Gas stoves are so hot right now. A recent report found that emissions from gas cooktops are worsening both the environmental crisis and the health of the humans who use them. This knowledge has stoked a heated cultural debate in the US. Some people have piped up to advocate for phasing out gas stoves, while others have fired back that the government can pry gas stoves out of their cold (presumably because they stopped paying the gas bill) dead hands. While the controversy has blown up, the reality is that gas is a problematic energy source with many worrisome issues. Reducing our dependence on the appliances and the fossil-based fuels they consume will be no easy task.
This week on Gadget Lab, WIRED staff writer Amanda Hoover joins us to re-spark the gas stove debate, and talk about what we can actually do to fix the problems these old-school appliances are causing.
Read Amanda’s story about the gas stove culture wars.
Amanda recommends the Normal Gossip podcast. Lauren recommends getting a short-term gym membership. Mike recommends the audiobook of Jack Kerouac’s The Dharma Bums as read by Ethan Hawke.
Amanda Hoover can be found on Twitter @amandahoovernj. Lauren Goode is @LaurenGoode. Michael Calore is @snackfight. Bling the main hotline at @GadgetLab. The show is produced by Boone Ashworth (@booneashworth). Our theme music is by Solar Keys.
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Michael Calore: Lauren.
Lauren Goode: Mike.
Michael Calore: Lauren, do you have gas?
Lauren Goode: OK, like, we're close as podcast hosts, but we're not this close. We're not talking about gas. Are you talking about gas stoves?
Michael Calore: I am indeed asking if you have a gas stove.
Lauren Goode: I do have a gas stove and I also have a gas car.
Michael Calore: All right.
Lauren Goode: Which I know, I know. You're giving me that look, but sometimes I give you a ride to work, so.
Michael Calore: All right. Well, that's not the type of gas that we're talking about. We're talking about natural gas.
Lauren Goode: OK, fair enough. And what exactly are we talking about?
Michael Calore: Well, let me ask you this. Have you ever felt the pressure to get rid of your gas stove?
Lauren Goode: I have entertained the thoughts of it, but one, I am a renter, and two, I kind of like the gas stove.
Michael Calore: Yeah. Yeah. I'm in the same boat.
Lauren Goode: OK.
Michael Calore: Let's talk about it.
Lauren Goode: Yes, let's do this.
[Gadget Lab intro theme music plays]
Michael Calore: Hi everyone. Welcome to Gadget Lab. I am Michael Calore. I'm a senior editor at WIRED.
Lauren Goode: And I'm Lauren Goode. I'm a senior writer at WIRED
Michael Calore: And we are also joined by a WIRED staff writer, Amanda Hoover. Hello, Amanda.
Amanda Hoover: Hi. Great to be here.
Michael Calore: All right. Great to have you. If you're not up to speed on the latest culture war, well, I'll break it down for you. Everybody is mad about gas stoves.
Lauren Goode: They're fired up.
Michael Calore: They are.
Lauren Goode: They're sizzling. It has sparked a conversation.
Michael Calore: The conversation is getting hot.
Lauren Goode: Yes.
Michael Calore: It turns out that using gas to heat your home and cook your oatmeal may not be the best thing for the health of the environment or the health of nearby humans. This is not new information, but a recent study about how gas stoves can cause asthma in children and release toxins into the air has sparked a fresh debate about these appliances. Amanda, you wrote a story for WIRED about how this debate is heating up.
Lauren Goode: Oh, yes.
Michael Calore: I'm going to fire whoever wrote the script. Before we get into the insane political angle surrounding the debate over gas stoves in the homes, what is the actual problem that people are talking about? Are gas stoves really that unhealthy?
Amanda Hoover: There's been some research that shows that gas stoves are, like you said, bad for the environment and possibly bad for your health if you're living in a home with one. They release methane, which is a greenhouse gas. They release methane even when they aren't on. Some studies have shown that they're just constantly leaking this out into houses and then out into the environment. Additionally, studies have shown that they could be dangerous to your health. There was a recent one at the end of last year that found that gas stoves could be responsible for almost 13 percent of cases of asthma in kids in the U.S. That's been a similar study in Australia in recent years that found about 12.3 percent of childhood asthma cases might be attributed to gas stoves. Additionally, they release benzene, which is a known carcinogen. The thing that we don't know, really—this hasn't been looked at for direct health impacts over long periods of time, and an expert I spoke to said that would be the kind of study that could be really useful to track—how living with a gastro stove for many years could influence your health. Because right now what they've found is they've kind of targeted the chemicals that are coming out of gas stoves into your home and at what rates, and connecting those to what that actually means for your health living with one. There's still a bit of a gap there aside from these asthma studies that have recently come out.
