Highlights: A study this summer found that using a single gas stove burner on high can raise levels of cancer-causing benzene above what’s been observed from secondhand smoke.
A new investigation by NPR and the Climate Investigations Center found that the gas industry tried to downplay the health risks of gas stoves for decades, turning to many of the same public-relations tactics the tobacco industry used to cover up the risks of smoking. Gas utilities even hired some of the same PR firms and scientists that Big Tobacco did.
Earlier this year, an investigation from DeSmog showed that the industry understood the hazards of gas appliances as far back as the 1970s and concealed what they knew from the public.
It’s a strategy that goes back as far back as 1972, according to the most recent investigation. That year, the gas industry got advice from Richard Darrow, who helped manufacture controversy around the health effects of smoking as the lead for tobacco accounts at the public relations firm Hill + Knowlton. At an American Gas Association conference, Darrow told utilities they needed to respond to claims that gas appliances were polluting homes and shape the narrative around the issue before critics got the chance. Scientists were starting to discover that exposure to nitrogen dioxide—a pollutant emitted by gas stoves—was linked to respiratory illnesses. So Darrow advised utilities to “mount the massive, consistent, long-range public relations programs necessary to cope with the problems.”
These studies didn’t just confuse the public, but also the federal government. When the Environmental Protection Agency assessed the health effects of nitrogen dioxide pollution in 1982, its review included five studies finding no evidence of problems—four of which were funded by the gas industry, the Climate Investigations Center recently uncovered.
Karen Harbert, the American Gas Association’s CEO, acknowledged that the gas industry has “collaborated” with researchers to “inform and educate regulators about the safety of gas cooking appliances.” Harbert claimed that the available science “does not provide sufficient or consistent evidence demonstrating chronic health hazards from natural gas ranges”—a line that should sound familiar by now.
See unfortunately what you’re describing here are good induction stoves, which is not the majority of what is on the market.
I’ve seen far too many of the bad kind, with duty cycles measured in the tens of seconds. Your 7/10 on the dial could be - like a non-inverter microwave - something in the neighbourhood of 7 seconds on / 3 seconds off. At that point they can actually be worse to use than old halogen glass cooktops, which at least remain hot during the off part of their thermostat’s cycle.
This is not even just cheap no-name crap either, have witnessed it with big-name-brand in-bench stovetops with four-figure pricetags.
If you’re doing something like poaching eggs (which typically calls for a wide, flat pan), you’ll actually see the water starting and stopping boiling in a cycle as it switches. Absolutely terrible.
I have a le cheapo Frigidaire, and mine definitely doesn’t do that. I also have a Summit tabletop single burner induction hot plate kicking around, which I think cost me all of $130 and came with three pans in the box. It doesn’t do that, either.
If you’ve got a recent model that does have a long on-off duty cycle like that, you should name and shame so people know to avoid it. People buying that kind of thing and being turned off by it is just going to slow down the course of progress, here.