Indoor Pollution from Gas Stoves

[cqaigy2]

^^^^
I agree about the plastic bags, although like milk jugs they seem to be building them more and more flimsy. I never recycle mine because as you say, there always seems to be another use for them first. I"ve brought them to the local farm stand and to the used book store I used to frequent, as trash bags and a myriad of other purposes. I do wish there was a way to recycle all of the grain bags I generate in summer though; I do reuse some for trash but not as many as I generate, and it seems like a waste to throw them out.

I know that feeling, like, i say to myself, man that cardboard box is sure a good box, i wonder if i can use it for something, or that's a nice glass jar. I missed the plastic bags at first, used them in all kinds of ways. But what i don't miss, is those same bags blowing around the country side. And something i didn't really think about, but most of that plastic breaks down after time, even if its a long time, which seems like a plus, but apparently it just breaks down into smaller plastic pieces that get taken up by all kinds of organisms. You can see all kinds plastic crap on ocean beaches and other places you never used to see it. So do we raise the price of plastic stuff to pay for keeping it out of the environment, or do we replace it with more expensive stuff?

 

[ultrarunner]

San Jose just restricted new gas installations...

In time I'm sure it will go nationwide as did smog controls for cars...

 

[grsthegreat]

i have a good range hood over gas stove that vents outside. you can see steam and smoke (if any) get drawn up hood. hold a piece of paper there and it gets sucked up. my wood stove has outside combustion air. so not worried in the least.

 

[rademamj1]

Jspsnng: Thanks for the link to national forestry data. I did read it with enthusiasm. So I must question what drove the huge national environmental strategy to move away from paper to plastics in the 70s and 80s. It certainly was not done to save national forests, which were mainly in a period of new recovering growth.

 

[5030]

I don't like electric stoves, so I have a gas stove. The hood over it is vented, (outside) so I don't see any problem with it at all.

It's all my dad/mom had, and dad did a lot of the cooking and still lived to be over 100. lol

SR

Only 'gas' here is what comes out my rear end (least in the house. Not about to implicate my wife in that as she may read my comment...

 

[RickB]

Burning was also a common way to clear land for farmland, much of which has since reverted back.

With good reason in many instances.

 

[ultrarunner]

Jspsnng: Thanks for the link to national forestry data. I did read it with enthusiasm. So I must question what drove the huge national environmental strategy to move away from paper to plastics in the 70s and 80s. It certainly was not done to save national forests, which were mainly in a period of new recovering growth.

It was the Save Trees movement... people tree sitting to protect and spiking trees very common back then.

It was a whole movement Not to use paper and billboards showed how many trees would be saved using plastic...

Maybe the Plastic Guys were behind it?

 

[gsganzer]

I take every study I read with a grain of salt these days. I'm not a science nay-sayer, but it seems so many of these studies are ultimately funded by an interest group that has cherry picked data that supports their argument, while downplaying data that opposes it. Or make tenuous links between cause and effect that feed more on people fears of it being so, than the actual evidence suggests.

 

[ericm979]

I have a hand held air pollution monitor that measures PM and formaldehyde among other things. But not NO2.

I can leave it running next to the propane stove, turn on a burner and there's no change (from essentially zero in non wildfire season). Actually cooking of course can put a bunch of stuff in the air depending on what and how you're cooking. But that's the same for any stove technology.

This study could be using more accurate air quality meters than the cheap one I have but mine would have to be really inaccurate to be missing all the PM2.5 and formaldehyde that they say gas stoves produce. Perhaps my stove burns cleaner than theirs. Or my sampling method was flawed.

 

[gsganzer]

I have a hand held air pollution monitor that measures PM and formaldehyde among other things. But not NO2.

I can leave it running next to the propane stove, turn on a burner and there's no change (from essentially zero in non wildfire season). Actually cooking of course can put a bunch of stuff in the air depending on what and how you're cooking. But that's the same for any stove technology.

This study could be using more accurate air quality meters than the cheap one I have but mine would have to be really inaccurate to be missing all the PM2.5 and formaldehyde that they say gas stoves produce. Perhaps my stove burns cleaner than theirs. Or my sampling method was flawed.

I used to perform source emissions sampling (stack testing) and currently work with SCR systems on power generation and other combustion sources. I wouldn't expect any particulate from natural gas, but I would expect NOx (NO and NO2) and CO and CO2. I'm not sure about formaldehyde. However, in a normally functioning house, is the amount generated from a cooking appliance going to be enough to be an issue? Because almost every other gas appliance (water heater, furnace, gas dryer) has it's combustion gases vented to the outdoors.

I did some reading from various sources and I suspect the issue (and probably the underlying purpose of the study) is to get legislation in place to ban the use of gas in residential applications as part of a wider "climate change" agenda for CO2 emissions.
Just my :2cents: