It’s 2006. I’m deep in the throes of an obsession with home makeover shows, and I’m ready to move in with my husband-to-be. Our new home probably won’t have the fancy granite countertops or stainless steel appliances that I covet, but it will most certainly have a gas stove, thank you very much.
The flames, so primal! The knobs, so hefty! The grill top, so sophisticated.
Everywhere we’ve lived since those early days of fossil-fueled domestic bliss has had a gas stove. But I’m rethinking the smug meals I’ve prepared on them, because I’ve been bamboozled into thinking they are the height of function and elegance, and that they run on "clean" natural gas.
But gas stoves are to the modern American kitchen as long cigarettes are to actresses with unplaceable European accents in black-and-white movies: Long on style, short on health.
Until now, little was known about what chemicals zipped through pipelines criss-crossing the country into our homes. Our research released today—Home is Where the Pipeline Ends—is the first to look at the chemical makeup of “natural” gas in homes, and found 21 chemicals designated as hazardous by EPA, some of which are linked to asthma, cancer, and poor birth outcomes. We also learned that small leaks can be undetectable by smell and concentrations are 8x higher in winter vs. summer.
Now I’m thinking back to my son’s childhood asthma with a giant, uncomfortable question mark: Not only did I use our stove with wild abandon, but I didn’t turn on the exhaust fan because it was loud and cooking to 70's soft rock sparks joy. Though it’s impossible to pinpoint the cause, I still wish I’d known.
But big problems come with big solutions. In this issue we’ll explore what we can do to protect our health and explore initiatives that will help speed up the transition to healthier, greener living.
