I measured the pollution from my gas stove

https://www.distilled.earth/p/i-measured-the-pollution-from-my

by jseliger • 4 years ago

174 206 4 years ago

Interesting. We have a gas stove and a gas furnace. Furnace was changed a few years back and coincides with worse asthma symptoms for both me and my youngest son.

Anyone have any air quality sensor recommendations? Preferably one that i can easily extract data from for analysis.

danans11• 4 years ago

Anyone have any air quality sensor recommendations?

Search the HN archive. There are lots of debates and discussions about air quality sensors, especially around the time of the West Coast US fires.

But from right now, every time you turn on your gas stove or oven, open a window and set your stove extractor fan to maximum, even if it briefly makes your house cold.

virtual_void3• 4 years ago

Thanks. Will take your advice on both counts!

scottlamb• 4 years ago

I don't recall any NO2 sensor recommendations in particular, and that wouldn't have been a focus during the fires. In general though folks here discussed AirGradient kits. https://www.airgradient.com/open-airgradient/kits/ I bought a stack of them, and I recommend them. The Pro kit at least has extra I2C module spots on the board (one for 3V3 modules, one for 5V modules). They sell a SGP41 module for VOC, and (I didn't know this until I looked at the spec sheet [1] just now) it also supports NO2. The output's apparently an "index" rather than calibrated physical units that you could compare to the threshold/graph in the post though.

(btw: iiuc the "special" thing about the SGP41 module sold by AirGradient as opposed to some Alibaba vendor is that the AirGradient one doesn't come with surface-mounted terminating resistors installed. If you buy one from somewhere else and want to plug it into the AirGradient board, you need to desolder those because the AirGradient's I2C bus is already terminated elsewhere.)

I have an older SGP30. Less luck there; it does VOC and CO2, no NO2.

[1] https://sensirion.com/media/documents/5FE8673C/61E96F50/Sens...

anamexis• 4 years ago

Depending on your inclination for some DIY, AirGradient makes great kits. Open source and easy to use however you want.

https://www.airgradient.com/open-airgradient/kits/

koolba• 4 years ago

Barring a completely incorrect install, the exhaust of the furnace should be completely vent out of your home. The indoor air is warmed by passing against a heat exchanger.

If you’re having issues with air quality have your humidity levels checked. If it’s too low, a furnace attached humidifier will solve that by adding humidity to the treated air.

RHSeeger• 4 years ago

We have a fairly new forced hot air heating system, and it has a humidifier in-line. It's amazing. You don't really notice it so much until you don't have it. When I'm in a house with forced hot air that doesn't have it, I find it painful. I was at a hotel in DC a while back that had the air on all evening, and my eyes hurt fiercely, dry due to the air. I don't get much of that at home (I'd get none, but... my eyes are broken enough that they're constantly dry to start with).

DoingIsLearning• 4 years ago

Furnace was changed a few years back and coincides with worse asthma symptoms for both me and my youngest son.

As others have said, if correctly installed you should not have any furnace exhaust indoors.

You should _always_ have at least a Carbon Monoxide alarm (CO) installed in the furnace room. If there is no monoxide leak it's unlikely that other particulates are escaping. The CO alarm should be installed in your furnace room irrespective of whatever sensor analytics you would like to add for your investigate.

lukev7• 4 years ago

Counterpoint: I also measured the pollution from my gas stove (using the same meter the author is, from the look of the graph) and it was well within acceptable parameters. And I don't even have a vent above it.

I bought a meter and started monitoring after reading an article similar to this one.

My next stove will probably be induction, but just be aware that not ALL gas stoves are problematic if set up correctly and burning cleanly.

Definitely get a meter to make sure, though.

Edit: since lots of people asked, I got a uHoo sensor from Amazon. It measures basically everything and cost $300.

ahelwer• 4 years ago

How much did you pay for the meter? Last time I looked into this measurements for various metrics were basically useless (unless you're only looking at relative, not absolute numbers) unless you spent at least a few hundred bucks and occasionally calibrated it.

asveikau5• 4 years ago

I think what I've heard before is that this needs regular monitoring, which most households will not do. Stuff can break in your stove and oven and you might not know.

RetpolineDrama• 4 years ago

Stuff can break in your stove and oven and you might not know.

I'd argue >99.9% of people would have no clue if the stove was otherwise functioning normally

diziet• 4 years ago

What specific meter did you use? I want to try it myself.

wcoenen• 4 years ago

I bought a meter and started monitoring after reading an article similar to this one.

Which meter? (I'm asking because I have a bad experience with a device from Aliexpress that turned out to produce fake air quality measurements. Though it did not claim to measure the NO2 pollution which the article talks about.)

edit: the uHoo seems to be an expensive device that promises to measure a bunch of stuff, but it cannot be calibrated. I would not trust it.

