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Gas.

Melissa Harris-perry: It's The Takeaway, I'm Melissa Harris-Perry, and we're coming in with some hotcakes on the recent fiery debate around gas stoves.

Speaker 1: The fire was lit after recent studies linked asthma with the use of gas stoves. A member of a federal consumer agency briefly suggested that perhaps the federal government might even ban them in newly built homes.

Melissa Harris-perry: Now, if you didn't hear it there on PBS NewsHour, you probably heard it everywhere else. I guess we're really cooking with gas now.

Cookin' with gas, cookin' with gas

We all cook better when we're cookin' with gas

Gas is so hot it's not on when it's off

It's the only way to cook, that's what I was taught

Now here's a fact you should have to know to pass

Nine out of ten chefs only cook with gas

"Why is that?" you say, "Can't I cook my way?"

The benefits we have to tell will really make you think

So listen,

Melissa Harris-perry: I got to admit, I love my gas stove. Talk of regulation had me feeling a bit like Charlton Heston.

Charlton Heston: From my cold, dead hands.

Rebecca Leber: You're definitely not alone in reacting that way.

Melissa Harris-perry: This is Rebecca Leber, a senior reporter at Vox who covers climate change. Rebecca's been reporting on the gas industry for years. What she's uncovered had me steaming.

Rebecca Leber: There's been this century of marketing around the gas stove. Today, I think we repeat a lot of these myths that first emerged as advertising. We think of them as facts now that the gas stove is the best and only way to cook. It's become this fashionable icon of our kitchens. It's amazing to trace back how much of this also appears in marketing from the industry going back decades. Some of the earliest examples I could find go back to the 1930s, when the gas industry hired comedian Bob Hope and came up with his catchphrase "cooking with gas" to mean you're really excelling, this is going above and beyond by cooking with gas.

Now, that's just a catchphrase that people use sometimes.

Melissa Harris-perry: I am usually pretty good at slicing these kinds of things out. I really read your reporting with my jaw on the floor. These are myths, not facts, that gas cooks better and faster and cleaner?

Rebecca Leber: There's a lot of debate here. First of all, it's a fossil fuel, so it's hard to argue that it's cleaner than any other form of cooking, but that's something again that emerged over time when the gas industry was competing with the likes of wood-fired stoves and coal-fired stoves. Gas did seem cleaner, but today, when you're comparing to electricity and its modern equivalent induction, that electricity might be coming from renewables, so it's hard to say burning a fossil fuel which emits methane and a bunch of other pollutants that are bad for the climate and health, it's hard to say that's any cleaner.

As far as the cooking myths go, I think there's a lot of debate out there. I've talked to professional chefs who are really split on this issue. Some remain loyal to the gas stove, but plenty really prefer induction, which uses magnets to conduct heat instead of traditional electric and the gas stove. Lots of chefs prefer that for its precision and other benefits like the cooktop doesn't get too hot.

Melissa Harris-perry: Why has this become such an issue recently?

Rebecca Leber: I'd like to clarify, there is no ban coming on gas stoves. The Biden administration has already said it will not pursue a ban, and neither will the Consumer Product Safety Commission. Backing up a commissioner for this agency that's actually independent of the White House said they were going to take a look at the gas stove and look at possible regulations around its safety and suggested a ban might be on the table. The agency quickly walked that back, so again, there's no ban coming. What we might see is more debate and regulation coming around the public health effects of the gas stove.

Melissa Harris-perry: Talk about some of those health effects.

Rebecca Leber: One of the most problematic pollutants that come from the gas stove is nitrogen dioxide. This is a pollutant we already know that it causes respiratory problems. We know this from decades of research on this pollutant outside. There's an increasing body of research on indoor pollution that gas appliances emit nitrogen dioxide at dangerously high levels. This is linked to all kinds of respiratory problems and linked to asthma. There was a recent study that linked the gas stove to about 13% of childhood asthma in the US.

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Melissa Harris-perry: More on the health effects of gas stoves right after this. It's The Takeaway, I'm Melissa Harris-Perry, and we're shedding light on the health risks and pollution caused by gas stoves. We're with VOX media senior reporter Rebecca Leber.

Rebecca Leber: The exact level of asthma that is linked to gas stoves is a bit up for debate, that was what the controversial finding of this recent study pointed to. The gas industry in response has said, "As long as you have proper ventilation, this isn't a problem, and we recommend ventilation." The problem is most people don't have adequate ventilation in their kitchens. They might not have a working range hood, they might just have a flimsy fan that recirculates that dirty air in the kitchen, or it might be broken or they don't even turn it on.

There's been this long disconnect even though the science has been clear on this for a long time. The public has been kept in the dark around these risks. I think when people are questioning, "Why didn't I know about this before?" It helps to look a bit at that past marketing and the gas industry's role in keeping consumers in the dark.

