US considers BANNING gas stoves over rising concerns it causes health and ... trends now
The United States is considering banning all gas stoves over health concerns.
The US Consumer Product Safety Commission announced on Monday it plans to take action to address the pollution emitted by gas stoves, which have been linked to higher cases of asthma.
In a statement to Bloomberg News, Richard Trumka Jr., an agency commissioner called gas stoves a 'hidden hazard.'
He added that 'any option is on the table' and 'products that can't be made safe can be banned.'
The agency could also elect to set standards on emissions for gas stoves.
Toxins such as benzene, methane, nitrogen dioxide are produced when a gas range is used
The Consumer Product Safety Commission is now considering banning all gas stoves
The announcement comes on the heels of a new study that found that roughly one in eight cases of childhood asthma in the US are the result of air pollution given off by gas stoves.
This puts emissions from gas cooking at the same asthma risk level as breathing in secondhand smoke.
Asthma affects roughly six million US children each year and nearly 13 percent of them get it from breathing in the myriad toxins that a gas stove belches out every day.
Findings from the team at the Rocky Mountain Institute in Colorado suggest that the roughly 35 percent of American homes that use gas stoves should mitigate the spread of toxins like nitrogen dioxide and benzene by switching to an electric induction stove.
Their research is the latest installment in a growing body that shows the danger of having a gas stove in the home, which can emit carcinogenic toxins that put people at risk of severe health effects.
Nearly 13 per cent of asthma cases in children on average can be blamed on the toxins produced by gas ranges. That is considerably higher in several states for which data was available including California, Illinois, New York, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania
Brady Seals, manager of the carbon free buildings program at RMI who led the research said: ‘The PAF [population attributable fraction] calculation is a common epidemiological tool that can help show us what reduction we would see if the risk factor was removed/reduced to an ideal scenario. In this case, getting rid of gas stoves could reduce the proportion of childhood asthma by 12.7%.’
The researchers from Colorado as well as Australia and New York analyzed the risk posed to children from gas emissions and the proportion of American households that have gas stoves, concluding that having the stoves greatly