SoftTalker• 4 years ago

A good rough indicator is that the flame on a gas burner should be pure blue. If you see yellow tips, or a yellow flame, it's not getting enough oxygen for complete combustion.

kragen5• 4 years ago

proper combustion will probably increase your nitrogen dioxide levels, not decrease them; if you have yellow diffusion tips you are getting unburned hydrocarbons and carbon monoxide which will tend to reduce any nitrogen dioxide present

the carbon monoxide can kill you pretty fucking dead tho

halfnormalform• 4 years ago

If you use an ultrasonic humidifier with a demineralization cartridge, it will turn your burners bright orange due to the sodium added to the air. It's not dangerous, but very disconcerting until you know what's up.

jeffbee5• 4 years ago

I think the big issue here is that renters do not get to pick and choose their appliances, so like other types of indoor health hazards this needs top-down regulation to make landlords replace gas with electric.

s17n• 4 years ago

Dear god please no, electric stoves are awful and idgaf about my lungs.

0x457• 4 years ago

Well: https://thehill.com/changing-america/sustainability/energy/3...

However, no politician will ever try to make landlords and homeowners angry by forcing retrofit, whatever they do it will only apply to new properties. I doubt there is anything other than government forcing them will make my landlord install new induction stove or solar panels, and may landlord is actually nice...

totoglazer2• 4 years ago

Also have a uHoo. Kind of hate the UI, but it seems like a decent sensor.

While my CO2 spikes during cooking on gas, fortunately NO2 remains low. 5-15 ppb range. My gas furnace is in the basement, several floors away from my apartment.

miguelazo4• 4 years ago

$300?! That's half-way to a decent induction range on sale.

yamtaddle4• 4 years ago

Has there been a huge price drop? We bought a range about a year ago and the cheapest induction ranges were still around $1,800 on sale. Gas could be had for like $350, entry-level. And has a robust used market, which is lacking for induction (which isn't necessarily the tech's fault—it is fairly new)

lukev7• 4 years ago

That's true, but it's also valuable for analyzing air quality for lots of other things (including Covid safety using CO2 as a proxy.) I use it at home and also bring it to the office occasionally to make sure things are reasonable there.

nomel3• 4 years ago

USD? Mid range where I am is over $1k USD, from a big box store. Amazon shows similar results. Are you thinking a little countertop unit?

lotsofpulp• 4 years ago

The cheapest induction range at Costco is $1,150. I would not bother with anything that is so low quality so as to be able to be sold at half of Costco’s cheapest model.

Also, hiring an electrician to install a power outlet for the induction stovetop could be at least $500, if not $1,000+.

nomel3• 4 years ago

And I don't even have a vent above it.

Where I am, this is illegal!

I unintentionally bought a "smart" gas range. I hooked it up to turn on my oven fan any time the burners are on, and for some minutes after they're off. I t think all ovens should have this feature, built in.

jjeaff2• 4 years ago

Do you also have a vent that goes outside? Because an oven fan means little if you don't have external exhaust.

danans11• 4 years ago

but just be aware that not ALL gas stoves are problematic if set up correctly and burning cleanly.

There is no such thing as a clean burning gas stove. Even when not in use, they leak methane, and the majority of methane they leak is when they are not in use.

All gas stoves and ovens, regardless of cost or age, put levels of pollutants into indoor air that are greater than what is safe [1]. A $15k Wolf range is no better than a $1500 range.

The solutions are to either introduce a lot of ventilation, or switch to non combustion cooking.

1. https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.1c04707

hedora• 4 years ago

However, there is such a thing as an even dirtier burning gas stove. For instance, put a natural gas regulator on a propane supplied burner, or vice versa.

Also, even a properly tuned range will emit all sorts of things that are much worse than methane.

lukev7• 4 years ago

Methane (at the volumes we're taking about) does not have significant health effects; the paper you link speaks mostly about its effect as a greenhouse gas.

And I'm measuring my NO2 and it's within safe levels. So should I believe you or my own lying eyes?

Granted, a lot of this may be due to other effects (e.g, ventilation) and I agree my next stovetop won't be gas.

But clearly some setups are less problematic than others and it's not the case that everyone is poisoning themselves unless they go buy an electric tomorrow.

kragen5• 4 years ago

though any gas other than air will kill you at a high enough dose, methane is pretty extremely safe; wikipedia claims the major risk if you avoid blowing yourself up is that it can displace air and thus oxygen

StillBored3• 4 years ago

That article claims the stove is leaking ~1% of its burned fuel. Which seems really unlikely, and deeper in they seem to claim its largely from the ignition cycle. Which is still _really_ hard to believe even on my old stove which generally takes a few arc's before there is enough gas near the spark igniter to catch.

Even if you assume that 100% of the gas loss in the time between when I turn it on, and it goes whoosh and burns all that fuel is wasted (say up to a full second) I would then have to leave the stove on for less than 100 seconds at full blast or double that if I turn the flow down by 1/2 for that gas to equal 1% of the gas used during the cycle.

Anyway, compared with the volume of methane in human flatulence, I would be worried more about how good the bathroom ventilation is than how much of unburnt methane manages to avoid being burned and also sucked out the fume hood.

So, I too am skeptical about these home air sensors, I have one of the egg ones, that claims to measure PPM (CO2/etc). Yet it was spiking every morning, and at first I thought it was my wife putting on perfume, but it happens even when she isn't home in the morning... After watching it and what happens in my house, I suspect its largely measuring the humidity in the air from the shower.

