast iron frying pans because it directly heats instead of throwing heat everywhere. Boils water faster than my microwave. And health bonuses too.
Gas stoves rock. Rather than banning gas stoves, just require that they be installed safely.
The answer here is simple- mandate a range hood with real outside exhaust (not the cheap ones that blow air back into the room). And require a make-up air vent with equivalent capacity.
Maybe require the stove to automatically engage the vent at low speed (near-silent) so when you start a burner the vent runs at like 10CFM or something automatically.
Mandating that someone renovate their entire kitchen to have a gas stove would have worse repercussions than just outright banning them
But it can be the required standard going forward
I vividly remember when they required fire-retardant insulation that every contractor and worker in the biz was up in arms, I can't imagine how well it's gonna go for contractors building high-rise apartments that are also required to have strong ventilation systems for dumb stoves
Do high-rise apartments tend to have gas stoves? I've never even seen a low-rise apartment without an electric range.
Yep. I'd rather not have a propane stove, but I live in an area with a lot of power outages. We have a propane generator for backup power. Makes no sense to size to generator to run and induction stove when we can just use our, properly installed, propane stove.
I just had my kitchen done and asked for better ventilation, provided options. Ended up with a microwave that blows air into the fucking room. And its connected to a vent outside, its just designed to blow air into the fucking room despite that. Contractor was so clueless and products are there to deceive us.
I think he probably installed it wrong. I've seen a few of these and read the manuals, there is almost always a setup where you have to remove a baffle from the rear output and reinstall that baffle in the front output. Look up the installation manual for your microwave. I would bet money your contractor missed a step.
I never got this fervent obsession "i mUsT hAvE gAs StOvE, eLeCtRiC iS tHe SuCk wAhHhHh." Geez you think an electric stove killed their puppy or something. Electric is more than fine, it's even better because it's not putting out all that extra heat, nevermind all the pollution, and the noise because you're supposed to run the fan at high (but people never do). Cue the gAs crying below.
Obligatory Climate Town Video: It’s Time To Break Up With Our Gas Stoves. It explains why we are, where we are today and what myth the gas industry is pushing to keep gas in our homes and the fugitive leaks in the environment. Can not recommend it enough.
Awesome video. Every time I see something this guy made I am impressed.
The only real issue is that how environmentally friendly electric is compared to gas depends on how the electricity is made. Gas effectively converts all of its potential chemical energy to heat where it is used. Electricity has to be generated from some process eg. burning fuel, nuclear energy, wind, solar, hydroelectric etc. and if it is primarily generated at coal or gas power plants, maybe 40 to 50% of the potential chemical energy in those fuels are converted into electricity. So if more than about 40% of the electricity you use is generated by burning fossil fuels, you arent really saving the environment by using electric instead of gas. But of course where that pollution ends up matters. In the case of electric, if your power is generated in power plants that burn fossil fuels, the pollution isn't directly being vented into your house. And those power plants may scrub their exhaust to an extent. i.e to reduce Sulfur Dioxide emissions etc.
Scrubbers at power plants will do way more than the one you won't have at home.
And gas can never be converted.
Electric + cast iron is my favorite combo, because the heat capacity of the cast iron pretty much cancels out the uneven heat from an electric burner
I'm currently frying with the thinnest stainless steel pan I've ever seen from the 70s. Didn't even know they could be that thin. And there is no problem with the on/off cycle. It's a made up fake concern from who knows where.
Nah it's not made up. It fucks with my sear. And by uneven, I mean some parts of the coil heat up at different rates than others / have better contact than others.
Since we got from gas to induction few years back we're totally convinced: it's much more efficient, in the summer the kitchen isn't getting that hot, in the winter the air is better, and after we got the ideal pans and pots, we love to cook on induction. I can recommend cast iron ware like Le Creuset (buy one with metal grip, if you wanna put it in the oven), don't go cheap there, you'll use it often. If you like wok I'd recommend a cast iron one too. It's a joy, we'll never go back, and I was a hard gas advocate before. And yes, dishwasher isn't friendly with cast iron, but it's quickly clean again, much faster than stainless steel etc
'gas stoves' and frying bacon. I love the smell of benzene in the morning. It's the smell of breakfast cooking on a gas stove.
I'll never fry bacon again unless I don't have an oven to bake it in. Baking it makes far better bacon and it smells great baking in my electric stove.
I'd still rather have a gas stove. IMO the improved experience of cooking with gas justifies the small increase in exposure to air pollution. My general principle is that I drive a car despite how dangerous that is, so I should be willing to take other risks as long as they're lower than the risk from driving.
(Resistive electric stoves are terrible. Inductive ones are much better. I can see why someone might like them more than gas, but I don't.)
Worse than secondhand smoke is not a small increase to air pollution
There's nothing better about gas than inductive, anyone complaining about conductive either has the wrong cookware or a malfunctioning model
I do consider it a small increase, but I suppose that's subjective and depends a lot on a person's risk tolerance. Maybe mine is higher than yours.