Lauren Goode: Amanda, the studies you're referencing are mostly out of the US. You did mention Australia as well. I'm wondering, how US-centric is this conversation? Because we know people in less developed countries also suffer health issues from fire-based stoves and poor ventilation, but this seems very specific to places where people have the stove infrastructure, where they have gas stoves with the natural gas.
Amanda Hoover: The way that it came up last week definitely was because it came up among US politicians who started arguing kind of along party lines. Republicans really saw this as, this could be overreach, telling people whether or not they could have gas stoves or not. You have environmentalists and some more liberal politicians kind of just pointing out the issues here. Right now, no one's trying to come in and take away everyone's gas stoves, and that's how the conversation kind of came across on Twitter. There have been, in certain liberal cities like San Francisco and Seattle and New York, there have been bans on certain gas appliances in new constructions and attempts to make those electric. But the conversation seems to mostly be happening in the US recently.
Lauren Goode: So it wasn't just the report that—I'm going to keep using this word and I apologize—sparked—it wasn't just the report that sparked the debate. It was politicians who were getting involved in the conversation and people pointing out that in some cities there are some laws starting to come down that are banning new gas stoves.
Amanda Hoover: Yeah. It started because the US Consumer Product Safety Commission, a commissioner from there did an interview with Bloomberg saying that there was a hidden hazard in stoves. Anything would be on the table, including a ban if products couldn't be made safe. The chair of that agency walked that back later. It was reported that President Joe Biden is not in favor of a ban on gas stoves, but the conversation had already sort of gone off the rails a little bit on Twitter, and also there were segments on Fox News where people were talking about how much they loved their gas stoves and didn't want them taken away, so it became this political issue when it hadn't really been framed quite in that way before.
Michael Calore: Yeah. He had to use that word “ban.” A ban is on the table. And of course in Washington, language is super important, because if you even hint that something is possible, then that causes everybody to sort of spiral to the worst possible conclusion. So the thing that was most alarming to me in this report, which is something that I hadn't heard before, was that gas stove's leak toxic gases even when they're not in use. Can you tell us more about this?
Amanda Hoover: Yeah. A researcher who has done multiple studies on gas stoves found that in particular, they're leaking methane even when not used. I think the emissions are higher when the stoves are on, but certain stoves that he went and looked at and measured, he found that the methane was leaking potentially all the time.
Michael Calore: And the advice is, of course, to use a fume hood over the stove anytime you're using it, to turn on the hood that exhausts the gases and anything else coming out of the stove out of your home. But not everybody has fume hoods.
Amanda Hoover: Yes. And some of them just blow the air back into your home, which—I went and looked at mine after doing this reporting and I realized that I could feel where the air was coming back right into my apartment directly above my stove, so that brings into question how helpful or useful they are. And of course, some people have their burners out on an island counter, places where they don't have those hoods. I've seen kitchens like that as well. So not everyone has those and there are a couple of other things that you can do to lessen all of these chemicals hanging out in your home as you cook and after you cook. But getting an electric or an induction stove would lessen the risk even more.
Michael Calore: So was there any discussion about other gas appliances in this research? Things like water heaters, because most of us have gas-powered water heaters in our homes also.
Amanda Hoover: Most of this really looked at stoves. As I was reporting this story, I did see some mention of that. The thing with those is that they aren't, like, directly in your kitchen where you're standing over them breathing in and turning them on multiple times a day where you have your family members around.
Michael Calore: All right. Let's take a quick break and we'll come back with more stove talk.
[Break]
Michael Calore: All right. Let's put the political debate about gas stoves on the back burner for a moment and talk about—
Lauren Goode: Oh my god.
Michael Calore: I told you, I don't know who wrote the script, but it wasn't me.
Lauren Goode: Oh my god.
Michael Calore: Let's talk a little bit about what normal people like you and I can actually do about this. And the first thing we should clear up is, if you have a gas stove in your home right now, is the government going to force you to replace it? Amanda, please tell us.
