This is a legitimate concern. What we do is monitor the outdoor air quality, open the windows when it's good, close them when it's bad, and skip the air filters inside unless indoor air quality is measured to be bad. Which only happens during wildfires as our house is modern and pretty well sealed.
Once our children are past the age of 10 or so we will probably go back to running air filters all the time. But the early years are crucial for immune system development and lack of exposure to the natural environment in early years is likely to be one of the biggest reasons for the rise in allergic diseases.
If you get a particle meter you quickly learn that the biggest source of particulate isn't gas but cooking (and especially lightly burning) food. The slightest smell of smoke means your home is going to be like (insert terrible air quality city) for a few minutes to a few hours depending on filtration.
One of the worst sources of this is the fact that so few places have real vent fans above cooking surfaces (the sucking through the microwave business does essentially nothing).
Combustion products from gas stoves are specifically implicated in asthma. Children in houses with gas stoves have asthma at higher rates and the effect is not small. People with electric stoves cook too, but their children get less asthma.
Perhaps the higher heat has something to do with it. I still suspect that not all particulates are made equal, so even though burning food makes more PM2.5, perhaps the particulates from the gas combustion are worse for us in some way.
Still, I try to avoid any of it! I have an induction stove, but now do things like skin-on salmon in the air fryer because it produces basically no smoke, whereas it used to smoke my house out when I did it on the frypan. Requires a lot less supervision than to stop it burning in the pan too, which is nice (but perhaps I was always just doing it on too hot a pan)...
If your gas is burning yellow, it is producing soot. If it is burning blue, it is producing very little soot. (the yellow you see is actually hot particles of soot glowing, but at a much lower temperature than the gaseous fuel-air mixture which glows blue. Gas flames can just get pans quite a lot hotter than electric or induction, generally.
>Gas flames can just get pans quite a lot hotter than electric or induction, generally.
This claim doesn't really pass the smell test for me. My induction burner gets plenty hot really fast, much warmer than I could ever practically use while cooking, even. After a quick search I was not able to find any data supporting the claim either - the only data I was able to find seemed to support induction peaking out at significantly higher temperatures than gas.
Do you have any data on gas vs induction- max temperatures?
The gas flame is as big as your burner is, there is a lot of variation there that has to do with the physical characteristics of the burner and gas line pressure.
An induction burner will be limited to about 1.5 kW if it's a portable unit and maybe 2.5 kW on a built-in range.
A gas range will usually have a high rating of 15-20,000 BTU/h which works out to ~4.5-6 kW.
But thermal transfer efficiency is different, they both depend on the size of the pan, the material, shape, etc.
Stick a needle into a 3000F flame and it will be red hot in a second. A thin smallish pan can get super hot. You can't just have a "max temp" rating. However induction ranges will have some thermal protection for their insides.
If you spill something, the flames will also burn what you spilled.
I have both gas and induction. I don't think it makes sense to cook higher than 250C, because all oils will burn at that temp. And the induction works surprisingly well in this conditions, subjectively seems to be even better than gas (faster heating, better heat uniformity), did not expect that.
"Our meta-analyses suggest that children living in a home with gas cooking have a 42% increased risk of having current asthma, a 24% increased risk of lifetime asthma and an overall 32% increased risk of having current and lifetime asthma."
https://academic.oup.com/ije/article/42/6/1724/737113
The study has multiple parts. The part of the study I quoted is not specific to nitrogen dioxide, but a general conclusion about the combined effects of all of the properties of gas stoves. The study does not have enough information to conclude that the effect is entirely or even mostly caused by nitrogen dioxide in particular, or any other single cause. I did not claim that particulates are the cause. The point is that gas stove combustion products are harmful to children and probably everyone.
It depends... some microwaves are a) connected to an actual vent and b) have decent suction.
However, they cost a sizeable chunk more than the cheap shit you find in rentals. (In SV, that cheap shit is looking spiffy, but it's still cheap shit. If it says Frigidaire, you know it's not exactly high end)
This is my only dealbreaker in rentals. I will happily pay more for a unit with a real exhaust fan. Its crazy that we expect them in bathrooms but don’t expect them in kitchens. Health concerns aside, who wants their whole house to smell like fish for hours after cooking.
Yep - but it's a space question. (I live in a house from the '40s, I have no idea if people back then were somehow 30% smaller or something, but having a full hood and a microwave is just a fantasy given the available space. One day..)
People were slightly smaller in the '40s, but the main difference is that they had a lot less stuff. Compared to the purchasing power, furniture was more expensive and a vast majority of today's appliances did not exist at all.
A typical kitchen had a stove and either an old-fashioned icebox or a fridge, and that was it.
I noticed some toilets in older houses in the bay area were comically small for me at 6'2" and I as I rule couldn't see my face in mirrors standing up (they were mounted so the tops were about at shoulder level. People from different places around the world are also different sizes (a lot of this has to do with multi-generational semi-inherited nutrition availability)
Once our children are past the age of 10 or so we will probably go back to running air filters all the time. But the early years are crucial for immune system development and lack of exposure to the natural environment in early years is likely to be one of the biggest reasons for the rise in allergic diseases.
Oh, and stop using gas appliances indoors.