Melissa Harris-perry: Has the gas industry been playing a role in this most recent dust-up around these questions?

Rebecca Leber: The gas industry has been waging this fight in cities and states for a few years now because climate activists and public health advocates have been trying to electrify their buildings, basically by saying, "New construction should run on electricity instead of being hooked up to gas." The gas industry has responded very aggressively in some of these battles. We've seen this in California, Oregon, and New York. The state and cities have looked at electrifying. The gas industry has responded with consultants, PR campaigns, pointing to their own research contesting the health effects of the gas stove.

This is the first time we've really seen this fight nationalize. I think some of these battles that have already been going on at the state level, we're now going to see those attacks escalate at the national level.

Melissa Harris-perry: If you're a renter and your landlord puts in a gas appliance, what can you potentially do about that?

Rebecca Leber: I think this is a really important point because Republicans have argued, "Of course, the government shouldn't get involved because consumers should have a choice." Often when you rent, you don't have a choice, you're stuck with that gas stove regardless. I rent, and I have a gas stove. [chuckles] There are some things you can do, increase the ventilation in your space. You probably can't install a range hood because that requires construction, but at the very least if you have one, please use it. You can also open windows. Anything that just improves airflow of the space can help.

There's also plenty of things you can do to actually electrify your kitchen here. On the more extreme end, I've heard some success stories of renters going to their landlord and actually arguing for upgrades by pointing to the science. Even if you can't do that, or your landlord is not responsive, lots of people are turning to these plug-in induction stovetops. They're like hot plates that you just plug into an outlet, so very renter-friendly. You can even put that over your stove and just use that as you would a gas stove.

Again, this is induction, not that electric stove that people love to hate. It heats the pan directly. The pan gets hot, but not the stove top itself, and you don't get any of those gas byproducts of course. The benefit of those plug-in stove tops is that they tend to be a lot lower in cost. I would encourage people to look at their space in a few different ways, both to electrify and improve the airflow.

Melissa Harris-perry: What about all the other things in our households that might run on gas?

Rebecca Leber: Gas stoves are the most visible appliance, and there aren't regulations requiring any of that polluted air to be vented while furnaces and boilers tend to have more requirements of how they're vented outside. Of course, a lot of this depends on the upkeep, so you want to make sure that everything is tightly piped and ducted. When it comes to fireplaces, we are in a similar situation, that not all gas-powered fireplaces are vented to the outside either, so that's another area that people can be just getting straight gas and its byproducts into their home.

When we're talking about electrifying buildings, looking at all the ways to transition the home off of gas and connecting to a grid that's increasingly running on renewables, it's important to look at the whole picture because the gas stove is only using so much gas while your gas boiler and your furnace are probably the biggest offenders when it comes to its climate effect.

Melissa Harris-perry: That's exactly where I wanted to go next. What about the broader question of how these appliances are affecting the big blue marble we're all on together here?

Rebecca Leber: What's coming out of your gas stove is methane. Methane is a really powerful greenhouse gas pollutant. It's second after carbon dioxide in our most worrisome greenhouse gas because it can warm the atmosphere much faster than CO2. In the next 10 years, methane is really what is going to have the biggest climate effect. Gas appliances by using methane are contributing to the climate problem.

Buildings in the US are about 12% responsible for the US's greenhouse gas footprint. Gas appliances are the major offender here. The gas stove itself isn't using a ton of methane when you're looking at these other appliances like the boiler and furnace. Like I said, this is a package. [chuckles] If you're hooked up to gas for your cooking, you're probably hooked up in other ways.

Methane is a worrisome gas for climate change. Research in the last few years have pinpointed that cities are emitting larger quantities of methane than we would think, and that's probably coming from gas. A really interesting study that came out last year from Stanford looked at when the gas stove is off and it actually found that the gas stove can be always leaking methane if the pipes are not fully connected or the connections are loose, that it can just be 24/7 leaking methane into that atmosphere.

Melissa Harris-Perry: If I have definitely been the victim of conditioning at this point, is there a marketing campaign for the earth or for our lungs that might work to change our perspective on this?

Rebecca Leber: Yes, that's a really interesting question. The gas industry has certainly hired their own social media influencers to promote the gas stove. We've seen climate advocacy groups actually respond with their own campaigns. They have worked with chefs and one I interviewed for Vox appears in an ad talking about induction. I think there has been this social media campaign just to get the word out, that induction is the way of the future.

A lot of it for Americans is just getting the word out because we're less familiar with this technology, while it's so much more popular in other countries, there's a lot that people can do to talk to their friends and neighbors about their options. With inflation reduction act incentives rolling out now, I think there's going to be a real economic case that this is the cheapest way to go.

Rebecca Leber: Rebecca Leber, senior reporter at Vox covering climate. Thanks for being on The Takeaway.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Thank you.

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