A new, peer-reviewed April scientific article demolishes an earlier claim, largely written by activist opponents of natural gas at the Rocky Mountain Institute, that home stoves burning natural gas cause childhood asthma.
That January 2023 article said, “We found that 12.7% … of current childhood asthma in the US is attributable to gas stove use.” Later, in interviews, RMI’s Brady Seals, one of the lead authors, claimed, “We were never saying that gas stoves cause asthma, we always say that they are associated with asthma, because that’s what the meta-analysis says, and that’s the data we have.” Attributable is a clear claim of causation and was widely reported that way in the general media.
The Apr. 17 article in the Global Epidemiology journal – “Gas cooking and respiratory outcomes in children: A systematic review” – finds, in characteristic scientific understatement, that “that the epidemiology literature is limited by high heterogeneity and low study quality and, therefore, it does not provide sufficient evidence regarding causal relationships between gas cooking or indoor NO2 and asthma or wheeze. We caution against over-interpreting the quantitative evidence synthesis estimates from meta-analyses of these studies.”
Most damning, the Global Epidemiology article states that “a large proportion of the studies to date are subject to multiple sources of bias and inaccuracy, primarily due to self-reported gas cooking exposure or respiratory outcome, insufficient adjustment for key confounders (e.g., environmental tobacco smoke, family history of asthma or allergies, socioeconomic status or home environment), and unestablished temporality.”
“…bias and inaccuracy, primarily due to self-reported gas cooking exposure or respiratory outcome, insufficient adjustment for key confounders (e.g., environmental tobacco smoke, family history of asthma or allergies, socioeconomic status or home environment), and unestablished temporality.”
The April study, led by researchers from Boston-based Gradient, an environmental and health risk sciences consulting firm, reviewed 66 earlier studies of gas cooking and childhood respiratory histories. “We conducted the first systematic review of this epidemiology literature that includes an in-depth evaluation of study heterogeneity and study quality, neither of which was systematically evaluated in earlier reviews,” says the article. “Most of the studies are cross-sectional by design, precluding causal inference. Only a few are cohort studies that could establish temporality and they have largely reported null results. There is large variability across studies in terms of study region, age of children, gas cooking exposure definition, and asthma or wheeze outcome definition, precluding clear interpretations of meta-analysis estimates….”
The bottom line, the January RMI-led study is worthless. The handwringing about cooking with gas is overdone.
The January study led some activists, including a member of the federal Consumer Product Safety Commission, to suggest that a ban on gas stoves might be in order. Republican politicians immediately and predictably expressed outrage. But the White House quickly put out a statement that President Biden has no interest in banning gas stoves, and CPSC chair Alex Hoehn-Saric issued a statement, “I am not looking to ban gas stoves and the CPSC has no proceeding to do so.”
In related natural gas news, a federal appeals court Apr. 17 overturned a 2019 Berkeley, Calif., law banning gas in new construction, siding with an appeal from the California Restaurant Association. The city ordinance would ban natural gas piping in new buildings, in favor of electricity. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, in a 3-0 decision, ruled that the local law was preempted by the federal Energy Policy and Conservation Act.
The opinion, overturning a federal district court ruling, said the federal law “expressly preempts State and local regulations concerning the energy use of many natural gas appliances, including those used in household and restaurant kitchens. Instead of directly banning those appliances in new buildings, Berkeley took a more circuitous route to the same result and enacted a building code that prohibits natural gas piping into those buildings, rendering the gas appliances useless.”
The appeals court overturned the city ordinance and remanded the case to the district court.
The Associated Press reported, “The ruling was expected to be appealed, according to a statement from a group of environmental advocates. Matt Vespa, a senior attorney with the nonprofit Earthjustice, called the decision misguided. ‘As we face a climate and air quality crisis from coast to coast, it is vital that cities and states maintain all legal pathways to protect public health, cut climate emissions, and increase safety by addressing pollution from buildings, and we’ll continue to fight to ensure this authority is preserved,’” Vespa said.
–Kennedy Maize
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