Doing nothing but turning the shower on causes it to spike a few mins later and then gradually go down for the rest of the day. I guess I didn't think that the majority of the PPM "pollution" in my house is actually just water droplets. Thats a lot different than all the fly-ash or whatever they want you to think is the problem. (edit: just to be clear, I'm not denying indoor pollution, only that the sensor I have, while marketed as such, isn't actually measuring pollution if most of what its measuring is mist from the showerhead).

maxerickson2• 4 years ago

How does a study that isolates the air around the stove in order to measure the emissions translate into the levels of pollutants that end up in the average home with a stove?

I should definitely fix my vent hood though.

midoridensha7• 4 years ago

There is no such thing as a clean burning gas stove. Even when not in use, they leak methane, and the majority of methane they leak is when they are not in use.

How exactly does a gas stove leak methane (or anything else) when it's turned off, so there's no gas flowing?

_benedict5• 4 years ago

NO2 is not easily measured accurately with inexpensive sensors like the uHoo. The US government tests a number of sensors and generally finds them lacking - my limited research suggests NO2 in consumer equipment is generally estimated mathematically based on correlations with other more easily measured pollutants, meaning it’s just not measuring NO2 at all.

The uHoo was tested some time ago and found to not be that great, but not for NO2 (which wasn’t tested)

http://www.aqmd.gov/aq-spec/sensordetail/uhoo

Indeed, as far as I can tell uHoo’s own website does not list an NO2 sensor as part of the equipment, despite listing it as a pollutant it reports:

https://getuhoo.com/blog/business/performance-precision-and-...

lukev7• 4 years ago

This is the same sensor used by others who have reported high NO2 levels correlated with their gas stove burning, though, so it's got to be measuring something relevant.

sliken3• 4 years ago

My house has a large air volume, the 2nd floor is half as big as the first, so half the first floor has 20 foot ceilings. I don't monitor NO2, but do monitor PM2.5 and CO2. I see no difference in PM2.5, but do see my baseline of 550-650 CO2 bump to 1500 with significant gas stove usage. The CO2 spreads quickly, my basement and bedroom sensors follow the 1st floor pretty quickly.

If people want a air quality sensor that can upload data to the cloud (by default) or your local graphana, including source for an exporter, I'd check out airthings, their units are basically turnkey and can, but don't require) use a cloud.

I'm definitely shopping for an induction stove soon.

ed25519FUUU2• 4 years ago

Do you use an exhaust hood vent when cooking? How long until the CO2 dissipates?

ahaucnx• 4 years ago

This articles is very misleading and makes conclusions based on a low cost sensor that in most cases will give you very wrong absolute readings. I would not trust the results at all. Unfortuntaley all too often, people do air quality measurements and just blindly believe what they see on the display as true figures.

It appears that the monitor in this article is a uHoo meter that can also measure NO2. The uHoo uses the SGX Sensortech MICS-2714 as NO2 sensors. It is a low cost metal oxide sensor and has a couple of significant issues. It is extremely suspectible to interfering gases like CO, Ethanol, Hydrogen, Amonia [1] and also gives highly different results based on humidity and temperature [2]. So just normal temperature and humidity fluctualtions will give greatly different results.

Like other TVOC sensors, often the measurements correlate somehow with the gases but the absolute measurements are often by magnitudes wrong. If absolute measurements -as highlighted in the article- are important than the sensor needs to be calibrated exactly for this environment. This calibration requirement is even mentioned in the official specs [2]:

IS CALIBRATION NEEDED, AND HOW OFTEN? It depends on the application, and on the required precision. Several factors tend to reduce the measurement accuracy e.g. production dispersion on base resistance (Ro) and sensitivity (S), temperature, humidity, the presence of interfering gases, ageing of the sensor, and on-time. Calibration is needed when the required accuracy cannot be obtained due to one or more of the factors listed above. This is the case for most applications where an absolute gas measurement is needed.

This problem with absolute measurements on MOX sensors (most TVOC sensors) has been recognised by the large sensors manufacturers like Sensirion and Bosch and the newer generation of these sensors do NOT provide absolute measurements anymore but an INDEX which defines if air quality is improving or getting worse.

In our open source air quality kits [3], we offer the Sensirion SGP41 as an option which is a much more modern sensor and offers an Index for TVOC and NOx. It still suffers from some of above issues like cross-interference of other gases but at least it does not give false absolute values. It can be very useful for detecting spikes but as outlined above the results need to be really understood with the knowledge of the limitations of these sensors in mind.

[1] https://www.sgxsensortech.com/content/uploads/2014/08/0278_D...

[2] https://www.sgxsensortech.com/content/uploads/2014/08/AN2-%E...

[3] https://www.airgradient.com/open-airgradient/kits/

byyll• 4 years ago

I've read a few reviews of the uHoo saying they both 2 and put them in the same room and ending up with vastly different readings. I am not sure it's accurate.

alfor5• 4 years ago

The site is dedicated to fighting fossil fuels as if there were pure evil.

