Highlights: A study this summer found that using a single gas stove burner on high can raise levels of cancer-causing benzene above what’s been observed from secondhand smoke.
A new investigation by NPR and the Climate Investigations Center found that the gas industry tried to downplay the health risks of gas stoves for decades, turning to many of the same public-relations tactics the tobacco industry used to cover up the risks of smoking. Gas utilities even hired some of the same PR firms and scientists that Big Tobacco did.
Earlier this year, an investigation from DeSmog showed that the industry understood the hazards of gas appliances as far back as the 1970s and concealed what they knew from the public.
It’s a strategy that goes back as far back as 1972, according to the most recent investigation. That year, the gas industry got advice from Richard Darrow, who helped manufacture controversy around the health effects of smoking as the lead for tobacco accounts at the public relations firm Hill + Knowlton. At an American Gas Association conference, Darrow told utilities they needed to respond to claims that gas appliances were polluting homes and shape the narrative around the issue before critics got the chance. Scientists were starting to discover that exposure to nitrogen dioxide—a pollutant emitted by gas stoves—was linked to respiratory illnesses. So Darrow advised utilities to “mount the massive, consistent, long-range public relations programs necessary to cope with the problems.”
These studies didn’t just confuse the public, but also the federal government. When the Environmental Protection Agency assessed the health effects of nitrogen dioxide pollution in 1982, its review included five studies finding no evidence of problems—four of which were funded by the gas industry, the Climate Investigations Center recently uncovered.
Karen Harbert, the American Gas Association’s CEO, acknowledged that the gas industry has “collaborated” with researchers to “inform and educate regulators about the safety of gas cooking appliances.” Harbert claimed that the available science “does not provide sufficient or consistent evidence demonstrating chronic health hazards from natural gas ranges”—a line that should sound familiar by now.
Induction stoves are still pretty expensive, and resistance electric stoves suck ass.
Do they? I’d check out Technology Connections videos on the subject. A couple more seconds to boil water is worth not inhaling whatever junk byproducts of combustion.
Induction is cheap as shit nowadays, and faster, so no-one should install new gas stoves. When renovating I ripped out my gas line.
HOWEVER I completely disagree with Alec on resistive electric stoves being “fine”. They’re terrible. They have ENORMOUS thermal inertia. He says “just move the pan off the heater”, but that doesn’t take into account that just getting a pan to the correct temperature is much harder on resistive electric. It takes forever to heat up an empty pan, but if you wait until the food is cooking to turn down the heat, it’s already too late and your food will be overcooked. Frying an egg is the worst, by the time that the pan is hot you gotta kill the heat entirely or the egg will be burnt so there is no margin for adjustment. Ugh. With induction it’s so much easier, you can just adjust the heat based on how the egg is frying and the pan will actually cool down or heat up enough that the egg will come out alright.
I mean sure depending on ventilation and personal opinions on air quality then resistive may be favorable over gas, but if I’m honest, if induction didn’t exist I’d probably take my chances with cancer.
You know I wonder to what extent that is about people having old electric stoves that have bang on bang off resistive electric coils rather than like, a tuned consistent current coil that heats up and stays hot at a temperature. Cause the bang on bang off coil is probably going to have more thermal inertia, or, you’d want more thermal inertia, for a more consistent heat. I dunno about the thermal inertia of the coil in general, though, I’ve definitely cooked on shitty enough electric stoves that just an egg, butter, and a nonstick pan will cook for like 3 seconds, go back to being off for a minute, and then the coil will heat up and cook the egg for another 3 seconds, which is fuckin crazy, that shit blows.
I don’t see how resistive is any different from gas in that respect.
I’m not particularly on any side of this discussion, but gas is a lot more responsive in terms of temperature changes than a resistive hob.
You can go from full to lowest and that change will apply to the pan pretty much immediately. As the other person said, there’s thermal inertia with the element of a resistive hob, it’s going to take a bit of time to cool to a lower temperature
You don’t see how turning down a gas burner will lower the temperature in a pan faster than waiting for a red hot spiral of metal to cool off?
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Limited sample size, but Technology Connections did a great video where gas wasn’t even particularly better at boiling water. It looks like it should be because FIRE, but you get into a mess of needing to very carefully match pots to burners.
Also, look in to an electric kettle for water. Even a shitty american voltage kettle is awesome relative to putting a kettle on the stove.
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For acknowledgement, I always do the same thing with the kettle.
I also love TC, and have seen this one too!
And, if that wasn’t enough, I even agree with you on the last part.
Now, what do we discuss?
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Eh. Unless you ACTUALLY get a restaurant grade set up (not just the expensive stuff with Bobby Flay branding), that tend to actually need real range hoods and so forth, you are, at best, cosplaying being a restaurant chef. At the consumer grade, the BTU differences are mostly a matter of branding over technology. And the responsiveness is almost universally beat by induction.
Don’t get me wrong. I am a sicko with a propane burner in his backyard for when I want to make a night out of my stir fry (or season some cast iron/carbon steel).
But I’ve had gas burners and electric burners over the decades and have even had the opportunity to cook in restaurant kitchens on occasion (the joys of being friends with people having millennial weddings…).
Speed to boil water is not at all the selling point of gas.
It’s speed and precision of temperature control.
Coils stay hot. When you turn the gas off, the heat is off RIGHT NOW. When you turn it on it’s on RIGHT NOW.
Many coils pulse full heat to simulate different heat levels. Gas gives you very precise control over exact heat levels and it is instantly responsive to change.
I’m not here to argue about the possible health concerns, I don’t know anything about that and would need to read more. But people who argue electric ranges are just as effective as gas simply haven’t cooked as much. I’m certain of this because I used to think that too until I switched to gas. Gas is plainly better.
