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How harmful are gas stoves? Their use causes 40,000 deaths per year

2024-10-29 11:35:39Kosova&Bota SHKRUAR NGA REDAKSIA VOX

How harmful are gas stoves? Their use causes 40,000 deaths per year

Gas stoves are contributing to the early deaths of around 40,000 Europeans a year, the first scientific study of its kind has concluded. For nearly 50 years, the world has been aware of the dangers of nitrogen dioxide (NO2) emitted by gas stoves. Now researchers at the Jaume I University School of Health Sciences in Spain have estimated the annual death toll by linking existing health studies to NO2 readings in European homes.

They found that in 14 European countries, dangerous conditions are created inside the average home, as fumes from gas stoves combine with background pollution to break World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines. Around a third of European homes cook with gas, and it is these homes that tend to have the highest levels of NO2.

Italy, Poland, Romania, France and the UK suffer the highest proportion of premature deaths caused by gas stoves. Pollution is worst in poorly ventilated homes and those that spend longer cooking. Indoor air quality is a serious health issue because Europeans spend almost all of their time indoors and buildings get less fresh air as homes are designed to be more airtight. Gas stoves have also been found to leak methane, a potent greenhouse gas, even when they are turned off.

As for outdoor pollution, NASA has recorded significant decreases in NO2 pollution over European cities in recent decades thanks to EU rules on vehicle emissions and vehicle technology. But background pollution remains a major contributor to the dangerous levels found by the new study. This study could be an important breakthrough in our understanding of the human health costs of gas cooking. The researchers used dozens of health studies that had determined the potential rates of asthma risk and premature death caused by a given level of NO2.

Previous studies could not apply risk rates to the real world until last year, when Dutch researchers took extensive measurements of NO2 inside and outside homes in many European countries to produce the most accurate picture of indoor pollution from gas stoves . The university used government datasets to scale these findings to produce regional maps of indoor NO2 pollution from stoves. These allowed the researchers to calculate the first scientific estimates of premature deaths and cases of childhood asthma from NO2 in Europe.

However, the true human cost of gas stove pollution is likely to be significantly higher. The lack of data meant the researchers had to rule out some effects of pollution that may also contribute to higher death and asthma rates. And they only focused on NO2 pollution because it is well studied by epidemiologists. Other harmful pollutants created by burning gas include carbon monoxide, benzene, formaldehyde and particulate matter. The researchers say they lacked the data needed to accurately predict the impact of these pollutants.

Using a less precise method, they estimate that gas stoves cause approximately 367,000 cases of asthma in children and 726,000 in all age groups, including these other pollutants, excluding carbon monoxide, which has no known link. with asthma. The EU has no indoor air quality standards and its legislative tools to tackle the problem are unclear, according to the European Public Health Alliance (EPHA). The bloc will propose updated rules for gas stoves later this year and has taken into consideration pollution limits including NO2.

The EPHA is urging Brussels to quickly phase out gas ovens through emissions restrictions, along with introducing financial incentives to switch to cleaner stoves. Just as governments helped citizens quit smoking, the EPHA argues that they should also help us quit gas. The alliance also wants to see mandatory consumer labels on stoves to signal the dangers of pollution, coupled with public education campaigns on the dangers of burning fuels indoors.


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