Gas stoves fill the air in your home with particulate matter (pm), which has been found to increase cancer risk in the long term.
So next time you buy a stove, consider choosing an induction stove.
Btw, gas stoves being better or faster than induction is a myth. They have certain specific advantages, but they are actually slower.
Obligatory Technology Connections video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eUywI8YGy0Y
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bull. shit.
It’s completely baffling that there are people unironically still defending gas stoves in 2025. There’s no discussion to be had on the subject any more, induction is superior and that’s final.
When the power goes out in sub zero temperatures, and your heating does too, it helps to be able to make hot water on the stove to warm up.
Otherwise, yeah induction is better.
A $50 dual burner camp stove solves that (or even cheaper, a $12 single burner backpacking stove if you have less space).
While you’re correct in general, in places where the power is out for a week, a camping/backpacking stove would be ill-suited to the task of keeping multiple people warm and fed. Especially in a house and not an apartment.
I think the people who claim gas stoves are best likely grew up either not cooking much, or had a decent gas stove, so their first exposure to an electric stove was super cheap, crappy electric coil stoves in student housing, or wherever they first lived as a young adult. Then when they were able to afford better, they got a better gas stove.
I have a really crappy gas stove, and it makes me yearn for the cheap electric coil stoves of my youth.
People say that gas stoves are more powerful and responsive, when the truth is that more powerful stoves are more powerful, and “responsiveness” is a fake concern. My crappy gas stove takes forever to get a pot of water boiling, especially compared to coil stoves. Yeah, you can turn a gas stove to 100% quickly, but that’s only better if it can put out more power. It won’t heat up any faster than an electric stove if the electric stove takes double the time, but also has double the power. There’s also not many cases where “time to maximum heat” is what you care about, I can’t think of any.
Responsiveness the other way (hot to cool) doesn’t matter when you have a high thermal mass in the pan (or the pan itself has high mass), it only matters when the pan and contents are light, in which case, you just take the pan off the heat.
I would agree in places with good infrastructure. I lived somewhere with rampant power outages, sometimes for 5 days at a time.
Gas was sure nice then.
In places where natural gas is cheap and electricity is expensive cost is a factor
Yes, a little bit… Burning any kind of fuel in your home is going to produce carcinogens.
But it’s really nothing to get too excited about, and cooking on electric is bullshit
There are two kinds of electric. Induction, and coil. Are you talking about induction or coil?
we have a decent quality induction range and electric stove and we’d never bother considering to go back to gas
I think that’s the thing though… You need to invest in a really good quality electric cooker to get something decent… Whereas any old?Cheap gas appliance will get the job done.
Plus every electric hob I’ve ever used has got bullshit touch sensitive buttons that don’t like wet fingers.
yes…why cant dials
I used to be 100% for gas ranges. Except for a couple of specific usecases, my 200v induction stove is great. I have a separate cannister gas stove if I want to really go to town on a wok or something. I’ve been converted.
It depends. A really good induction stove is fine. The cheap ones they put in rentals are all really annoying though. Bad UI is my main gripe with them honestly.
I think they are more than fine but bad UI is real
As other people have said, induction is alright. Way better than traditional electric anyway.
More than alright, it’s amazing
Yeah, I prefer my gas stovetop than any crappy induction.
Have they reinvented buttons yet or do you spend your time long-clicking and watching out not to short the touch-screen-top with 1 drop of water?
Jesting aside, induction is probably good but the bullshit that gas stoves causes cancer is just an unfounded lie. It’s like being scared of the microwave owen or “3G mobile”.
I think you’ve confused coil for induction, and gas stoves definitely cause cancer. So do cars.
Show me some propf of that, a scientific study. Make me change my views.
I remember reading a study on this where all the scientists replaced their home ranges because the results were so bad.
Cooking in electric is fine, just different. I had an exposed coil stove for a while which was passable, but my glass top coil range is rather good. I grew up on gas and honestly my only complaint about electric is a bit slower heating time and it doesn’t react as fast as I’d like, but it’s not nearly as bad as people like to claim.
Do you have more detail on this? What types of particulate matter exactly?
