Several scientific articles have gone viral saying that gas stoves should be extinguished because they can cause different respiratory diseases, especially in children. What is true about that?
Its premise is clear: the combustion of gas in domestic kitchens generates harmful compounds for respiratory health such as nitrogen dioxide, carbon monoxide and fine particles. The publication, which concludes that 13% of childhood asthma cases may be due to gas stoves (the same percentage as living with a smoker), was put forward by Richard Trumka Jr., commissioner of the United States federal agency for Consumer Safety, in an interview for Bloomberg in which he considered that gas stoves are ‘a hidden danger’.
What’s more, Trumka put on the table the possibility of banning gas stoves both for public health reasons and for ecological reasons, since gas is, after all, a fossil fuel whose extraction and combustion is highly polluting. “It will be applied to new products,” the commissioner later qualified for CNN.
The high rate of asthma in the US (1 in 12 people are diagnosed with this respiratory disease) worries the authorities, who have gone directly to consumers’ homes to look for one of the causes of the problem. The hypersensitivity of the respiratory system of people affected by asthma makes them more reactive to the high concentrations of toxic gases that may remain in their homes if the kitchens are not properly ventilated. However, the data may not be correlated: it is estimated that only 38% of US homes have gas stoves, with significant differences between states such as California or New Jersey, where it reaches 70%.
In the European Union, more than 100 million citizens cook with gas. Specifically, a third of Spaniards and more than half of Italian, Dutch, Romanian and Hungarian households do so, according to a report by the NGO Alliance for European Public Health (EPHA). The organization, along with 14 other associations, signed a letter addressed to the executive vice-president of the European Commission, Frans Timmermans, and to the Commissioner for Energy, Kadri Simson, to proceed with the gas stoves in the same way as the US. is raised: withdraw them from the market.
For Xavier Querol, an air quality expert and director of the EGAR group at IDAE-CSIC, the key is to make a global assessment of the situation. “The kitchen is one of the sources of contamination that is generated inside the houses. Gas stoves, when burning this fuel, emit many polluting particles, such as ultrafine particles and nitrogen oxide. However, frying on an electric stove also generates many volatile organic substances that are polluting”.
The dangers due to the accumulation of gases would be reduced with proper ventilation of the kitchen space, either through an extractor hood or simply by opening a window or door to the outside during and after the use of the stove. “The solution is to have a good extractor hood to get rid of these substances and also ventilate.” Querol advises the ventilation of houses not only because of the pollutants that can be produced in the kitchen, but because other objects in the houses, such as carpets and curtains, treated with fire retardants, the paint on the walls themselves and even detergents, They also generate a series of pollutants that are harmful to humans.
“Every time society develops more, a longer life expectancy is acquired and that is why it is important to reduce exposure to pollution: there is no use having a long life expectancy if we are sick and suffering. We must take into account that we spend 90% of the time indoors, that 5% of the time we are in itinere, that is, moving from home to work or school, and that only the quality of the other 5% of the remaining time in which we are abroad is really regulated by law. Pollution is generated and infiltrates our homes, and for this reason it is necessary to avoid exposing yourself as much as possible.
For catering professionals, who spend long working days in the kitchen, this is also a fact to take into account, both due to exposure to harmful particles and the extra heat emitted by gas stoves, which can increase the temperature of a kitchen at full capacity to unbearable degrees.
Although, while professional kitchens have always preferred the use of gas hobs, it now seems that electric LE hobs are gaining ground. From Sehrs Equipments, the kitchen equipment distribution line of the Sehrs company, they affirm that they currently sell almost as many electric stoves as gas stoves to their customers, who range from small bars to large kitchens in clinics or hotels.
