Gas stoves can pollute the air in our homes and even contribute to climate change. But lots of people enjoy cooking on them. Is there a way to switch away from gas that works well and doesn’t break the bank?
Megan Hall: Welcome to Possibly, where we take on huge problems like the future of our planet and break them down into small questions with unexpected answers. I’m Megan Hall.
When it’s dinner time in my house, I fire up the gas stove, just like 38% of Americans. I know that more and more studies are showing that burning that gas inside our homes can hurt our health and the environment – but what can we do about it?
Here to tell us more are Will Malloy and Nat Hardy.
Will Malloy: Hi Megan!
Nat Hardy: Hello!
Megan Hall: So, why are we talking about getting rid of gas stoves?
Will Malloy: There are basically two reasons – the air quality inside our homes, and the impact on the environment.
Nat Hardy: The environmental stuff is pretty straightforward – gas stoves burn, well, natural gas, mostly methane – a powerful greenhouse gas.
Will Malloy: Burning that natural gas is less of the problem here actually – most of the emissions from gas stoves come from when that methane leaks into the atmosphere without being burned.
Nat Hardy: One study found that, between all the households in the US, stoves leak 500,000 cars’ worth of methane into the atmosphere every year.
Megan Hall: Is that a lot?
Will Malloy: It’s not nothing – but there are over 275 million motor vehicles on the road in the US, so cooking with gas isn’t as big of a deal as other things we do – like driving.
Nat Hardy: But if we want to get rid of fossil fuels, we have to wean ourselves off of natural gas completely.
Will Malloy: There’s another reason you might want to switch sooner rather than later, though – your health.
Stephen Porder: We’re starting to see that indoor air quality is really strongly affected by burning gas in your house, which, if you think about it, is actually not all that surprising.
Nat Hardy: That’s Stephen Porder, our show’s founder and Brown University’s provost for Sustainability.
Will Malloy: And like he said, burning gas inside puts pollutants into the air, like nitric oxides and benzene.
Nat Hardy: These pollutants can hurt us – there’s strong evidence that cooking with gas stoves indoors is associated with children developing asthma.
Will Malloy: There’s also evidence that households that replace their gas stove with an electric one see benefits to their health.
Nat Hardy: A study in Ecuador looked at what happened when the government encouraged people to switch away from gas stoves –
Stephen Porder: What they found is that across Ecuador, for every 1% of people, extra people, who enrolled in the program and switched off of their gas stove, they had a 1% drop in all-cause hospitalization, and a one or 2% drop in the things you typically would associate with bad air quality, like lung problems and heart attacks. So that’s a really direct human health impact.
Megan Hall: Wow! That seems like a big ifference. But ripping out my gas stove and replacing it with an electric one would be pretty expensive, right?
Will Malloy: It would be – but that’s not the only way to switch from gas to electric.
Megan Hall: What do you mean?
Nat Hardy: Here’s how Stephen made the switch-
Stephen Porder: I think my mother in law got me an induction burner because she knew I was like, Mr. Environmental dude, and so we just put it on top of our gas stove. And I think it probably cost about 100 bucks but it cooks amazingly.
Megan Hall: That’s so straightforward.
Nat Hardy: Right? There’s no reason not to switch!
Megan Hall: But, but what if I just like cooking on my gas stove?
Will Malloy: You’re definitely not alone. That’s something that comes up a lot. People don’t want to give up the stove they know and love.
Nat Hardy: But cooking on induction burners can actually be pretty great –
Stephen Porder: It cooks super fast. It boils water super fast, like it’s very controllable. So on this particular induction plate, for example, there were 20 different heat settings that you could use for a pan.
Will Malloy: One study that gave induction stoves to households in New York found that people ended up really liking them – the investigators offered to switch the stoves back to gas after the study was over, but every single household wanted to keep their new induction stove.
Megan Hall: Okay! I’ll have to check that out. Thanks, Will and Nat!
That’s it for today. You can find more information, or ask a question about the way your choices affect our planet, at askpossibly.org. You can also subscribe to Possibly wherever you get your podcasts or follow us on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, X, or Bluesky at “askpossibly”
Possibly is a co-production of Brown University’s Institute for Environment and Society, Brown’s Climate Solutions Initiative, and The Public’s Radio.
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