Cooking With Smoke
What do gas stoves and cigarettes have in common? When burned, they both release many of the same toxic substances detrimental to human health. Additionally, both the gas and tobacco industries knew for decades that these products caused serious health problems without disclosing the risks to the public.
Last month, the Public Health Law Center, a nonprofit founded two decades ago to defend human health from tobacco, published a report comparing the complicity of the tobacco and gas industries. The researchers were “astonished to discover the parallels between methane gas and commercial tobacco, including surprising similarities between the pollutants released by both gas stoves and tobacco, the similarities of health harms from secondhand smoke and gas stoves, and the two industries’ mirror-image deception campaigns designed to conceal those health harms and prevent public awareness and government regulation.”
According to the EPA, both cigarettes and gas stoves are primary producers of nitrogen dioxide, which has been found to increase the risk of asthma in kids by as much as 42%. A study in 2022 found that gas stoves emit the carcinogen benzene, even when the stoves are turned off, at a sufficiently powerful concentration to violate California’s health regulations. It’s like living and sleeping in an odorless cloud of secondhand cigarette smoke. And of course, benzene emissions are worse when the stove is turned on. Carbon monoxide emitted by stoves is something most people are aware of, but what people might not know is that carbon monoxide detectors usually don’t detect chronic carbon monoxide levels below the level of life-threatening. Check out this graphic for the full list.
The gas industry has known for decades that gas stoves cause respiratory problems. In the 1980s, they scrapped a safer design that would’ve reduced nitrogen oxide emissions by 40%, and, more recently, they’ve been caught secretly funding an expert witness and ‘astroturf’ groups who didn’t disclose they were being paid by gas utilities for their activism.
The Public Health Law Center recommends changes to building performance standards, sometimes known as “stretch codes,” to prohibit dangerous levels of pollutants. They also recommend promoting electric buildings, since electric stoves emit vastly fewer pollutants. Chicago’s Clean and Affordable Buildings Ordinance (CABO) sets a pollutant standard for combustion in new construction to reduce indoor pollution levels and reduce our carbon footprint. You can read more about CABO from the American Institute of Architects of Chicago, the Citizens Utility Board, or sustainable developer AJ Patton.
To join our monthly meeting or learn more about CABO, contact the Environmental Action Committee at environment@lwvchicago.org!