New study finds gas stove can raise benzene

A new study has discovered that using a gas stove can raise indoor concentrations of benzene, a cancer-linked chemical, above what is found in secondhand smoking or even beyond levels found next to oil and gas facilities.

The survey, which measured benzene levels in 87 homes in California and Colorado, found that gas and propane stoves frequently emitted benzene at rates well above healthy benchmarks set by the World Health Organization and the US Environmental Protection Agency EPA. Leaving a single gas hob on for 45 minutes elevated benzene levels to higher than that found in secondhand tobacco smoking or at the boundary of oil and gas plants, with emissions 10 to 25 times higher than that from electric coil stoves. Even low-burning Hobs, or gas ovens, emit substantial levels of benzene. Induction stoves do not emit benzene at all, the researchers said.

Scientists at Stanford University are the first to use new monitors to accurately measure benzene in indoors, according to the peer-reviewed study. Even low doses of airborne benzene raise the risk of a variety of cancers, such as lymphomas and leukemia, by harming people's bone marrow. The levels of benzene can linger for six hours after a gas stove is turned off.

I am hard-pressed to think of a more powerful chemical effect of leukemia than benzene, said Jan Kirsch, a California-based oncologist who said people had in their homes a very potent cause of blood cell cancers.

People have died, undoubtably, from exposure to benzene in their homes, and unless this problem is ameliorated, people will continue to do so, Mr. Kirsch said. The idea is not to cause panic, but there are risks and we want to reduce them. It's important to spread this message to the general public, so we can understand and act on it. More than a third of Americans use gas stoves, although many lack proper ventilation to help reduce dangerous levels of benzene. Even when range hoods are used, their purpose is to simply circulation air around a residence instead of expel the harmful chemicals.

The result is that indoor air hazards often rival or even surpass the kind of outdoor air pollution that has been reduced by clean air regulations over the past 50 years.

Gas stoves are the only common fossil fuel appliances to vent pollution insides, said Stanford scientist Rob Jackson, who helped lead the new research. We would never willingly stand over the tailpipe of a car, breathing in its pollution, but we do willingly stand over our stoves, breathing in the pollution they emit.

The study was published earlier this year, which revealed that gas stoves are responsible for more than 12% of all childhood asthma cases in the United States, with separate research discovering that a series of different pollutants are expelled from gas stoves even after they are turned off.

Joe Biden's administration has tried to formulate efficiency standards for new stoves to lower such pollution, with around half of all stoves currently sold likely to fail the proposed safeguards. This has angered a political backlash, with Ron DeSantis, the Republican presidential candidate, seeking to avoid any sort of gas stove ban in Florida, the state in which he is governor. Several Republicans in the US House of Representatives and the Senate have pushed forward legislation that would ban gas stoves.

We should encourage the use of induction stoves, particularly in lower-income communities, he said.

We stopped cooking over coal a century ago in the US because gas is cleaner and today I believe we should eventually stop cooking over gas because electricity is cleaner.