Guest essay by Eric Worrall

Hobgoblins in your kitchen, to frighten you into switching to a climate friendly electric cooker.

Your Natural Gas Stove Is Fueling Climate Change And Harming Your Health—And It’s Worse Than Scientists Thought

Jeff Kart
Contributor Sustainability

For those of us who enjoy cooking meals with natural gas, there’s a warning from scientists at Stanford University. 

You may have heard that natural gas stoves generate carbon dioxide by burning natural gas as a fuel. It makes sense. 

But natural gas stoves also leak unburned methane into the air, a greenhouse gas that’s 86 times as potent as carbon dioxide (CO2) over a 20-year period. Researchers found that this leaking has a climate impact comparable to the carbon dioxide emissions from a half-million cars. 

Home methane leaks contribute to a third as much warming as the carbon dioxide generated by combustion during cooking. Gas stoves also can expose users to respiratory, disease-triggering pollutants like nitrogen oxides (NOx).

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Read more: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffkart/2022/01/27/your-natural-gas-stove-is-fueling-climate-change-and-harming-your-health-and-its-worse-than-scientists-thought/?sh=718329222c63

Food chemistry is great fun if you don’t enjoy peace of mind. Nitrous oxides and nitric acid produced from gas flames is nothing compares to what happens to the food IN the cooker. Frying is especially naughty – deep frying at high temperatures, and likely pan frying, creates dioxane and acrylamide, and a host of other chemical nasties.

Of course, if you think about all this too much, the worry is more likely to kill you than any actual toxins in your food. Stress is bad for your heart.

You know what? I think I’ll keep my gas cooker, and keep enjoying life.