Does not seems like a place for balanced views.

giraffe_lady• 4 years ago

They may not be "pure evil" but they are clearly extremely bad. What does a balanced view of that look like for you?

lazide3• 4 years ago

With a decent hood, they are not clearly bad.

ethanbond2• 4 years ago

The obvious outcome of the "both sides"-ism of late: We need to give equal airtime to the Inhaling Ignited Hydrocarbons Is Okay Actually group.

Sources don't matter, depth of analysis doesn't matter, expert consensus doesn't matter, basic risk mitigation principles don't matter, what matters is that wherever a view is shared, all other views must be shared at equal volume and with equal credence.

lukev7• 4 years ago

Gas stoves (like everything else) have pros and cons. CO2 emissions are certainly a major con, which is why my next stove will be an induction. I got a gas ten years ago because induction cooktops were not widely available and the cook quality of gas is far higher than non-induction electric, and I cook a lot and really need quality tools.

Facts matter, and it doesn't do anyone any good to paint something as "extremely bad" without balancing all relevant facts. Acknowledging that gas stoves are often (but not always) bad for indoor air quality is part of that.

alfor5• 4 years ago

In this article I understand the concern about NOx, good ventilation, a detector might be a good idea. A quick look at the site show how much it is targeting at fighting all fossil fuels. But fossil fuels are the backbone of our civilisation. Yes we need to transition, and it’s happening, but if you were to cut them off completely I think that more that half of the world population would die in the next 12 months. So let’s be careful with that transition, we can easily kill more people by raising the cost of fuel than saving future people from hypothetical climate catastrophes or from NOx.

Whatever what the activists and government does, the pricing alone is driving out all fossil fuels. Solar, wind and batteries are already cheaper than the other alternatives. It’s just a question of a few years.

serverholic• 4 years ago

Please, please enlighten us with your take on what a balanced view means here.

virtual_void3• 4 years ago

He cites his sources (which seem reasonable), is making measurements and has written up objective results it seems.

Perhaps there are other articles less objective on that site but it doesn’t seem like this article should be dismissed out of hand.

alfor5• 4 years ago

We always use heuristics to assess if a source is credible.

Otherwise we have to do our own research, collect our own data. There is no other way around if there is no trust.

It’s very easy for some information to be true, but also excluding all the bits that don’t fit the author bias.

I think a source that is that biasied should be called out.

hristov• 4 years ago

Balance does not imply truth. Sometimes truthful views are imbalanced because the truth is imbalanced.

pessimizer• 4 years ago

You're never going to be convinced of anything if you'll only accept arguments from people who do not believe them.

dang2• 4 years ago

(We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34316898)

alfor5• 4 years ago

This thread got remove from the main discussion.

Fell like Twitter before the cleanup here.

ladberg• 4 years ago

I've had similarly bad results with CO2, PM2.5, and PM10 concentrations when I use my gas stove.

If anyone is curious I have a Qingping Air Monitor Lite which I love. It's probably sucking up my data but I don't mind too much because it has a great physical interface, natively connects to HomeKit so I can see the current status and trigger events when levels get too high, and has a decent app that shows charts over time.

It's nice to be able to remotely see that particulate levels are rising and turn on my air filter for a bit so everything's back to normal by the time I get home.

danans11• 4 years ago

Indoor air pollution from gas combustion appliances can actually be worse in newer homes because they are so much less leaky (and by consequence more efficient) than older homes.

New building codes call for mechanical ventilation, but not nearly enough to compensate for the byproducts of combustion appliances or other sources of indoor air pollution.

The best solution (an airtight house with 24/7 whole house mechanical ventilation with heat/humidity recovery) is sadly still the stuff of high end green homes.

If you cook with a gas stove, you should open windows and run your extractor fan at max when cooking.

aclatuts• 4 years ago

Some higher end homes have a make up air system for venting a stove top in air tight houses, but it is so expensive.

ed25519FUUU2• 4 years ago

Are you describing something different than the overhead fan equipped above the gas range in most new homes?

thinkcontext2• 4 years ago

I believe you are referring to a Heat or Energy Recovery Ventilator (HRV or ERV). In the absence of a range hood they would be better than nothing. But they aren't designed for the large volume of air changes that cooking requires.

bgentry2• 4 years ago

I have a new house (built in 2020) and it did come with an inefficient, underpowered mechanical ventilation intake that just pulled outside air directly into the home. Given the house is in Austin, Texas where the weather outside rarely matches the conditions inside, this results in a lot of cooling or heating loss, as well as losing the humidity conditioning of the indoor air. It's no wonder that I regularly hear locals advising folks to simply turn off the mechanical ventilator; bringing in hot, humid summer air or cold, dry winter air is not good, even if the fresh air is.

That's why shortly after moving in, I had the garbage ventilator replaced with an ERV. Based on my research I selected a Renewaire EV-Premium L, a variable speed unit which does up to 280 CFM. That's a ton of fresh air, even for a 4300 sqft house. But importantly it preserves some of the temperature and humidity when exchanging the air, so it's a lot more efficient than a plain mechanical ventilator.

