About 47 million homes use natural gas or propane-burning cooktops and ovens. Stanford researchers found that cooking with gas stoves can raise indoor levels of the carcinogen benzene above those found in secondhand smoke.

Is this one of those things we will look back at from the future and say: “I can’t believe that we did that?” like leaded fuel?

  • jaderoEnglish
    3·
    1 year ago

    While waiting for electricity, cook outside on a BBQ or camp stove as much as possible and open windows for a cross draft when cooking inside.

    Once you have electricity, make sure you have a properly installed range hood that vents to the outside. Turn that fan on before lighting the stove and let it run for a little bit after.

    I remember reading somewhere that that deals with the vast majority of the issue.

    You can help out the range hood by using the back burners as much as possible.

    You can reduce the use of the stove quite dramatically with an electric kettle, a microwave, and things like crock pots, toaster ovens, and electric frying pans.

    One note on the BBQ: my wife does virtually all of her baking (breads, cakes, muffins, etc) on the BBQ, weather permitting.

    We are also in the middle of nowhere. While we’ve always had power, it was only recently upgraded from 30 amp service to “real” power.

    I hope your stove is one that runs without pilot lights. Pilot lights suck a lot of propane, and would have a proportional effect on emissions. When we switched away from pilot lights, out propane use went down from about 350 pounds a year to 250 or less.