//w w w .popsci.com/environment/gas-stoves-harmful/

They are being banned in new construction in some areas with more to follow.

I've always hated gas anyway - I can smell it - but I didn't know these facts...

Playing devils advocate, the authors of the article seem to have a "green" bias, and what's that saying: "We find what we are looking for". I'd be curious to see how the health effects of gas stoves compare to other dangers in our lives like driving cars, kids (and me) spending lots of time on computers, and the effects of sugar in our diet, for example.

I knew they were being banned in some places, like San Fransisco.

Exactly Wilma! So, the agenda being pushed is cooking with...coal. Because thats still where a large amount of electricity is produced. And as the sun gets closer and closer to switching polarity, a gas stove and fireplace, or a woodburning stove will be very good to have. Last time the big nuclear reactor in the sky switched polarities, ( just before the civil war,) telegraph lines were damaged. Now, with everything electrified, we'll be wishing for some good old low rech, off the electric grid stuff. Our electric grid isn't up to snuff as it is.

Certainly, I do not know all about it, JAC. But, close family members who work in the industry know stuff.

Exactly how it works. We would need to cover most of the landmass of the US with solar panels. Wrong approach. First thing is to cut need. When was the last time you used an electric dryer? You can't if you live off solar energy. I have used a clothes line for 20 years. I don't do laundry or shower until afternoon when my solar hot water is ready. I can go 3 days off my battery bank if there is no sun or wind to power my farm. Longer now that I have doubled my bank. Solar is by definition only by day and must be stored to fuel the night. But, our energy storage technology is not yet ready for massive energy sinks. Wind? The power output varies by the CUBE of the wind velocity. Most of the time you get very little power, but at high winds you get way too much to store.

Alternative energy is not ready for prime time. We will be ready when the lights of Vegas go off and nobody uses energy sucking appliances anymore. I have made sustainable living a long term goal and have spent two decades living a sustainable life with a hybrid wind solar system I love dearly., It is a sacrifice of convenience.

I'm in Michigan -- not a real windy place at all. They put up about 50 wind turbines last year and they are working great. This idea that you need high winds for them to work or that "most of the time you get very little power" is simply not accurate. At least, not for large, commercial turbines.

Also, for the large, commercial ones, you don't HAVE to store the power long term. Most of these feed back into the Consumer's Electric grid from what I understand so that the power can be distributed fairly widely without much need for storage.

-John...

Hard to count the number of times my wind turbine has been down for repair. Wind destroys everything you put in it's way. Google..."Graveyard of wind turbine blades". Landfills across the US are filling up.

Ahhh, the Law of Unintended Consequence is brutal. Turbines are VERY high maintenance. Solar panels very low maintenance. The alternative energy push is simply another corporate pork barrel feeding frenzy. Billions will be fed into solar/wind projects, but will it end with usable renewable energy? Are we going to feed that lovely energy into an aging grid system?

Gas stoves, like ventless gas heaters, have to burn 99%+ "clean" to avoid killing the occupants of the place that use them. Therefore, I was having a hard time with anyone claiming they are "dirty / not green."

That said, I believe in doing my due diligence, so I read this article. Take a look. Obviously some legit concerns here.

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

Now what I do NOT know is how the leaks, incomplete combustion, etc compare to the green houses gases created by the coal fired plants that still produce well over 50% of the US grid electricity and the manufacturing process for solar panels, wind turbines, batteries, inverters, meters, and thousands of extra miles of transmission lines to carry added capacity to replace all of them. Sadly, this isn't a zero sum game, nor is our infrastructure even close to ready to handle it. My guess is, without several trillion dollars "invested" (i.e. spent...let's be honest enough to call it what it is, shall we?) we won't be ready to swap over to electric stove any time in the next 1-2 decades.

Think about it: over 30% of currently available US housing stock is over 50 years old. Most of those aren't going to have the necessary wiring and electric service panels capacity to pull out a gas water heater or stove (might as well do both, right?) without being upgraded to code. Some houses have already been upgraded: fair enough. But I have 5 out of my 31 residential units that have gas stoves/water heaters and will need to be entirely retro fit for electric appliances. They are on fuse boxes or outdated breaker panels with no way to wire in two additional 220 V dedicated circuits. Last time I priced an upgrade to code (required) it was $3,000 for these little 2 bed houses....and that was before the Rona drove pricing up on everything. My guess today? $4000 seems reasonable, probably low!

So there's $15,000 shall we say spent to accomplish what is already being accomplished: cooking and heating water. Not a lot of incentive to do that, is there, other than to be a good citizen of the Earth. There are other land lords in my town with hundreds of these units. Their costs will make mine look like chump change.

