My title is based on a comparison, that is, having a gas cooking stove in your home carries the same level of asthma risk to children as having someone who smokes in the home. (My sources are listed above.)
When I started researching this topic I expected to find out that over long periods of time gas stove usage produced an uptick in childhood asthma. What I found that according to research published last year, 12.7 percent of all childhood asthma is attributable to gas stoves. That’s 647,700 children. That is much more than an uptick. Just in case, that didn’t alarm me enough, I discovered that gas stoves leak gas all the time and they have an effect on air pollution and global warming.
However and as usual, the culture wars that have made much of public discourse a subhuman cesspool, have taken hold.
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/06/13/house-passes-bill-block-gas-stove-ban-00100492
“We know the motivation of the CPSC and throughout this entire administration is a green climate push,” Rep. Kelly Armstrong (R-N.D.), the sponsor of the legislation, said. “The goal is to dictate how you live every aspect of your life — how you save and invest for the future by pushing ESG, how you drive by banning gas-powered cars, and now the goal is to control how you cook.”
The federal government at the time wasn’t considering a ban but that didn’t stop them from preventive strike on behalf of the fossil fuel industry. Yes, so you see saving our children and ourselves from indoor pollution caused by a product about which we were told over and over again was safe is all some kind of “woke” political plot to steal freedom.
The research is pretty clear. We need to develop rules on indoor pollution (there aren’t any now) and based on the data in front of me, it seems likely gas stove aren’t going to pass muster. It’s not woke to try to prevent childhood asthma. It’s not work to cut down on pollution and it’s absolutely, positively not woke to call out an industry that told us this product was safe.
You would think that children might find the occasional advocate in the United States Congress. You might think that hearing a child wheezing for a breath of air would be influential in the great hearing rooms of our capital. And you would be wrong. We not only subsidize the fossil fuels industry billions of dollars a year, we have to pretend they are our benefactors and using their products is an example of our “freedom.”
James Pilant
Pilant's Business Ethics Blog 