I have it wired into my Ecobee thermostat. It runs at its configurable low speed 24/7, and the Ecobee puts it in boost mode (full output) for 10-15 minutes per hour.

This setup did cost some money of course, but the $2000 cost was pretty minor in the context of a new home. With this setup, we never see a buildup of CO2, VOCs, etc indoors. Definitely worth it when we're both working from home and spending most of our time there. And although we have a gas cooktop, I never see any indoor air quality issues so long as we're running the hood while cooking.

I hope indoor air quality becomes a bigger priority for homes, offices, and schools. The building codes in this area haven't yet caught up to the need for improved ventilation to account for how much better sealed up modern buildings are.

alliao5• 4 years ago

is it humid where you are? I'd love to have ERV but I'm in Auckland, NZ where dew point is bit of an issue and house sized dehumidifier isn't common as weather's temperate and heatpump only really caught on in the last decade or so. central air not common.

alliao5• 4 years ago

i've really come full circle on the whole housing thing. At first I hated leaky old buildings, looked into passivehaus standard etc, wanting to minimising all air leakage. then I read about the NYC's oversized steam powered heater that allowed you to open windows during winter to achieve proper air change per hour during Spanish flu.

Later on I looked into ERV systems for ventilation, which threw me down path of looking at dew point as when introducing a lot of outside air, humidity becomes an issue. now I'm convinced plenty of older buildings actually considered a lot of these things, I saw many cottages in NZ angled properly to receive the ideal amount of solar gains in different seasons which naturally ventilated and are pleasing to be in. very rare, but they do exist, and as result only a very small heatpump is required to minimally push the comfort envelope one way or another.

I guess what I am saying is don't fight the nature if you can, and architecture it properly. failing that, airtight + mechanical ventilation is going to be expensive and probably impossible to hit good air quality (6ACH+)...

danans11• 4 years ago

then I read about the NYC's oversized steam powered heater that allowed you to open windows during winter to achieve proper air change per hour during Spanish flu.
I guess what I am saying is don't fight the nature if you can, and architecture it properly.

Oversized steam heaters are exactly fighting nature, are they not? Really, every building system is a fight against nature. The idea is to exploit properties of materials and the forces of nature when you can to get closer to whatever your chosen optimum is without having to fight nature so hard.

It's not even that hard build to near PassivHaus standards for airtightness these days with regular materials (I did it). It does take an intention to focus on airtightness, which most production builders don't have.

failing that, airtight + mechanical ventilation is going to be expensive and probably impossible to hit good air quality (6ACH+)...

3ACH is plenty for good indoor air quality. I got close to that once with a whole house ventilating fan that cost $300. HRV/ERV are more expensive, but they also do heat recovery and air filtration, and provide consistent air quality everywhere.

Fauntleroy• 4 years ago

Which sensors detect NO2? I have a CO2 and PM2.5 sensor, but I'm finding it hard to come up with anything that mentions NO2.

a_t48• 4 years ago

It's a bit pricey, but some Dyson fans can measure NO2.

totoglazer2• 4 years ago

The uHoo the author and another commenter here mentioned does.

CorrectHorseBat• 4 years ago

Modern gas boilers here (furnaces aren't very popular, I assume from a pollution point there's no difference) have external intake and exhaust. Would those still give indoor pollution?

lazide3• 4 years ago

Any furnace, boiler, etc. which allows any exhaust gas to mix with indoor air is a major risk of Carbon Monoxide poisoning. Which does sometimes happen.

If it's functioning correctly, exhaust gas and indoor air do not directly contact each other at all, they both go on opposite sides of a heat exchanger.

nrclark• 4 years ago

In the US, furnaces are required to be in a closet and have a carbon monoxide shutoff. A furnace will disable itself if local CO levels get above some threshold. So if your furnace's exhaust is working correctly, it shouldn't have much effect on airborne pollution in your house. And if your exhaust -isn't- working, then your furnace will shut itself off.

I don't know the rules around gas boilers, but I'd expect that they're probably the same.

Gas stoves are very different from an air pollution perspective. Kitchens are high-traffic areas in a lot of houses, and stoves are usually out in the open from an airflow perspective. Lots of houses don't have an exhaust hood that vents to the outside. And lots of cooks aren't in the habit of turning on their exhaust fans unless something has burned.

DrFunke2• 4 years ago

This was a concern of mine, so I purchased an induction stove. Also took it one step further by moving my entire kitchen to a covered outdoor patio. It seemed silly to be breathing oil particles for hours every time I cook chicken. Very grateful for my hypochondriac mother. She taught me to never not stop think about all the ways we can get cancer.

postalrat• 4 years ago

Is always thinking about getting cancer a way to get cancer?

DrFunke2• 4 years ago

Thanks, I'll add that to the list.

jojobas• 4 years ago

It always bugged me that you can just burn something inside, unless there's a proper, exhaust-to-the-outside rangehood. I guess the only worse thing is the modern world are Japanese exhaust-to-room oil heaters.

chadlavi• 4 years ago

My wife can be in another room and not even know I've turned on the stove/oven, and she starts to cough when I start cooking. (we rent, don't get at me about replacing)

I try to use our portable induction burner whenever I can now, even though we pay for electricity but we don't pay for gas.

