Consumer Safety Commission Walks Back Gas-Stove Threat amid Backlash
U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission chairman Alexander D. Hoehn-Saric issued a statement Wednesday assuring the public that his agency has no intention of banning gas stoves after a commission official drew the ire of the cooking public by suggesting the appliances might be banned in the near future due to the alleged health threat they pose to Americans.
“Over the past several days, there has been a lot of attention paid to gas stove emissions and to the Consumer Product Safety Commission,” Hoehn-Saric wrote in an official statement released Wednesday. “To be clear, I am not looking to ban gas stoves and the CPSC has no proceeding to do so.”
Commissioner Richard Trumka Jr. had originally told Bloomberg News that fears over air quality caused by gas stoves was creating “a hidden hazard.”
“Any option is on the table. Products that can’t be made safe can be banned,” Trumka Jr. insisted.
The comments came following Senator Cory Booker (D., N.J.) and Representative Don Beyer (D., Va.) urging the federal agency to investigate the issue due to its allegedly disproportionate impact on black, Latino, and low-income households.
Gas stoves fell into the Consumer Product Safety Commission’s crosshairs following an academic journal article published in December 2022, finding that 12.7 percent of childhood asthma cases were linked to its usage in households. The paper went on to parallel the “childhood asthma burden” produced by gas stoves being equivalent to secondhand smoke exposure.
The American Gas Association responded to the publication by challenging the robustness of the study.
“The claims made…are derived from an advocacy-based mathematical exercise that doesn’t add any new science. The authors conducted no measurements or tests based on real-life appliance usage, emissions rates, or exposures, and did not adequately consider other factors that are known to contribute to asthma and other respiratory health outcomes,” the American Gas Association stated in an official release last week.
Similar sentiments were echoed by West Virginia’s Democratic senator Joe Manchin on Twitter midday Wednesday.
“This is a recipe for disaster. The federal government has no business telling American families how to cook their dinner. I can tell you the last thing that would ever leave my house is the gas stove that we cook on,” Manchin wrote.
The news coincided with New York governor Kathy Hochul’s state-of-the-state address Tuesday which called for completely eliminating gas heating and appliances in new construction projects by 2030. One Brooklyn-based restauranteur, Stratis Morfogen, expressed his frustration at Hochul’s proposal.
“We lose 40% productivity by using electric…If they inquire with small business owners, I’ll give them three pieces of advice, get a stronger filtration system, get a hood system that works and basically train your staff how to maintain it,” Morfogen told Tucker Carlson on Fox News.