Amanda Hoover: Not right now. That is something, I think, that would be incredibly unpopular and not even just for conservatives. Replacing your gas stove can be expensive. It's something that people can consider if they, one, own the home, and two, have some potentially disposable income to make this change right now. Replacing an appliance that seems to work perfectly well, I think, doesn't appeal to many people, but the government is not coming for anyone's stoves because even local bans that have happened have really focused on future construction. And on the flip side, there are some places that have passed laws that would prevent cities from implementing natural gas bans. So you have certain cities wanting to move to electric and you have others that are not pushing in that direction.
Lauren Goode: And let's say that you wanted to replace your gas stove right now, not necessarily because your city is mandating it, just because you're a conscientious consumer, how much would that actually cost?
Amanda Hoover: The ranges alone for an induction can cost around $1,100 to $4,000. They can get more expensive as well. Electric options can be a bit cheaper, around $500, $600 starting out, but they are a bit less efficient than the induction stoves so some of that cost, you know, you might incur in your bills over time, and that's just for the range. I believe there would also have to be the labor and the rewiring and resetting up your home for all of this, which could then vary as well.
Michael Calore: Right.
Amanda Hoover: So to get a nice induction range, which is what people like as replacement to gas, because so many people like to cook with their gas stoves, it can be pretty pricey.
Michael Calore: And to be clear, like you said, there are regular electric ranges, which are sometimes called radiant electric. That's a new word that people are using to differentiate an electric stove top from a cooktop that uses induction cooking, which is also an electrical method, but uses non-radiant energy to heat whatever's on it. Also, with an induction stove, you know, you have to make sure that your pans are compatible, so there are people who maybe use old cookware that—most cookware now is induction friendly, but if you have something that's like 10 or 15 years old, like your favorite casserole dish may not be usable on an induction cooktop so you have to buy a new pan on top of that. So there are some additional costs associated with making the switch. That said, you could keep things cheap and just get a radiant stove top, and those are as cheap as $500, $600 for a nice one. And they can also get a little bit more expensive than that, but I think that's probably more the starting cost.
Lauren Goode: And isn't a lot of our electricity not exactly coming from clean energy anyway? A good percentage of our electricity is actually coal-powered.
Michael Calore: That's a good point.
Lauren Goode: I have to say, I had an electric stove when I was in grad school, which is an apartment I ended up staying in for several years, and it took like—I'm being mildly dramatic here—like an hour to make pasta. It just took so long to heat up a big vat of water.
Michael Calore: Yeah. I think the electric cooktops that most people have had experiences with are from the previous generation of electric cooktops.
Lauren Goode: This definitely was.
Michael Calore: Probably something from the '80s or the '90s and it has that coil.
Lauren Goode: Yes. And they're kind of unbalanced. They're uneven.
Michael Calore: Yeah. You put something on it and it sort of lists.
Lauren Goode: Yes.
Michael Calore: And it takes a while to heat up, but I can say that the new radiant heat cooktops, which usually have a glass panel and then the coil is beneath a glass panel, so you don't have that listing effect.
Lauren Goode: Yeah, my mother has one of those.
Michael Calore: Those are remarkably efficient. I'm not saying energy efficient. They're not as energy efficient as an induction cooktop, but they—
Lauren Goode: But they cook efficient.
Michael Calore: Yeah. They're much faster at boiling water, for example, to use your example.
Lauren Goode: Right. I mean, presumably the pan is being heated up more evenly too.
Michael Calore: Yeah, yeah. Those are fancy. They're more expensive.
Lauren Goode: Would you ever switch? We've both established that we're renters, but would you ever switch to induction?
Michael Calore: I have a gas stove now that I love. The oven's not great, but the cooktop is fantastic and it's definitely showing its age. It's getting kind of rusty. It's creaking a little bit. I don't really feel like it's going to be safe that much longer. But I do rent. I have considered replacing it, but I know that if I ask my landlord to replace it, they're going to get the cheapest thing on sale at Best Buy this week and toss it in there and I'm not going to be happy with it. So I have considered spending my own money on an induction cooktop just to swap out the one that is probably not safe anymore. And then just eating the cost using it as long as I live in that place and then just leaving it there when I move.
Lauren Goode: That would be very kind of you.
Michael Calore: What about you, Amanda?
Amanda Hoover: I rent as well. I have a gas stove. A couple of weeks ago actually, they thought my gas stove was leaking carbon monoxide into my apartment.
Lauren Goode: Oh no.
Amanda Hoover: Because my detector kept going off.
