Unless it's 115F outside or driving rain sideways onto the window, it's almost always wise to crack a window when cooking. Food throws off a ton of stuff, smoke and various compounds.
There’s also an education and awareness aspect to this! If you’re aware of the risks, by all means get a gas stove and vent properly. However I bet the vast majority of Americans are unaware of the risks and their ventilation systems inadequacy
In theory.
In 2014, a group of researchers in Baltimore ran a study with 78 homes with gas stoves to understand the most effective ways to reduce indoor air pollution. In one group of homes, they replaced gas stoves with electric stoves: in this group, NO2 pollution levels fell by 50%. (Apparently the remaining NO2 probably came from cars and other sources of pollution outside). In another group of homes, they gave homeowners an air purifier with a carbon filter and NO2 levels fell by 22%. In the last group, they installed range hoods: in this final group they found no significant difference in NO2 pollution.
* https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24329966/
LBNL found that range hoods sometimes captured only 55% of pollutants like NO2:
* https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22044446/
Another study found it 30%:
* https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/es3001079
Even with range hoods, results can vary even for the same range, see (e.g.):
> These studies found that for many range hoods, [capture efficiency] is much higher for the back than for the front cooktop burners.
* https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03601...
* https://phys.org/news/2012-05-kitchen-exhaust-fans-vary-effe...
Some gas stoves leak pollution even when they are turned off (are you planning to run a vent 24/7?):
* https://sustainability.stanford.edu/news/climate-and-health-...
Of course blaming ventilation is a standard go-to response from industry:
> “Ventilation is really where this discussion should be, rather than banning one particular type of technology,” said Jill Notini, a vice president with the Washington-based [Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers] trade group. “Banning one type of a cooking appliance is not going to address the concerns about overall indoor air quality. We may need some behavior change, we may need [people] to turn on their hoods when cooking.”
* https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/us-safety-agency-to-consider-ban...
It's probably a lot easier to prevent pollution in the first place as compared to dealing with it after the fact.
It certainly is but if someone’s informed they’re the consenting adult to make the decision they want.
Interesting venting didn’t make a difference but an air purifier did - this definitely doesn’t sound intuitive to me. Maybe venting shouldn’t be implemented as a hood, but something closer to the burners themselves?
I'm not entirely certain what submarine captain is committed to eradicating natural gas stoves (probably some assumed angle around smearing natgas in the name of reducing emissions.
All of that notwithstanding, this article fails my spam filters on the basis of "think of the children!"