I was extremely skeptical and snooty about the potential of induction cooktops when it was first floated, but if I owned a home I would definitely prefer an induction stovetop to a gas one now. Induction is a lot faster and more responsive than gas, in my experience. Just wish there were induction stovetops that has real knobs and weren't so easily cracked or scraped.

barney54• 4 years ago

I don't understand the correlation between air quality and asthma. In the United States, asthma rates are way up. This article blames at least part of the increase on air pollution, specifically nitrogen dioxide. But nitrogen dioxide concentrations in the United States are down by 54% since 1990 alone. https://gispub.epa.gov/air/trendsreport/2021/#air_trends It isn't outdoor air pollution that's driving the increase in asthma because outdoor air quality is improving (and has been improving for over 50 years in the United States.

I would imagine that today's natural gas stoves are cleaner than in the past, natural gas appliance don't seem to be driving the increase in asthma either.

My point is that the data isn't clear what is driving the increase in asthma.

gedy• 4 years ago

From the increase in allergies, I wonder if life is too clean now basically.

conqueso• 4 years ago

There's a well established theory called the "Hygiene Hypothesis" that says exactly this - https://www.fda.gov/vaccines-blood-biologics/consumers-biolo...

ericbarrett• 4 years ago

You raise a great point about air quality improvements. However, nitrogen dioxide, the irritant discussed in the article, is created with any hot-enough combustion process, since it's a reaction of the nitrogen and oxygen already in the air. Quality of fuel should have little to do with it.

carlivar• 4 years ago

C-sections correlate to asthma. Compare c-section rates to asthma rates.

ntimcan• 4 years ago

Breastfeeding rates correlate to asthma. Compare rates of breast feeding to asthma rates.

musicale• 4 years ago

Definitely open the windows and turn the hood fan on before you turn the stove on (preferably one that actually vents outside since inside ones are useless[1,2]) and leave it on until after you turn the stove off.

[1] https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2020/5/7/21247602...

[1] https://www.cbc.ca/news/science/gas-stoves-air-pollution-1.6...

bob10292• 4 years ago

Induction really is better in a lot of important ways (especially if you value your time and cook every day). The only thing I hate to cook on it is wok-style or anything where the pan has to move quickly with fine temperature control. Most of the time, I can blast the rice on max and slide the pan around to similar effect, but it's not ideal and it can "run away" very quickly if food gets stuck.

Aside from the few caveats, I can't imagine going without. Bringing water or oil to temperature is easily 3-5x faster on my 5kW element. Waiting for a semi-direct flame to heat your pot is so primitive by comparison.

Then, there is the cleaning aspect. My induction cooktop takes 15 seconds to wipe down. My last gas range had some parts go through dishwasher, with others getting toothbrush-in-sink treatment. Unless you like cooking on a dirty range, this adds up fast.

ajross2• 4 years ago

Also safety: you can boil over a pot, pick it up, and just wipe the spilled gunk off the stove and the bottom of the pot with your other hand using nothing more than a rag.

That's not to say you can't get an induction pan searing hot (small pans can actually get much hotter than ones over gas), but you have to work at it. Generally the pan is no hotter than its contents.

bob10292• 4 years ago

The safety has some fun and practical side effects.

I put a paper towel between my cast iron deep fryer and my cooktop to keep it from leaving those weird oily rings behind.

That said... the ridiculous power does have 1 downside relative to safety. If you are heating oil on an induction cooktop, please set a contingency timer somewhere to remind you to turn it off. In the amount of time it takes a gas range to get oil dangerously-smoking, induction has already ignited it and its been a raging inferno for at least 2 minutes.

Quiza12• 4 years ago

Agree with it all. Although I'll add that I miss charring vegies over the naked flame, as well.

ryantgtg• 4 years ago

Do you ever need to heat tortillas? We put those directly on our gas range, and are wondering what the induction solution is.

beebmam• 4 years ago

Natural gas is absurdly cheap in most parts of the US. It's not going to change anytime soon here, simply due to these economic reasons.

How do I go about testing my gas stove for dangerous emissions?

none_to_remain• 4 years ago

I will continue cooking with gas and simply accept this risk

screye• 4 years ago

I would be all for moving off gas-stoves, but can we acknowledge that the alternatives really suck if you like cooking ? I want to be part of the solution, so here are few things that alternatives need to figure out before I move off gas:

Easy problems:

1. No more cycling-induction/electric stoves. I do not want my food alternating between burning & sitting around.

2. A power setting where low-to-medium aren't only kind of burning your food.

3. Off means off. I don't want my food cooking for 5 more minutes after I turn the stove off.

4. Kitchen ranges having high quality broilers to make up for the lack of a charring mechanism on alternative ranges.

Hard problems:

1. Being able to change the shape of the surface element to trace the shape of the pan. I cook with a wok, and all non-gas-ranges only heat the very center. If I can use a wok to fix the shape of the coil into a bowl, then I can ensure even heating even in a wok. (It's a spring coil, the shape should be mechanically adjustable).

