As California Considers Warning Labels for Gas Stoves, Researchers Learn More About Their Negative Health Impacts

Ruth Ann Norton used to look forward to seeing the blue flame that danced on the burners of her gas stove. At one time, she says, she would have sworn that preparing meals with the appliance actually made her a better cook.

But then she started learning about the toxic gasses, including carbon monoxide, formaldehyde and other harmful pollutants that are emitted by stoves into the air, even when they’re turned off. 

“I’m a person who grew up cooking, and love that blue flame,” said Norton, who leads the environmental advocacy group known as the Green & Healthy Homes Initiative. “But people fear what they don’t know. And what people need to understand really strongly is the subtle and profound impact that this is having—on neurological health, on respiratory health, on reproductive health.”

In recent years, gas stoves have been an unlikely front in the nation’s culture wars, occupying space at the center of a debate over public health, consumer protection and the commercial interests of manufacturers. Now, Norton is among the environmental advocates who wonder if a pair of recent developments around the public’s understanding of the harms of gas stoves might be the start of a broader shift to expand the use of electrical ranges.

On Monday, lawmakers in the California Assembly advanced a bill that would require any gas stoves sold in the state to bear a warning label indicating that stoves and ovens in use “can release nitrogen dioxide, carbon monoxide, and benzene inside homes at rates that lead to concentrations exceeding the standards of the Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment and the United States Environmental Protection Agency for outdoor air quality.” 

The label would also note that breathing those pollutants “can exacerbate preexisting respiratory illnesses and increase the risk of developing leukemia and asthma, especially in children. To help reduce the risk of breathing harmful gases, allow ventilation in the area and turn on a vent hood when gas-powered stoves and ranges are in use.”

The measure, which moved the state Senate, could be considered for passage later this year.

“Just running a stove for a few minutes with poor ventilation can lead to indoor concentrations of nitrogen dioxide that exceed the EPA’s air standard for outdoors,” Gail Pellerin, the California assembly member who introduced the bill, said in an interview Wednesday. “You’re sitting there in the house drinking a glass of wine, making dinner, and you’re just inhaling a toxic level of these gases. So, we need a label to make sure people are informed.”

Pellerin’s proposal moved forward in the legislature just days after a group of Stanford researchers announced the findings of a peer-reviewed study that builds on earlier examinations of the public health toll of exposure to nitrogen dioxide pollution from gas and propane stoves.

The study, published in the journal Science Advances, found that gas stoves contribute to about 19,000 adult deaths each year and increase long-time exposure to nitrogen dioxide to 75 percent of the World Health Organization’s exposure guideline.

That last figure was one of the most significant findings by the research team, said the study’s lead author, Yannai Kashtan.

“It’s most important that people are aware of the risks and on the one hand, don’t freak out tomorrow, but also think seriously about indoor air pollution when they’re thinking about, ‘OK, you know, what’s my next appliance going to be?’” he added.

Researchers also found that people of color are disproportionately affected by the stoves. American Indian/Alaska Native households typically experience 60 percent more exposure to nitrogen dioxide than the national average. African American and Hispanic/Latino households record 20 percent more exposure than average.

“Poor people breathe dirtier air outdoors,” said Rob Jackson, a professor at Stanford’s Doerr School of Sustainability, who was the study’s senior author. “And if they own a gas stove, they breathe it indoors, too. 

“The same applies for various racial and ethnic groups that we identified, including Blacks, Hispanics, Native Americans,” he said. “Solutions are more difficult for poor people, people in public housing and in poor neighborhoods, for often renters can’t switch their appliances because they don’t own and can’t afford to do so. So they need help to breathe safer air indoors.”

Milagros Elia, who grew up in New York, not far from a community nicknamed “Asthma Alley” because of the many people who live with the ailment there, said gas stoves are a racial justice issue. The neighborhoods near her childhood home are where researchers have found some of the highest death and disease rates for asthma in America.

Elia, who is the program manager for Climate and Clean Energy Advocacy for the Alliance of Nurses for Healthy Environments, said the study confirms that gas stoves are a “threat to public health.”

And she notes that while New York has become the first state to ban gas stoves in many new buildings, “for the neighborhoods that I grew up in, there’s no policy that requires an update to happen.”

“Typically in the winter, for example if you’re not getting enough heat, what the community continues to do is simply open the oven and turn it on to heat the apartment,” said Elia, who is Hispanic. “Children are growing up in these apartments and in these homes and it is a legacy. Generation to generation, living in these neighborhood environments and building structures, we’re left with an inheritance of chronic illness.”

Another study author, Kari C. Nadeau, who is a doctor specializing in allergy, asthma and immunology in children and adults, said she believes the most important takeaway is “we care about the public’s health.”

“Just like when public health scientists found that seatbelts were able to reduce risk of injury in car accidents. And just like when public health researchers found cigarettes to be dangerous to our health, there are now many scientific studies, including our recent article, showing gas stoves are not healthy because of the indoor air pollution they create,” said Nadeau, who is chair of the Department of Environmental Health at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. “Therefore, we should focus on solutions to reduce indoor air pollution to try to protect children, pregnant women, the elderly, adults and public health in general.”

In the California General Assembly, Pellerin said that she hopes the legislature’s consideration of her bill requiring warning labels might lead to changes nationwide.

“We often hear, as goes California, so goes the nation,” she said. “We’re hoping that California leads the way on this and that other states will do the same.”