ASHRAE Journal - May 2023 - 40

IEQ APPLICATIONS
Column
Max Sherman
Still Cooking With Gas?
BY MAX SHERMAN, PH.D., FELLOW/LIFE MEMBER ASHRAE
The phrase " cooking with gas " started its life in the 1930s and 1940s as a marketing
slogan by the gas industry. But the public, enamored with the benefits of gas cooking,
soon adopted it to mean anything that was done really well. Of late, the star power of
gas cooking has dimmed as air quality concerns have made gas stoves a shady suspect.
Policy makers have in places banned the technology, and much has been written in
the press-but is gas cooking really deserving of all that shade?
The recent kerfuffle has been due to a perfect storm
of both indoor and outdoor environmental concerns
that have come to our collective attention in the last
few years, but these are not the only issues to consider.
Concerns in increasing order of relevance to ASHRAE
include safety, outdoor air quality, decarbonization
and indoor air quality (IAQ). Let us look at them
individually.
Safety
Appliance safety may not be the most relevant to
ASHRAE's activities, but it is the oldest and most
important issue with a cooking appliance-regardless of
its fuel source. Fortunately for the public, the appliance
industry is well aware of that and has developed
industry standards. ANSI Z21.1/CSA 1.1, Household Cooking
Gas Appliances,1 is a well-developed standard. Stoves can
certainly be dangerous appliances when improperly
operated or operating, but industry standards have
reduced safety concerns to the point where it has
not been an issue for the public. Presumably, safety
standards can always be improved, but nothing has
changed significantly in the last few years for gas
cooking appliance safety that would suggest banning
them was appropriate.
40
ASHRAE JOURNAL ashrae.o rg M AY 2023
Outdoor (Ambient) Air Quality
Ideally, combustion appliances would produce only
carbon dioxide and water vapor, but real-world gas
appliances also produce oxides of nitrogen (NOx).
Nitrogen dioxide (NO2) specifically is one of the criteria
contaminants listed in the National Ambient Air Quality
Standards2 (NAAQS). Low-NOx technology for burners
is steadily improving and is required in some jurisdictions,
but NO2 production is not expected to go to zero,
and that gives regulators cause for concern.
In some areas, household-generated NOx can be a
major contribution to ozone production (i.e., smog).
For such outdoor air quality reasons, California-having
a lion's share of noncompliance areas-recently
announced that it intends to ban gas water heaters and
gas furnaces at the end of the decade.3 The important
thing to note about that is they did not include gas cooking
appliances in that ban, although the production of
NOx in cooking equipment is significantly larger than
for the low-NOx burners California currently requires
for water heaters and furnaces.
The reason gas stoves are not in that banned list is
not hard to understand: such a policy does not pass a
Max Sherman, Ph.D., is principal, EPB Consulting Group and a professor at University
of Nottingham.
http://www.ashrae.org
ASHRAE Journal - May 2023

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of ASHRAE Journal - May 2023