Michael Calore: Oh no.
Amanda Hoover: It turned out that it was the laundromat on the street level. So for a little while it looked like I was going to get a new stove. The gas company came and they put a tag on my stove and they were like, "This is deadly." It turned out that it was not going to immediately kill me and it was actually the laundromat, but that was my adventure with my stove recently.
Michael Calore: Big city living.
Lauren Goode: And I guess you can't ask your landlord to replace the laundromat.
Amanda Hoover: No, it took them four days to even, well, it took maybe about a week, but after it became a severe crisis, it took them days to even realize it was the laundromat.
Lauren Goode: Well, we're glad you're OK.
Amanda Hoover: It happened at Christmas, so I was actually out of my house.
Lauren Goode: And Amanda, are there any tax credits or rebates that people can look into if they are looking to replace their gas stoves right now?
Amanda Hoover: Yes. So there are some rebates available under the Inflation Reduction Act for people who are looking to replace their cooking appliances with electric ones. These might range from up to $840 for new cooking appliances and maybe another $500 to help cover the cost of converting from natural gas to electric, because that's another thing to keep in mind that you have to do as well.
Michael Calore: Yeah.
Lauren Goode: What do you think, Mike, does that make it more palatable for you to pay for this even though your landlord really should be paying for it?
Michael Calore: Yeah, certainly. I mean, what I would really love to happen is to have a conversation with my landlord about what type of stove I would like and ask them to pay for it and then give them the rebate.
Lauren Goode: I have a feeling how my conversation with my landlord would go.
Michael Calore: How would that go?
Lauren Goode: Well, first of all, I'd have to catch her in between the 17 podcasts that she's taping, and then I would ask her and she'd go, "No," and that would be it. That'd be the end of it.
Michael Calore: Yeah. I think a lot of people just don't want to give it up because cooking with gas is very convenient. As we said, it's fast. It also offers a precision that you often can't get when you turn the heat down, the heat actually turns down. It doesn't slowly go down over the next five or six minutes. Once you've used a stove that does that for you, it's hard to give it up.
Lauren Goode: What do you think it says about our current culture that gas stoves have hit the cultural zeitgeist?
Amanda Hoover: Yeah, I think where this is kind of coming down is, we've seen Republicans really oppose a lot of things in President Biden's agenda, including his support for electric vehicles. And to me, this kind of seems to fall along similar lines. People enjoy using their gas stove. They don't want to be told how they should cook, and they don't want to be told how they should drive and what they should drive. So it seems to be a debate that is pretty similar to that and it's another way to pick at this environmental agenda.
Michael Calore: Well, I can't wait until the research paper comes out that says that Americans should stop eating so much meat. So we can start this all over again.
Amanda Hoover: Wait, are you vegan?
Michael Calore: No comment.
Lauren Goode: It comes up every podcast now.
Michael Calore: OK. Let's take a break and when we come back we'll do our recommendations.
[Break]
Michael Calore: All right. This is the last part of the show where we all share our recommendations for things that our listeners might enjoy. Amanda, as our guest, you get to go first. What is your recommendation?
Amanda Hoover: I have been unable to stop listening to this podcast, Normal Gossip. In it, the host and a guest just walk through this anonymous story that is a crazy thing that's happened to people that they don't know and we don't know, so you get kind of the thrill from gossiping without any of the guilt because you almost definitely won't know any of these people. It's kind of funny because it's pretty specific even with changed names, so if it was about you, you could probably tell. But it's very funny. They talk a lot about the ethics of gossip and the history of gossip as well so it's been very interesting.
Michael Calore: That's awesome. And what's it called?
Amanda Hoover: Normal Gossip.
Michael Calore: Normal Gossip.
Lauren Goode: What's one of the more memorable stories you've heard?
Amanda Hoover: They're so intricate and complicated that I could not possibly tell it in less than a half an hour, which is what they do. But there are people who have spats over what is the best type of yarn to be using and how that unravels. There's been crazy bridesmaid stories and drama and pettiness. So there's something in there for everybody who's wants the thrill of gossiping without any of the guilt.
Lauren Goode: I love it.
Michael Calore: That sounds perfect. Lauren, what's your recommendation?