I’ve heard great things about induction and maybe that’s the way I’ll go next. Not sure yet. I’m certainly curious.
You’ve got the precision factor backwards. Gas is a clear loser on that.
When you have knob levels 0—9, if you set the knob to 3 on electric you get exactly ½ the heat energy that you get from level 6. It’s perfectly linear. This is not true in the slightest with gas. A gas flame is non-linear as you go from 0 to 9. All you can do is eye-ball the flame and guess. Even when you have a flame size in mind, it’s not reproduceable because you’re still eye-balling it every time. You can’t trust the levels on a gas knob either because they’re so non-linear that you can get a big flame difference in certain points along the scale.
Gas also has less precision of control because of the reduced range at both ends. The lowest possible gas setting is still too hot for some tasks. So the best you can do is manually mimic the pulsing of electric by turning the burner off and reigniting periodically. The highest temp on gas is also less than the highest temp electric can achieve.
The only “precision” task that gas wins at is at the zero (off) level, and speed, AFAICT, which is related to precision. Both of those factors can be discarded for the most part when comparing induction because it adjusts temp demand fast enough.
I appreciate your well mathed response, but this is a classic example of using a numbers argument where the eye test should prevail. It’s like people who play fantasy sports and argue that advanced stats prove a player who sucks, is actually good.
I don’t at all think in the terms you are thinking of when I cook. I’m not looking at the flames. I’m not looking for “exactly half” when I drop the temp. I’m cooking, and watching the food I make react. Sometimes I need to raise or drop the temp just a tiny bit, and I can do that with excellent speed and resolution of change with gas. Electric pulses do not offer this. Every electric stove I have ever used is absolutely terrible at making small quick adjustments of heat. I am not thinking about the exact percentage by which I want to raise or lower it, and getting concerned about whether it’s exactly right. I’m not concerned about the linearity of change (although honestly if I’m thinking of it, my gas stove’s heat range feels fairly linear to me). I am doing this by intuition or feel, and by watching what I’m cooking to see that it is doing what I want.
Also I have no idea what you mean about gas being too hot at its lowest setting. I have never encountered this in many years of cooking. Mine goes low enough that I can keep a sauce warm without stirring without it sticking. I have however, many times encountered food that scorched because the electric coils stayed hot for 15 minutes after being turned off.
Ultimately, I probably incorrectly used the word precision. Someone who is a superior wordsmith may be able to direct me to the correct verbage.
Induction stoves get cheaper and cheaper every year.
Also? It is mostly just the old exposed metal coil resistive stoves that were horrible. You know, the one we all had growing up where you had to poke the coil with a fork until it made connection again so that it would heat up.
Pretty much any glass top resistive electric stove (so anything made in the past two decades or so?) is fine. Very easy to clean, much less prone to damage, and gets pretty hot pretty fast. You aren’t getting “wok hei” for all the cantonese stir frying you do but… you aren’t getting that with a gas stove either unless you have an ACTUAL restaurant setup (no, not just the expensive options at the Lowes) which tend to have very specific ventilation requirements too… If you want to go all out with your wok, get an outdoor propane burner.
Now, I do actually think the drawback to resistive heating staying hot is a lot bigger than “just pick up the pot”. Not when I am making a weeknight meal for myself. But when I am cooking a larger meal for a date night or having friends over and am using multiple burners? I don’t really have anywhere to put the pot. But that is also incredibly “first world problems” of “I have too much food”
I actually prefer the coils. The glass-top ones are never as easy to clean as they claim, and the glass between the burner and the pot reduces heat transfer and causes them to heat up even slower. With the coil-type the pot is resting on the heater, which means maximum heat transfer via conduction.
Another problem is that the cooktop stays very hot after you take it off the heat. With gas and induction the heat stops instantly, but I’ve burned a lot of food because I misjudged how long it takes for a resistive burner to cool down. And the glass tops are again worse because they have a lot more thermal mass than a coil.
Induction solves all of these problems, though. Heat is controllable and instant, and the cooktop cools down very quickly.
The glass in-between makes them heat up much faster, it is the whole point actually. It is IR transparent, so only the heating element itself has to heat up to get things started. Then only a bit of insulation (next to no mass) has to heat up to get things to nearly 100 %.
I have also never heard or seen this glass being harder to clean than any other type of stove, which are a pain to clean in comparison.
The glass is definitely more of a pain to clean. It’s easy enough to get stuff off, but visually you can see any streaks or missed corners much more than an enamel stovetop.
Sucks less ass than cancer.
I’ll die of old age waiting for a resistive electric burner to boil water.
It is getting better, we got ours for a little more than $1,000, but electric stoves are dirt cheap. 1/3rd to 1/2 the price.
Induction stoves are not expensive at all.
I always blame my tools when I have no experience using them.
They’re different. You’ll be fine.
I do have experience with gas, induction, and traditional electric and can say with confidence that cooking on traditional electric sucks ass. Induction is good though and I’d say it’s on par with gas if you have the right pans.
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Cast iron works fine on induction though
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Maybe. And typically I don’t lift a pan that’s cooking, even on gas.
Cast iron is perfectly fine on induction. And no you wont scratch the glass with it. And yes you can lift it.
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Resistance electric stoves can only get to about 1600 degrees. Gas stoves get to well over 3400. You can’t get a good a sear out of resistance electric, and water takes forever to boil.
My next stove is going to be induction, though I will have a propane burner for when I really need to char something.
And I’m sure you’ll be horrified to know that I have a charcoal grill like some kind of caveman.
You use the charcoal grill outside where the fumes easily disperse. A gas stove releases the pollution directly into your living space, where it hangs around. They’re not comparable.