Gas stoves and indoor air quality-polluting when off?

January 15, 2023 6:06 AM

I've seen quite a few articles in the media about indoor air quality issues caused by gas stoves. It's easy to understand how the products of combustion might not be geat for indoor air quality, but muliple articles have claimed that stoves emit toxins when off. How is that possible? Today's article in the Guardian specifically mentions benzene.
posted by Larry David Syndrome to Home & Garden (10 answers total)

It depends partly on what the definition of "off" is. (Sorry.)

One thing that can happen is that a burner can be on without being lit. Gas is absolutely coming out of the stove and polluting the air, but not being burned off, which can actually be life-threatening. I had to put a cover on the inmost knob on my stove because twice I accidentally hip-checked it on.

I'm waiting for the rebates to come into play (I'm in the US) so I can get the thing replaced with electric. I'm not getting any younger, and I don't want to die from my gas range.
posted by humbug at 6:15 AM on January 15, 2023 [1 favorite]

This article mentions that unburned gas typically is not pure methane but could contain other VOCs like benzene. So an stove that leaks unburned gas may introduce these compounds into the house air.
posted by JoeZydeco at 6:40 AM on January 15, 2023 [1 favorite]

They are citing this one study from an environmental group that claims to have taken 185 natural gas samples from 159 homes from across California, and run analysis on all of them. They claim to have found benzene in 99% of the samples, and every gas stove leaks to a certain extent. The study, combined with previous estimates, shows that benzene may be undercounted.

However, the conclusion of the study was "This study supports the need to further improve our understanding of leaked downstream NG as a source of health risk."
posted by kschang at 6:43 AM on January 15, 2023 [3 favorites]

I'm not a chemist.

What I didn't see in the Guardian article was any note or comparison to how much benzene, etc, comes out of your turned off stove vs how much we happily put in our home from other sources.

Dry shampoo, spray antiperspirant, and body sprays all contain benzene.

Electronics duster and many inexpensive nail polishes contain toluene.

Air fresheners have commonly used toluene and xylene as propellant.

How many of these things do we willingly bring into our homes, spray into the air and put directly on our bodies, without so much as a blink.

Is having a gas stove in my home worse than using dry shampoo once a week? Once a month? I looked at several articles and all I could find in any of them as a comparison stat was "as much as one cigarette" and "living with a smoker" which aren't useful stats to me.

And yes there's an argument to be made for uh ok but isn't any benzene at all bad? Yes, of course. But I live in a city and I'm sucking in pollutants all day every day, so complete avoidance is literally impossible for me.

For now I'm going to worry about my gas stove exactly as much as I'm worrying about the pearl clutching lead in my dark chocolate, which is none.


Edit to add:
How is that possible?
They're saying it's leaking. Like seeping through your closed valves.
posted by phunniemee at 6:44 AM on January 15, 2023 [15 favorites]

The two obvious sources are pilot lights and leaks. Modern stoves don't have pilot lights, but many older stoves are still in service. And any appliance that uses gas can leak.

That's theoretical, though. It would be good to know if the actual sources of toxins have been identified.
posted by Winnie the Proust at 7:28 AM on January 15, 2023 [2 favorites]

Interesting in-depth thread about the methodology of how this paper calculated risk from an epidemiologist on Twitter.

https://twitter.com/gidmk/status/1613336168061632512?s=46&t=bod2rQxVe8C-nrPFW2jpgQ
posted by forkisbetter at 8:30 AM on January 15, 2023 [2 favorites]

This is just a social media thing that the link to forkisbetter linked to that I found also suspicious in the study. That said if your gas lines are leaking enough to harm you, you’d be seeing charges on your bill. The real problem are capped wells that leak gas like crazy and there are literally thousands of them. I’ve seen news programs take that data and equate it to your home.

Most older homes that have gas stoves are drafty enough it shouldn’t be a problem and if you can’t smell the sulphur they add to it to it to make it smell you definitely don’t have a problem. I’d worry much more about radon exposure to be honest.
posted by geoff. at 9:24 AM on January 15, 2023 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: To clarify, I was approaching the claim that gas stoves emit a meaningful amount of benzene when off from a position of scepticism, not alarm. The mercaptan odorant added to natural gas is detectable at such low concentrations that gas appliances have to seal pretty well to not produce a noticeable odor. I'll dig into the links and read more. Thanks to all who responded!
posted by Larry David Syndrome at 11:23 AM on January 15, 2023 [1 favorite]

My grandmother's home (built in the 1900s to 1920s in California) had a smell when I visited her, and I always thought it was "grandmother home" smell. She had a stove with a pilot light, and I later realized this was "stove pilot light smell." Whether it was hazardous or not, I can't say, but stoves with pilot lights definitely stink up the place. Gas water heaters do too, but to a lesser extent since these are vented.
posted by soylent00FF00 at 4:31 PM on January 15, 2023 [1 favorite]

I started running the range hood fan, whenever I cook, or bake. I don't preheat my oven. I have pilotless ignition. My gas floor heater is new and the combustion compartment is sealed, and it has an out door flue, but it runs on a pilot light. I do feel this in my lungs if I run it too warmly. We passed the coldest part of the winter, and already I run it less. I turn it off at night. The fossil fuel lobby is already all over this, using the NRA's cold dead hands script to drum up emotion against getting rid of gas stoves. One trouble is that property managers plunk down a new stove, but they don't tune them to make sure they are burning cleanly. I turn off the floor heater pilot once I stop heating my place.
posted by Oyéah at 3:52 PM on January 16, 2023