Lauren Goode: My recommendation this week is something that's being gently reused from another podcast we taped. I'm recommending that if you have new health and fitness goals this year, because it is January, it is time for such things—don't buy a yearlong gym membership. There are so many options out there now where you can dip your toe in. You can buy a handful of classes somewhere. I just signed up for a new gym in San Francisco where I was able to spend less than a hundred dollars and get 15 passes to try it. And this place has a pool and basketball courts and things that I wasn't getting from my other gym so I'm going to give it a try. But it's no commitment. If you sign up for a yearlong gym membership, you often have to pay an activation fee. You might have to pay a cancellation fee when you discover that you're not using it. And let's be honest, sometimes our adherence to our New Year's goals is a little bit low. We fall off by March or so. There's also things like Class Pass now where you can just dip your toe into different classes around your neighborhood and try things out before you make a firm commitment. So that's my recommendation this week, is not to go all in, just dip your toe in, try different things. The year is still new. You don't have to make any big decisions just yet.
Michael Calore: So get the five-class Yoga Pass instead of the 20-class Yoga Pass.
Lauren Goode: Yeah, absolutely. And do it while your flex spending in your health savings accounts are still flush.
Michael Calore: Nice.
Lauren Goode: That's my recommendation.
Michael Calore: Nice.
Lauren Goode: Yeah. How about you, Mike?
Michael Calore: I'm going to recommend an audiobook. You have to bear with me. So it's The Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac, the novel from 1958 as read by Ethan Hawke.
Lauren Goode: I love it already.
Michael Calore: Yeah. So I know this is very dudey, but I was a big Jack Kerouac fan when I was a young man, and then I gave him up for a really long time, just because there are other things out there to be obsessed with. And I haven't read The Dharma Bums since legitimately my early twenties. So I'm revisiting it now a full lifetime later and the writing is fantastic. It's a really great book. I don't know why I ever left this guy behind, but it's the audiobook, which is, I think, the only audiobook available that's read by Ethan Hawke—is just fantastic. I really hope that Ethan Hawke won a Grammy for this because it's really good. He gets way into it and he really brings out the best in the writing and he brings out all the different sort of character voices, not in an annoying way, but in a very tastefully performed way. So regardless of how you feel, feel about Jack Kerouac and regardless of how you feel about Ethan Hawke, I would recommend giving it a shot. It's a really great way to re-experience something that I had forgotten I actually liked.
Lauren Goode: I would listen more for the Ethan Hawke than the Jack Kerouac.
Michael Calore: Yeah, that's what I thought too. But just hearing him read the prose, I was like, "Wow, that is some good writing."
Lauren Goode: Nice.
Michael Calore: I really got into it. I'm still almost done with it. I think I have an hour left. It's like a seven-hour audiobook, so yeah, it's a good one.
Lauren Goode: What are you using to listen to it? Audible?
Michael Calore: Libby.
Lauren Goode: Oh, Libby.
Michael Calore: Libby.
Lauren Goode: Right?
Michael Calore: Yep.
Lauren Goode: Which you've recommended on this podcast before.
Michael Calore: Yep. The free audiobook app that ties into your library card. So if you don't have a library card, get one and then get Libby.
Lauren Goode: Are like in Brooklyn right now? You're talking about the library, Ethan Hawke, going vegan.
Michael Calore: Induction cooking.
Lauren Goode: Induction cooking.
Michael Calore: No.
Lauren Goode: I love it.
Michael Calore: I think you mean San Francisco.
Lauren Goode: Oh yeah. That's true.
Michael Calore: These are all of our San Francisco values.
Lauren Goode: I watched Glass Onion this week, finally. Loved the cameo by Ethan Hawke. I was a little bit disappointed that he didn't show up more, but he's the guy who meets them at the dock and shoots the anti-Covid thing into their throats.
Michael Calore: Yep.
Lauren Goode: That was hilarious. The whole thing was hilarious.
Michael Calore: Yep.
Lauren Goode: And then he just disappears.
Michael Calore: That was good.
Lauren Goode: That was great.
Michael Calore: OK, well that is our show for this week. Thank you, Amanda, for being on the show and telling us all about cooking with gas.
Amanda Hoover: Absolutely. Thanks so much for having me.
Michael Calore: Sure.
Lauren Goode: It's been a gas.
Michael Calore: Oh no. It's been an inductive loop. And thank you all for listening. If you have feedback, you can find all of us on Twitter. Just check the show notes. Our producer is Boone Ashworth, and we will be back next week. Until then, goodbye.
[Gadget Lab outro theme music plays]
