I don't have studies to back this claim up directly and I think this is one of those areas that are hard to study because I am assuming it would require recording participants through their lifetime. I do think this will be something that seems obvious once we do look back at it. Here is my line of thinking, apologies it is not well put together and is only a stream of thoughts.
1. We now accept that cooking with wood causes lung disease/cancer. There are studies that show an increased rate of lung issues with women in developing countries due to inhalation of smoke.
2. We are increasingly seeing studies that show inhaling any pollutants is not safe/healthy. I am not fear mongering about it but I do try to be more aware because of this.
3. When I cook in my kitchen I see pm2 and voc measurments spike almost instantly even on measurement devices in a bedroom across the house. This is without having central air on at the time. Our home is 20ish years old and not modern air tight. I once burned some bread in the oven slightly, just the smallest bit of visible smoke came out of the oven, readings spiked and stayed that way for 2hours even with two medium size hepa filters on.
4. I originally came to my conclusion prior to the more recent studies showing indoor natural gas combustion can be an issue. Originall I was more concerned with pollutants that come from the cooking process as it is very hard to ventilate inside a house. When I originally read some of these studies and it appeared that the main issue was burners that were combusting improperly.
So its mostly my own extrapolation based on what has been seen in populations that are exposed to pollutants on a regular basis. I could be overthinking it but it makes sense to me that its best to reduce exposure where possible. I cook outside and it keeps both the smells and the pollutants out of the home. And I also just make my original statement with the functionality of chinese style apartment kitchens. The kitchen is almost like a wetroom in a sense but for smells. It closes off from the rest of the unit and is open to the outside so you can do whatever you want cooking wise and not impact the rest of the unit.
> Around 3 billion people cook using polluting open fires or simple stoves fuelled by kerosene, biomass (wood, animal dung and crop waste) and coal.
> Each year, close to 4 million people die prematurely from illness attributable to household air pollution from inefficient cooking practices using polluting stoves paired with solid fuels and kerosene.
> Household air pollution causes noncommunicable diseases including stroke, ischaemic heart disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and lung cancer.
> Close to half of deaths due to pneumonia among children under 5 years of age are caused by particulate matter (soot) inhaled from household air pollution.
> Our home is 20ish years old and not modern air tight. I once burned some bread in the oven slightly, just the smallest bit of visible smoke came out of the oven, readings spiked and stayed that way for 2hours even with two medium size hepa filters on.
This is the part it seems like most people are not considering. The actual cooking of food, especially if something gets burnt, creates far more "hazardous" vapors than anything else, unless you have malfunctioning equipment. I put it in scare quotes because at the end of the day you have to live your life and if you mainly take care of yourself you'll have a healthy life, even if you burn some toast here and there. Get a great extraction system that can remove > 500 CFM and start it before you cook and run it for 10m after.
> We now accept that cooking with wood causes lung disease/cancer.
It's also completely enjoyable. I cook over open fire probably about 20 times a year and over charcoal many more times. I love cooking with wood and smoking food. The process of it is completely relaxing and enjoyable. It's a risk worth taking. It's also done in the most vented possible area - outdoors.
While I agree that gas stoves put out more VOCs than most people would imagine, the fact that humans have been cooking inside on either wood or gas stoves for many hundreds of years, gives testament to the idea that it can’t really be /that/ detrimental to human health. Sure it would be better without them, but I’d imagine that the health gains would be marginal at best.
People in some countries have been cooking with indoor wood-fired stoves forever, yet we know for sure that these stoves are bad for respiratory health. That doesn't mean all the research is wrong!
I think the big take away is that you should pretty much always turn on the exhaust hood over your stove top when you cook. Doing so removes many of the particles generated by cooking.
The narrative in this article is heavy, but basically if I understand this right..cooking food indoors pollutes the air, and because you are in your kitchen indoors, you're polluting your own living space's air?
Long-term exposure to burning wood for heating and cooking can cause heart and lung disease.[1]
The main air pollutants in wood smoke are particulate matter (PM), carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxides and a range of other organic compounds like formaldehyde, benzene and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons.[1][2]
Using reverse-cycle refrigerant heating (or 'heat pumps') is probably the least worst polluting method of heating. Modern heat pumps can generate (well, move) four times more heat energy than used to drive the pump[3], with the added benefit of moving the source of pollution away from populated areas, or being carbon neutral via window, solar, hydro, geothermal.
Cooking with gas in a kitchen also exposes people to toxic fumes. Burning wood in a wood stove without adequate ventilation exposes people to carcinogens, particulates, and carbon monoxide.
The secondhand smoke discussion is a good topic derailment for marijuana legalization. People will argue about that issue instead of just thinking about ways to consume it without exposing others to harm, such as going outside or any of the non-smoking ways to consume cannabis.
Second-hand smoke is an actual risk, but the studies that WHO cite all consider indoor use. Burning carcinogens should simply never be done without adequate ventilation, whether for food preparation, science experiments, or recreation.
Yeah, home cooking is irrelevant for climate chage, but it is very relevant to people's health. Burning things produces compounds that are bad for you to breathe in, and this is what anti-gas stove articles talk about.
Great comment but a point you missed is that the cooking itself produces the vast majority of the indoor air pollution. It would be reasonable to start using building code to push for real venting of ranges gas AND electric, ... of course once you've done that then the gas indoor air quality issue is moot.
