Picture this: It’s 5:30 p.m. on Thanksgiving. On the stove, cranberry sauce is bubbling and potatoes are slowly turning tender enough to mash. The oven door opens and shuts again, a perfectly golden cornbread swapping places with an enormous turkey.
Folks start to arrive. Coming in from the cold, they’re surprised to see the kitchen windows wide open. However, the host knows something they don’t: with two gas burners and a gas oven running, the room will quickly fill up with harmful air pollution if it’s not ventilated.
She’d rather make everyone keep their sweaters on than allow unhealthy gasses to build up in her kitchen, especially with young kids running underfoot and elders stopping in to opine on her cooking.
This imaginary host’s concern about her gas appliances is based on very real evidence — including a new report from Beyond Gas DC, which found unhealthy levels of nitrogen dioxide in more than 60% of the kitchens they tested in D.C. and Montgomery County. Beyond Gas is a coalition of four local community and environmental groups that advocates for building electrification.
“Our homes should be a refuge,” Northeast resident Michelle Hall, a Beyond Gas volunteer from the Washington Interfaith Network, said in a press release. “But as this report shows, as long as residents continue to rely on burning dirty methane gas in homes, our health will be at risk.”
The “Cooking Up Danger” report, released Nov. 21, documents 663 home tests for nitrogen dioxide, or NO2. With the oven running and two burners on for 30 minutes, more than 400 of the kitchens tested had levels of NO2 higher than the Environmental Protection Agency’s health standard for one hour’s outdoor exposure.
Hidden Health Risks
A growing body of research links gas appliances to a wide range of health issues, including short-term and long-term respiratory issues.
Dr. Panagi Galiatsatos, a pulmonary physician and researcher at Johns Hopkins, said that poorly ventilated gas stoves can cause some of the same lung conditions commonly associated with cigarettes, such as COPD and emphysema. Particles can also enter the bloodstream, Galiatsatos said, which can increase risks for heart conditions like heart disease and hypertension.
“Cooking is all about keeping people healthy, right? We wash our hands after we touch the meat, and so forth,” said Galiatsatos. “Your lungs should not be sacrificed in this conversation.”
The oldest and the youngest people at the Thanksgiving table face additional risks from indoor air pollution — seniors because their immune systems tend to be weaker, and kids because their lungs are still growing.
Children living in households that use gas stoves for cooking are 42% more likely to have asthma than those in homes without gas appliances, a 2013 analysis published in the International Journal of Epidemiology found.
“Children’s lungs continue to develop into teenage years, and the best way to ensure those lungs have the best chance of being as healthy as they can be is making sure that those lungs are exposed to the best air [possible],” Galiatsatos said.
For Now, Ventilation Is Key
In some households tested by the Beyond Gas volunteers, the NO2 spilled out of the kitchen, with high levels registering even in families’ upstairs bedrooms. It could also take hours after cooking is over for the nitrogen dioxide to fully dissipate, according to the report.
Galiatsatos compared the problem to a sewage backup: with nowhere to go, the bad air just builds up — and people keep breathing it in.
While advocates note that switching from gas to electric appliances is best for indoor air quality, there are effective steps that families with gas stoves can take to protect their health.
The safest solution is to send the pollutants outdoors using a vent — but few homes actually have the equipment required to do so, and it’s particularly rare in older houses. While gas furnaces, water heaters and dryers are legally required to have a vent to the outside, gas ovens and cooktops are not. Many over-the-stove fans, like the kinds that come with microwaves, are made to catch grease; they can’t do anything to disperse pollutants.
That’s why Thanksgiving hosts (and everyday home cooks) should consider opening windows, using the vent fan if there is one, and putting a fan in the window to push gas fumes outdoors during and after stove use.
Richard Vilmenay, another Beyond Gas volunteer with the Washington Interfaith Network, said that since learning about the issue he turns on a fan and opens windows and his front door whenever he uses his gas stove. With his 4-year-old daughter’s lungs in mind, Vilmenay now relies heavily on his electric air fryer, and largely avoids using his oven.
He hopes the new report will help inform more people of the danger so that they can take similar steps.
“In this time of Thanksgiving, where there’s going to be so many families gathering together, often in kitchen, talking, preparing meals, sharing their time together — it’s so important,” Vilmenay said. “[We] can still have these family moments, right? But here’s just a few things that you can do differently that can help address this harm.”