One thing I learned from the california wildfires, after buying an indoor air quality monitor, was that doing something as innocuous as baking a pizza in an ELECTRIC oven was enough to spike the AQI PM 2.5 air quality to 400, briefly (15 min) in our 1200 sq ft unit. In the bay area PM2.5 outdoors usually hovers between 5 and 35, with 75 being roughly when haze is noticeable at longer distances. 300+ is what happens when certain international cities have days-long fireworks festivals. I was measuring 400 with an electric oven cooking a frozen pizza from safeway.<p>Unless it's 115F outside or driving rain sideways onto the window, it's almost always wise to crack a window when cooking. Food throws off a ton of stuff, smoke and various compounds.
There’s no way around the production of combustion byproducts, but as the article states this is managed with proper ventilation - something that most builders skimp on. With the current focus on tight air envelopes, this might actually get worse compared to our older leakier way of building and sealing homes.<p>There’s also an education and awareness aspect to this! If you’re aware of the risks, by all means get a gas stove and vent properly. However I bet the vast majority of Americans are unaware of the risks and their ventilation systems inadequacy
Does anyone know of residential range hoods where the motor is at the top of the stack rather than in the kitchen? I’d love to have a whopper of a motor but outside my house rather than the current in-kitchen options which seem to be either (a) powerful but so loud you can’t think or (b) ineffective but quiet
This particular pearl-clutching trigger always comes down to "poor people with poor ventilation in their kitchens", which is a banal conclusion and so obviously not newsworthy.<p>I'm not entirely certain what submarine captain is committed to eradicating natural gas stoves (probably some assumed angle around smearing natgas in the name of reducing emissions.<p>All of that notwithstanding, this article fails my spam filters on the basis of "think of the children!"