As for induction stoves: they work quite well. If I was cooking simply because I needed cooked food and for no other reason, I would have no objection to them (and perhaps a preference for them). However, I feel that there's something deeply satisfying about cooking over a fire and I want that satisfaction when I cook.
I agree. Gas is hands down a better heat source if your primary method of cooking is to sauté and toss or are cooking in a wok. The flame is a tool you can work with. But for most home cooks, it doesn't make much difference. If you're just scooting stuff around with a spatula, a hot pan is a hot pan no matter how it got hot.
We don't have a stove, but we do have a gas furnace and water heater. When we were buying the home 2 years ago, the inspection turned up a gas leak in the attic and that almost halted the whole thing. That and the radon gear that was installed and never enabled.
We did get it resolved, but man, it was a super scary discovery.
Gas leak in the attic? Why would you have gas service in the attic?
That's where the furnace is. ;)
Some houses have the furnace in the attic.
We have an electric stove but a gas fireplace and a gas furnace/water heater. Is that just as bad?
Gas fireplaces usually work by separate chambers, the burn off/exhaust is drawn out the flue while a fan rotates cool air around the heated box and then back out into the house.
Gas water heaters can leak exhaust into the house if the vent hood isn't properly pulling air out of the house. I recall using a match to test that it pulled the smoke up and out.
I don't think so, because the benzene source isn't right there in front of you like with a stove burner. The fireplace is probably alright because of the chimney, and the larger worry there would be particulate matter and smoke anyway.
Where does the exhaust from the furnace and water heater go? If it goes through a vent system and then outside it should be fine. It might be fine otherwise even, if it becomes diluted when becoming in the general atmosphere of your home.
Disclaimer, I am not an expert on emissions nor venting. I studied chemistry and chem eng in college, but this isn't my professional field.
We also keep the doors to the fireplace closed when we're not using it. So that probably helps keep the fumes out of the house.
Your furnace should be vented directly to the outside like your fireplace. Gas stoves only require the vent hood, which does some good work on venting the room, but the user is still exposed to those output gases before they can be vented. That also assumes the user even uses the vent hood. Pretty wild when you think about it.
Good to know. Thanks!
Wait I totally misread your comment. I thought you said furnace. Your gas fireplace sounds like it's of the ventless variety which I just read up on now. I don't think these are even permitted for use where I live. You're right to be cautious with it.
I said we had both, which isn't great.
Unless your furnace isn't vented, it's fine. The ventless gas fireplace though would be just as bad as a gas stove, if not worse because as the name implies it's not vented.
I would guess the fireplace it just goes out the chimney if there is one, and just as bad if there isn't one
Hopefully not a stupid question: would this affect butane stoves, like the ones you use to go camping?
Butane doesn't break into the same things, but everything that combusts breaks down into smaller things that all constantly keep coming up as bad for us in excess. The location also matters as far as health goes. Camping stove in open air good, not so much inside a tent.
Found an article/study stating propane does release benzene:
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.2c09289
The isobutane/white gas stuff may too but I couldn't find anything to support that.
If you're ever out in your garage in winter and using those burner tops on a propane tank it's best to have a source of fresh air and ventilation (which of course negates the ability to heat effectively).
e: no stupid questions, lots of internet "researchers" though (myself included)
What is the concentration of benzene in second hand smoke, or in the kitchen of a gas range?
If you read the linked report you will find that
This shouldn’t be conflated with ‘they knew about potential cancer risks and tried to hide it in the 1970s’.
So my gas stove is bad, but here's a question: what about my gas heater that heats my home. Those things just light fire using gas and then blow air across it to warm the house. Wouldn't this be worse than the stove?
No, because your furnace should be venting its exhaust outside. There's a heat exchanger that draws interior air through the furnace, taking heat from the combustion but the exhaust and your home's interior air do not mix!
Edit: I should qualify the above. A gas furnace is less bad for your health than a gas stove, because a gas stove is leaving a lot of combustion byproducts in the home's air while a gas furnace shouldn't. There's still a case to be made that anything burning fossils fuels is probably not healthy and isn't good for the environment to boot.
Gas and oil furnaces have the burning air and the indoor air strictly separated to prevent carbon monoxide poisoning. If you want a deep dive into how it works so you know you're safe - provided you've had it inspected and serviced recently - here's a Technology Connections video.
If you're taking an actual furnace and not some crazy contraption, those are made so the exhaust goes outside, and fresh air is heated (it's not mixed with exhaust) and then pushed into the ducts.
That's not how those work. All of the exhaust gasses get vented outside.
The gas that heats the air and the air that's heated do not mix, Technology Connections has a video on this topic where he shows how a gas fired furnace works
The fumes are vented to outside unless your installation is bad or broken
Did anyone expect then to be impartial or a reliable source of health information?