2. Can the good ones be competitive on prices with top gas ranges ?

I really dislike electric stoves, they have the worst of all worlds. Induction stoves: I could live with, but the good ones are too expensive to be a reasonable alternative for most people. There are additional good reasons to switch as seen from this[1] video.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hX2aZUav-54

______________

Final caveat for tropical countries. Here, windows are always open. Houses often lack a gas connection, and instead have a gas-cylinder supplied to the house. So the pollution & removal-of-gas benefits do not apply. The cooking culture often relies on instantaneous fire to give certain staple flavors. They rely on curved pot shapes for cooking techniques & and the price differentials hurt a lot more when you're a poor country.

Gas stoves sound a lot less evil in these tropical circumstances and this is the region where a majority of the world's population lives.

alliao5• 4 years ago

totally, given good sensor and control it's achievable.

I've seen commercial grade equipment for wok (shaped) and even claypot (they really need to make a 220v one for where I am https://www.siroca.co.jp/product/kamadosandenki/ )

hmm a bed of magnets to hug the bottom of pans with flexible induction coils beneath would work, and to clean just pop the magnetic layer into dishwasher

time for a kickstarter?

charlie02• 4 years ago

I'm not surprised about the gas stove pollution, but am surprised at how ineffective kitchen fans are. I got an air purifier with a sensor on it. It's about 8 feet away from the kitchen and it always goes on a few minutes if I switch any of the burners to a high setting. This happens even when I have the stove fan setting on high. These are suppose to suck the bad air out, but don't seem to do a good job at it.

alar443• 4 years ago

Is it actually vented outside? Every place I've had it just recirculates through the hood.

charlie02• 4 years ago

Yes, it has a large pipe going up through the ceiling.

dang2• 4 years ago

Related ongoing thread:

U.S. safety agency to consider ban on gas stoves amid health fears - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34310218 - Jan 2023 (114 comments)

Also related:

Gas stoves are more hazardous than we’ve been led to believe (2020) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31630946 - June 2022 (122 comments)

What a gas stove ban means for restaurants - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31603850 - June 2022 (592 comments)

My best estimate is gas stoves decrease life expectancy by 53 days on average - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30275953 - Feb 2022 (117 comments)

How bad is my gas stove? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29935939 - Jan 2022 (520 comments)

Cities try to phase out gas stoves but cooks are pushing back - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27874912 - July 2021 (481 comments)

Experts are sounding the alarm about the hidden dangers of gas stoves - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25332332 - Dec 2020 (343 comments)

globalreset• 4 years ago

Absent real life threats, first-world people increasingly busy themselves with inventing surrogate problems.

Everywhere Nazis are trying to overthrow democracy, climate change is going to destroy us all in the next 5 years, viruses go rampage and we need to lock everyone up, now your gas stove is trying to kill you.

While in reality western world has never been so safe and prosperous.

alar443• 4 years ago

For real. This is an absolute non issue, not even in comparison to anything else. There are tradeoffs for being a human. We need heat to cook. A few ppb in your home of whatever isn't shit compared to, idk, walking next to a fucking road or being in a city. Electric just offloads it to coal plants which is likely worse.

Good grief.

alliao5• 4 years ago

don't know if you've been to Japan or followed any Japanese product, the idea of improvement is possible everywhere and anywhere is a compounding and thus powerful concept. Every year a journey between two cities are shortened by 1% really adds up. I don't see anything wrong with improvements in general, you may be willing to take the risk, but it doesn't hurt that there's some other human beings thinking/working on this issue.

kragen5• 4 years ago

summary to circumvent the clickbait headline: author measured 291 ppb nitrogen dioxide from his gas stove and gas furnace, and gas stoves increase the risk of childhood asthma by 42% (relative to an unspecified baseline but I bet it doesn't include cooking with wood or coal) due to the nitrogen dioxide exposure

article does not mention particulates produced by food being cooked

legitster• 4 years ago

In other words, it may be possible to build a home with perfectly vented gas appliances, and there may be a safe level of NO2, but in the real world—in the homes that we all actually live in—this is probably the rare exception.

This is a rather frustratingly blithe conclusion. Should we ban electricity in homes because they can be wired wrong?

I'm not entirely sold on the health risks as presented, but that the author doesn't seem interested in seriously exploring any of the obvious solutions to this (seemingly) fixable problem makes this entire analysis feel rather lazy.

542458• 4 years ago

Electricity is a funny comparison to pick. True, we didn’t ban electricity, but we did (effectively) ban certain “types” of particularly dangerous in-home electricity, like knob-and-tube. And like the cited passage, knob-and-tube can theoretically be perfectly safe (and even has some unique advantages!), but often isn’t safe in real-world scenarios.

Reason077• 4 years ago

Even an electric/induction stove will generate a lot of indoor air pollution if not well ventilated.

In my current London flat (which I'm moving out of soon), nobody uses the fan above the stove because it's super loud and doesn't work properly anyway. Frying pretty much anything in the kitchen will cause my PM2.5 meter, which is upstairs in my bedroom on the other side of the house, to go crazy. Often up into the hundreds of µg/m³.

