
Changing your stove from gas to clean electric power is not only better for the environment, but much better for your health. nikamata / iStock / Getty Images Plus
Changing your stove from gas to clean electric power is not only better for the environment, but much better for your health, according to a new study that found gas stoves add pollution that makes indoor air up to two to five times dirtier than outdoor air.
The finding is particularly troubling with so many restaurants closed and people staying home to cook their meals and baking their own bread.
As Grist reported, the study by researchers at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health found that after just one hour of using a gas-fired stove or oven, levels of nitrogen dioxide inside homes reached levels that exceeded national air-quality standards. Nitrogen dioxide is one of the gases that adds to smog and is considered harmful to human health. The study found that the indoor air quality caused by gas-powered furnaces, stoves, and water heaters could increase the likelihood of respiratory and cardiovascular disease and premature death.
"The goal of this report is to provide information to Californians on how pollution from gas-fired appliances affects the air they breathe, and the related health effects," Yifang Zhu, the study's lead researcher, said in a statement. "California's state agencies often focus on greenhouse gas emissions and climate change impacts, but there has been much less focus on how fossil fuel use in household appliances can adversely impact indoor air quality and public health."
A similar review published by the Rocky Mountain Institute in collaboration with the advocacy groups Physicians for Social Responsibility, Mothers Out Front and the Sierra Club targeted gas stoves. It found that pollutants released by gas ranges can have negative health effects, often exacerbating respiratory conditions like asthma, according to a Rocky Mountain Institute press release.
The report's lead author, Brady Seals, said the problem has received little attention even though it's been known for a long time. "Somehow we've gotten accustomed to having a combustion device, often unvented, inside of the home," Seals said, as The Guardian reported.
Slight increases in short-term exposure to nitrogen dioxide can be harmful, increasing asthma risk for children. One study found that children in homes with gas stoves have a 42 percent higher chance of having asthma symptoms. A study from Australia attributed 12 percent of all childhood asthma to the presence of gas stoves, according to The Guardian.
Exposure to nitrogen dioxide also makes chronic obstructive pulmonary disease worse and may be linked to heart problems, diabetes and cancer. Homes with gas stoves can have nitrogen dioxide concentrations that are 50–400 percent higher than homes with electric stoves, according to an article by Brady Seals.
The best solution for health and for the climate, according to Seals' report, is to change to electric stoves. If that's not feasible, individuals with gas stoves should also open windows, cook on their back burners, use an exhaust hood, run an air purifier with a HEPA filter and install a carbon monoxide detector.
As the Natural Resources Defense Council noted, the two studies are especially important now that we know a small increase in long-term exposure to PM2.5 air pollution is linked to higher death rates from COVID-19. The danger is disproportionately high in low-income communities which already deal with the health consequences of toxic air. These same neighborhoods tend to grapple with smaller, overcrowded spaces, poor ventilation, and they are often near highways or industrial pollution. Homes in those neighborhoods also tend to have poorly maintained appliances, increasing the hazards of burning gas indoors.
"Like coronavirus, gas stove pollution may affect lower-income families disproportionately," said Dr. Robert Gould, associate professor at University of California San Francisco School of Medicine, to the Rocky Mountain Institute. "These communities must be prioritized when designing incentives and policies to support transitions to clean electric alternatives."
- Disbanded Air Pollution Panel Finds EPA Standards Don't Protect ... ›
- 7 Science-Backed Health Benefits of Having Plants at Home ... ›
- Household Products Cause as Much Air Pollution as Cars ... ›
A tornado tore through a city north of Birmingham, Alabama, Monday night, killing one person and injuring at least 30.
- Tornadoes and Climate Change: What Does the Science Say ... ›
- Tornadoes Hit Unusually Wide Swaths of U.S., Alarming Climate ... ›
- 23 Dead as Tornado Pummels Lee County, AL in Further Sign ... ›
EcoWatch Daily Newsletter
By David Konisky
On his first day in office President Joe Biden started signing executive orders to reverse Trump administration policies. One sweeping directive calls for stronger action to protect public health and the environment and hold polluters accountable, including those who "disproportionately harm communities of color and low-income communities."