So what's going to happen? The US Govt will probably created out of thin air a crap ton more money like they did during the Rona and offer tax credits, incentives, etc (freebies!), which will result in higher inflation, etc.

Plus...we'll probably need about 50,000 or so more qualified electricians, at a time when the trades are seeing record retirements with few replacements. Congress can print all the money they want: that doesn't magically whisk new electricians into existence. Look for salaries to rise. $200/hour, anyone? Then gotta mine all that copper for wires and components. Rare earth materials for battery banks, etc.

Then we've got third world/developing countries (India, China) who are producing green house gases by the billion tons. They do not seem too concerned with cutting emissions. Sure, the US can help, but how do we get them on board is a question yet to be answered.

There is no free lunch.

Some day the world will be (mostly) all electric. As fossil fuels get more expensive to extract, we will reach a point where economically it will make more sense to switch to electricity. How we get there and when is up for debate. So rest easy, ye worriers of climate change. We're all doing our part but it is going to take some time. How about do something productive and go bug those nutters who say we shouldn't be using nuclear, which from what I read is by far the safest source of electrical power with fewer deaths per 100,000 industry workers and is far more dependable and has the scalability needed for consistent, clean energy?

Meanwhile, as Ben Shapiro says, we humans will need to work on more adaptive strategies. Humans suck at mitigation, but we're pretty good at adaptation. Staying put in X spot isn't guaranteed to anyone. Adjust, adapt, overcome.

Electric also has health concerns. Remember all the warnings to not have cell phone or alarm clock next to your bed? All those waves.....( oh, no!)

This reminds me of the 1980s when asbestos became the big bad guy? Then some studies were done that showed that fiberglass insulation was every bit as dangerous. But, oops! Fiberglass insulation was in almost every home in America, and, without it, we'd have one heck of an energy crisis. And, if fiberglass is as dangerous as asbestos, and fiberglass is in most homes.....maybe asbestos isn't just going to kill us on sight ? But that doesn't mean we should play with it. Use care.

In other words, we can worry, worry, worry over every little thing, or we can just get on with life. Politicians like to keep us worried, so they can claim to do something. Lawyers too. Its what lines THEIR pockets.

That doesn't mean we should be reckless. I wear my well-fitting mask and other protective gear when working around any dusty stuff that can get in my lungs, spread dropcloths to catch any stray bits ( I've found that old blankets and flannel sheets 'grab and hold' particles better than plastic sheeting) I even spread a clean bedspread on the floor of my living room as my grandkids are learning to crawl to prevent baby's inhalation of dust mite droppings. ( Once thought to be associated with Kowasaki syndrome, if I recall... might have the name wrong, been 30 years since the pediatrician warned of letting my infant son crawl on carpet, especially freshly shampooed carpets. ) Many of my family gets asthma from cats. Should cats be banned? I still allow them in my rentals; I just will wear a mask at turnover cleaning, if I think I need it. Only one tenant so far has a cat, and she keeps that house so clean that the furnace filters barely need changing.

I tend to burn more things when I cook with electric. I've never been accused of being a great cook on any day, but I do better with gas. Burned foods potentially/ possibly give of carcinogens.... oh-hoh! We keep our gas lines tight, but, of course, there is a burst of gas as the burners ignite, and there are combustion gasses... so, we ventilate.

JAC, just to give you something to lookup, I was wrong about the polarity of sun itself being the problem. It does that fairly regularly. Its Carrington -events or mebbe coronal mass ejections? that we should not worry about. You'll find it interesting. Most of it goes over my wee little brain.

Anyway, we need to upgrade infrastucture. And, as the pandemic should have taught us, a little self-sufficiency is good. Back in the 90s, we lived in an area where all electric houses were popular. We were grateful for our gas fireplace when a major snow storm took down power lines. Our house before that had a wood fireplace, which was used a time or two during a power outage.

Hmmm green agenda forcing people to use electric power from coal powered steam plant.

The gov't is spending oodles of $$ to subsidize wind turbines and solar panels. Somehow clear cutting "old growth" forests is ok when you are doing it to put in the above.

Those turbines are bird killers and contain boatloads of OIL in their base. They cannot be recycled when they break down.

Semi-local college installed a wind turbine a few years back. It killed more bats each night than birds throughout.

Bats eat more bugs than I want around.

They ended up flushing the project after a few years. Guess it didn't save enough to make it worth it.

The findings in themselves are not sufficient IMO to ban gas stoves. They need to do a comparison of the drawbacks to the byproducts of producing more electricity for electric ranges. If the electricity is produced using some "dirty" method, it may be just as harmful for the environment.

PLEASE ACCEPT MY APOLOGY, THIS SILLY BS SOUNDS LIKE A CALIFORNIA IDEA. everyday we redefine stupid here. again, sorry!