I traveled around the developing world for more than a decade seeing and studying first-hand the damage that wood and charcoal do to the lungs of people – mostly women and children – who use it for cooking. Nearly half the world’s population cooks with solid fuels, and I was proud of my work to bring cleaner options and help prevent pneumonia, lung disease and other effects of breathing in smoke on a daily basis.
And when I got home from these trips, I would turn on my gas stove to cook meals – never once guessing that the invisible gas piped into my house, and its similarly invisible emissions, were also harmful.
The gas in our stoves is mostly methane, a short-lived but super-potent greenhouse gas with 100 times the climate-warming harm of carbon dioxide over a 10-year timeframe. When burned, methane converts to carbon dioxide, and burning gas in buildings for heating, cooling and cooking is responsible for about a tenth of the United States’ carbon emissions.
Burning natural gas also generates toxic pollutants in our homes, including nitrogen oxides. As documented in Health Effects from Gas Stove Pollution – a report I co-
— source theguardian.com | Brady Seals | 16 Sep 2021