Breathing Easier at Home

When I’m hungry for a bowl of soup or a plate of pasta, nothing beats my gas stove. Just flip the switch and in minutes, I’ve made a delicious meal—or, given my culinary abilities, at least something passable and filling.

But no matter how healthful the food I prepare, it recently became clear to me that I’m probably doing my health a disservice: I’m inhaling a range of dangerous gasses.

A new study from Stanford looked at gas stove use across 87 homes in California and Colorado: 100% of the time, scientists found detectable levels of benzene—a carcinogen found in cigarette smoke—sometimes at levels exceeding what you’d find in smokers’ homes. Turning on a burner for 45 minutes produced levels of benzene comparable to smoking a cigarette yourself.

How much should we care about benzene? Benzene damages immune systems, impairs the production of red blood cells and affects bone marrow. It’s also been linked to leukemia and anemia.

Even worse, elevated benzene levels persisted for hours after the stove was turned off. And the smaller the home or apartment, the worse the problem, meaning people with fewer resources are unduly burdened by gas stoves.

It’s not just benzene we’re releasing into our homes. Besides methane and benzene, when we burn natural gas, we release another 20 hazardous air pollutants into the air.

Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised. Long ago, after coughing and choking for thousands of years, civilization jettisoned the notion of open fires in the home. Now we save them for camp and roasting marshmallows.

At Resilient Palisades, we’re strongly in favor of electrifying everything, and then greening the grid with renewable, solar and wind energy. Electrifying everything may start with your car, but must continue at home.

First, we need to replace our gas furnaces and HVAC units with electric heat pumps. Then the Stanford study brings the final flame firmly into view.

The Los Angeles Times recently opined that the gas stove “seems like it’s headed toward the what-the-hell-were-we-thinking section of U.S. public health history, joining tobacco, lead paint, and cars without seatbelts or airbags.”

Fortunately, the Inflation Reduction Act offers consumer rebates to swap gas stoves for electric ones. There’s no better time to get the gas out of our homes.

At my house, we’ve already made a start. My 17-year-old son Leo, who believes every single thing he reads—fortunately in this case—recently made us purchase an induction cooker. He’s convinced that in 50 years, we’ll look back on burning gas in our homes much the way we currently view lighting a campfire indoors.

Thanks to the Stanford study and Leo, we’re already using our new induction cooker to make healthful soups and pastas, and we’re not harming ourselves along the way.

Ryan Craig is treasurer of Resilient Palisades and co-leads the Clean Energy team.