Michael S. Regan, President Biden's nominee to lead the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, grew up near a coal-burning power plant in North Carolina and has pledged to "enact an environmental justice framework that empowers people in all communities." NCDEQ
Trending
By Katherine Kornei
Clear-cutting a forest is relatively easy—just pick a tree and start chopping. But there are benefits to more sophisticated forest management. One technique—which involves repeatedly harvesting smaller trees every 30 or so years but leaving an upper story of larger trees for longer periods (60, 90, or 120 years)—ensures a steady supply of both firewood and construction timber.
A Pattern in the Rings
<p>The <a href="https://www.encyclopedia.com/science/dictionaries-thesauruses-pictures-and-press-releases/coppice-standards-0" target="_blank">coppice-with-standards</a> management practice produces a two-story forest, said <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Bernhard_Muigg" target="_blank">Bernhard Muigg</a>, a dendrochronologist at the University of Freiburg in Germany. "You have an upper story of single trees that are allowed to grow for several understory generations."</p><p>That arrangement imprints a characteristic tree ring pattern in a forest's upper story trees (the "standards"): thick rings indicative of heavy growth, which show up at regular intervals as the surrounding smaller trees are cut down. "The trees are growing faster," said Muigg. "You can really see it with your naked eye."</p><p>Muigg and his collaborators characterized that <a href="https://ltrr.arizona.edu/about/treerings" target="_blank">dendrochronological pattern</a> in 161 oak trees growing in central Germany, one of the few remaining sites in Europe with actively managed coppice-with-standards forests. They found up to nine cycles of heavy growth in the trees, the oldest of which was planted in 1761. The researchers then turned to a historical data set — more than 2,000 oak <a href="https://eos.org/articles/podcast-discovering-europes-history-through-its-timbers" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">timbers from buildings and archaeological sites</a> in Germany and France dating from between 300 and 2015 — to look for a similar pattern.</p>A Gap of 500 Years
<p>The team found wood with the characteristic coppice-with-standards tree ring pattern dating to as early as the 6th century. That was a surprise, Muigg and his colleagues concluded, because the first mention of this forest management practice in historical documents occurred only roughly 500 years later, in the 13th century.</p><p>It's probable that forest management practices were not well documented prior to the High Middle Ages (1000–1250), the researchers suggested. "Forests are mainly mentioned in the context of royal hunting interests or donations," said Muigg. Dendrochronological studies are particularly important because they can reveal information not captured by a sparse historical record, he added.</p><p>These results were <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-78933-8" target="_blank">published in December in <em>Scientific Reports</em></a>.</p><p>"It's nice to see the longevity and the history of coppice-with-standards," said <a href="https://www.teagasc.ie/contact/staff-directory/s/ian-short/" target="_blank">Ian Short</a>, a forestry researcher at Teagasc, the Agriculture and Food Development Authority in Ireland, not involved in the research. This technique is valuable because it promotes conservation and habitat biodiversity, Short said. "In the next 10 or 20 years, I think we'll see more coppice-with-standards coming back into production."</p><p>In the future, Muigg and his collaborators hope to analyze a larger sample of historic timbers to trace how the coppice-with-standards practice spread throughout Europe. It will be interesting to understand where this technique originated and how it propagated, said Muigg, and there are plenty of old pieces of wood waiting to be analyzed. "There [are] tons of dendrochronological data."</p><p><em><a href="mailto:katherine.kornei@gmail.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Katherine Kornei</a> is a freelance science journalist covering Earth and space science. Her bylines frequently appear in Eos, Science, and The New York Times. Katherine holds a Ph.D. in astronomy from the University of California, Los Angeles.</em></p><p><em>This story originally appeared in <a href="https://eos.org/articles/tree-rings-reveal-how-ancient-forests-were-managed" target="_blank">Eos</a></em> <em>and is republished here as part of Covering Climate Now, a global journalism collaboration strengthening coverage of the climate story.</em></p>Earth's ice is melting 57 percent faster than in the 1990s and the world has lost more than 28 trillion tons of ice since 1994, research published Monday in The Cryosphere shows.
By Jewel Fraser
Noreen Nunez lives in a middle-class neighborhood that rises up a hillside in Trinidad's Tunapuna-Piarco region.