Good kitchen ventilation is super important, gas stove or otherwise!

binkHN• 4 years ago

I guess I can corroborate a bit. Back around the start of the pandemic, I picked up a few Awair devices (back when they were reasonably priced and weren’t used for crypto purposes) and put them around the house. Whenever we cooked with our gas cooktop, TVOCs skyrocketed and the HVAC system dispersed this throughout the house.

StanislavPetrov• 4 years ago

I'm fine with the government making people aware of the risks, but not with banning gas stoves. I'm an adult, and if I want to take that risk for myself, that should be up to me to decide. The oft-trotted out argument that "well, when you get sick, the government has to take care of you and you are a burden to society" is nonsense. If sentient adults don't have the right to make their own choices and assess their own risks, because of some amorphous burden to society, then the entire concept of freedom and autonomy is out the window. This is an increasingly more important issue as people who push for "Socialism" strongly believe it should be up to the government to decide what you are allowed to do and should have the power to decide what "acceptable level of risk" adults are able to take on. It is also one that pushes people like myself away from "Socialism", which is unfortunate because I believe in a strong social safety net for those who are unable to support and/or take care of themselves (for whatever reason). But when push comes to shove, I'd rather live in a society without any social safety net whatsoever, where I was free to make my own decisions and take my own risks, than an authoritarian society with a social safety net.

nemo44x2• 4 years ago

Get an electric or induction cooking surface and cook food and you’ll notice any and all air quality sensors reporting pollution if you have a poorly vented stove. The very process of heating oil to high temperatures to sear and brown foods emits all sort of pollutant.

You can live your life by boiling everything on an induction range or you can cook with gas indoors like billions of people have without issue for generations. Stop being weird.

99_002• 4 years ago

Compare pollution while not cooking versus cooking with gas is the opposition of rational thinking.

Probably even running an electric toaster will have an impact, especially if it hasn't been cleaned out (which is likely).

nemo44x2• 4 years ago

It’s the same thinking that creates “studies” where they run an old, faulty burner with no ventilation for 3 hours and compare results with running a new induction stovetop and marvel and how much better induction is for you.

There’s a combined effort to demonize gas ranges by some climate extremists and it has been picked up by some media. They can’t convince people to change (because gas is superior technology) so they cone up with badly designed studies to scare people.

They won’t be happy until you’re eating dehydrated beetles and grasshoppers.

I can’t wait until they tell me to stop using my wood burning (gasp!!) fireplace every day.

asdff• 4 years ago

It gets so hot in my small kitchen while cooking that I end up opening the window anyhow. Too bad these days you have people who don't even open their windows in the summertime due to central AC. I'm sure their air quality is poor just from plastic products that the modern home is filled with (including carpet and furniture) offgassing

99_002• 4 years ago

Unless you are willing to stop cooking, comparing indoor pollution while cooking with a gas stove versus when not cooking with anything is dumb.

Comparing indoor pollution while cooking with a gas stove versus an electric stove makes sense.

Yes, I suspect electric is cleaner than gas, how much cleaner is what's important.

sliken3• 4 years ago

I didn't realize how big a deal the natural gas related pollution was. As in the post I found out my rental wasn't doing what it should. Turns out a hail storm had crushed the hat above the water heater exhaust. Turns out the resulting air quality in the apartment was so bad my wife's hand writing changed. We both don't remember much from that year, but have clear memories from the year before and after.

Luckily we moved out after 8 months and her handwriting returned and our memories got much better.

I strongly recommend monitoring your air quality, ideally with a CO alarm, since it's deadly quickly, and something like the airthings.com which monitors PM2.5, CO2, radon, and VOC.

jacooper• 4 years ago

This story was originally published in January 2022. It has been edited slightly for clarity and to reflect new research.

January 2023 not 2022.

casey2• 4 years ago

Stop with the "stealth" induction ad threads? No, the imperceptible amount of NO2 your gas stove releases is not a reason to waste money.

LatteLazy• 4 years ago

The study he links to is just a correlation study right? It proves nothing beyond the study author's ability to start with an assumption and then do maths.

boredumb• 4 years ago

In case you're wondering why people are suddenly concerned about gas stoves -> https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/us-safety-agency-to-consider-ban...

mattpallissard• 4 years ago

I worked several years in the food service industry in large, indstrial kitchens. Ever since I have been puzzled as to why fume hoods over cook stoves are woefully inadequate. Undersized, under powered, inadequately vented if vented at all.

Even if your stove is burning cleanly it is a luxury to be able to cook on high heat without filling the entire room with smoke.

Not to mention I'd suspect the fumes from the burning oil are probably worse than your clean[ish] burning LNG/propane stove.

askin4it• 4 years ago

If you haven't figured it out: gas stoves are now "bad". By the time the "news" gets here, it's been upscaled to be consumed by 100+ IQs--that's us!

Looks like the cultural elites don't want you enjoying cooking with gas.

They'll have to cancel that expression as well. Now you are cooking with subatomic particles!

quazar• 4 years ago

We were always at war with Gasstovia.

I measured the pollution from my gas stove

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