Sure. But the comment you responded to was about the observational study that the author did, not about the research. The question is about what portion of the observed emissions come from cooking per se, as opposed to the gas that is used to do the cooking. I suspect it is a small portion, but it is still an interesting one, and not addressed by the article.
> It doesn't matter if you use induction, radiant, or coil electric, they all produce just as much cooking fumes as gas, and the gas burning has a negligible impact.
> I've confirmed this myself many times over with calibrated sensors.
This really means nothing considering that rigorous studies and metastudies [1] have been performed and the results published that demonstrate the opposite: that gas stoves result in CO and other harmful emissions that electric stoves don't, independent of what is being cooked. Those studies aren't a global conspiracy against gas stoves. If you have similarly published your data and it has been reviewed, please do share it with the world.
> The worst thing about indoor air quality in the US is that the US doesn't require external venting in kitchens by code, and it should
I agree wholeheartedly, but the problem doesn't end there. Most range hoods in single family homes are externally vented, but there is a behavioral problem, which is that most people use the kitchen hood vent as a way to exhaust smoke odors only, usually only in response to a smoke alarm going off. Even worse, after enough rounds of this, many people end up disabling the smoke alarms near their kitchen rather than taking it as an indication that there is an air quality problem.
If the only effect of these studies is to alert people to the necessity of turning on their hood vent and opening a window for makeup air everytime they cook, especially on a gas stove, that's a win.
Cooking of any kind will cause all sorts of pollutants to spike, including PM2.5 and finer particles.
Does elevated NO2 from gas stoves warrant banning them from buildings? They are great for certain methods of cooking, and can be used sparingly.
In a modern building in a modern city, where just baseline NO2 routinely exceeds 30+ ppb (with CO2, PM2.5, formaldehydes, etc. also reaching unsafe levels), an activated carbon air filter alongside a HEPA filter is necessary to compensate for pollutants out- and indoors anyway—and AFAIK a good air filter setup also lowers nitrogen dioxide levels.
Can confirm. I have a high efficiency furnace and gas stove and both vent outside. I also have air quality monitors and filters and cooking does not set them off, so I feel like the claims about indoor pollution are overblown and just being used to try and justify banning gas stoves.
Gas stoves creates high amounts of indoor pollution. The amount of pollution gas stoves creates inside are often illegal outside, the US doesn't have indoor pollution standards.
Children living in homes with gas stoves are 40% more likely to develop asthma for example, according to some studies. Other studies have it closer to 10%.
Anyway, it's clear that indoor gas combustion isn't advisable from a health perspective. Not to mention the climate, burning methane for energy should be phased out, full stop.
You misunderstand. Indoor cooking fires are a major source of indoor air pollution that sickens the families, and particularly the women. Not to mention, many women spend hours per day gathering and hauling wood for their fires.
I've seen several articles recently highlighting problems with gas stoves. Some of these are environmental critiques--gas needs to be retired to deal with climate change. Another critique is around indoor air quality:
"On the air-quality front, at least, the evidence against gas stoves is damning. Although cooking food on any stove produces particulate pollutants, burning gas produces nitrogen dioxide, or NO2,, and sometimes also carbon monoxide, according to Brett Singer, a scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory who studies indoor air quality. Brief exposures to air with high concentrations of NO2 can lead to coughing and wheezing for people with asthma or other respiratory issues, and prolonged exposure to the gas can contribute to the development of those conditions, according to the EPA. Homes with gas stoves can contain approximately 50 to 400 percent higher concentrations of NO2 than homes with electric stoves, often resulting in levels of indoor air pollution that would be illegal outdoors, according to a recent report by the Rocky Mountain Institute, a sustainability think tank. “NO2 is invisible and odorless, which is one of the reasons it’s gone so unnoticed,” Brady Seals, a lead author on the report, says."
1. We now accept that cooking with wood causes lung disease/cancer. There are studies that show an increased rate of lung issues with women in developing countries due to inhalation of smoke.
2. We are increasingly seeing studies that show inhaling any pollutants is not safe/healthy. I am not fear mongering about it but I do try to be more aware because of this.
3. When I cook in my kitchen I see pm2 and voc measurments spike almost instantly even on measurement devices in a bedroom across the house. This is without having central air on at the time. Our home is 20ish years old and not modern air tight. I once burned some bread in the oven slightly, just the smallest bit of visible smoke came out of the oven, readings spiked and stayed that way for 2hours even with two medium size hepa filters on.
4. I originally came to my conclusion prior to the more recent studies showing indoor natural gas combustion can be an issue. Originall I was more concerned with pollutants that come from the cooking process as it is very hard to ventilate inside a house. When I originally read some of these studies and it appeared that the main issue was burners that were combusting improperly.
So its mostly my own extrapolation based on what has been seen in populations that are exposed to pollutants on a regular basis. I could be overthinking it but it makes sense to me that its best to reduce exposure where possible. I cook outside and it keeps both the smells and the pollutants out of the home. And I also just make my original statement with the functionality of chinese style apartment kitchens. The kitchen is almost like a wetroom in a sense but for smells. It closes off from the rest of the unit and is open to the outside so you can do whatever you want cooking wise and not impact the rest of the unit.
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