Not OP, but combustion byproducts/impurities mostly. Get a air quality sensor and watch it go mad when you start cooking.
The one real downside to induction is actually its speed. You can really easily burn your food very quickly if your not careful. IKEA sell an induction hot plate for $40AUD, well worth giving it a try.
I didnt watch the video yet but do you have any estimates on how much pm is released? Where I live the air contains about 50 mikrograms per cubic meter and I’d like to know which is unhealthier: using a gas stove without ventilation or going outside and breathing fresh air
Induction is the best, I’ll never go back
Induction is best in theory, however in practice it’s unfortunately often paired with these shitty buttonless capacitive controls that are harder to decipher that hieroglyphics as well as “”“smart”“” features
They do still sell induction stoves with classic dumb buttons but they are either hard to come buy or aimed at professional chefs, which instantly adds two zeros to their price
The interfaces are usually really bad, yes. The technology itself still makes up for this particular shortcoming, but they need to step up their game.
I have a regular flat top glass stove WITH KNOBS that works with ALL PANS, not just magnetic… then I have a standalone induction unit for when I need to really crank up the heat.
Works a dream!
Induction also doesn’t work with aluminum items like a moka pot without an “induction adapter” which is just a steel plate.
Aluminum doesn’t belong anywhere near food. Get a stainless moka pot!
Tell that to my aluminum foil.
Mine has simple capacitive controls. Turn it on, higher number is more hotter. Very simple.
Apparently it has other features, not bothered with them.
My stove apparently has wifi. But why I would put that thing on my network is beyond me.
wireless house fire
Tbf the flat buttonless style makes them really easy to clean.
I cannot wait to finish uni and move to a place without a gas stove. The thing is they renoveated the kitchen just before I moved in but they decided to put in a gas stove for whatever reason.
It’s the best, got one not too long ago, and same, I’ll never go back. Immediate temperature control.
I mean, you have immediate temp control with gas too?
They probably had a non-induction electric stovetop before.
Yes, but we’re talking gas vs induction, right?
Right, so it’s the same but without the cancer and explosions.
But without electrocutions 😋
Interesting.
Now let’s see that beautiful, clean coal.
Not quite as immediate! You’d be surprised at the difference
I’ve never seen a gas stove with temp control. I’m not even sure how that would work. Controlling the amount of gas, sure, but not the temperature. In an induction stove, you can set it to 150 degrees, and it will hold that.
It’s significantly immediate-er with induction - particularly going from cool to hot. Boil water in 2 minutes and handles don’t get hot in the process. And since nothing is heating except the metal of the base of the pan there is no residual heat from the cooktop parts or the sides of the pan when you turn it off. The temperature drops much faster.
I went back to gas after 5 years cooking on induction and miss it a lot. Cooking something like pasta that requires boiling a sizeable quantity of water takes 2x or 3x longer on gas, even with a very powerful burner.
With free cancer!
Don’t forget your aluminium hat against the 3G
You were making good points, what happened?
Well show me the study, I mean people all over the world uses highly reglemented gas stoves for not very much time a day and we’re not getting cancer ftom it I bet. I do bet a plastic TV might emanating more dangerous crap for example. Or breathing in a city.
Last “study” I read about gas stoves, it was a crap study too but even they said there is no danger whatsoever, except if you like use it in a non at all ventilated space. => Some website took it and ran with it “gas stoves could cause cancer!1!”. And here we are. It’s like that fake story sbout vaccines & autism.
We have gas heaters for water, sure if you don’t have any ventilation then thats bad, but if your electric setup is bad, induction won’t save that either?
I should probably get off the internet for today 😋 go boil me a slow cup of tea ^^
Cheers & thanks warbond
This guy thinks science is a conspiracy lmao
Show me the study.
You seriously just asked me to go find you proof of something heavily tested and demonstrated as fact? Bahahaha. Go waste someone else’s time 🤡
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I read that running an extractor hood mitigates the risk a fair amount. Not completely, but enough that you shouldn’t worry if gas is your only option
Many people don’t turn the hood on until food itself is creating a lot of vapor because they are usually so noisy. Meaning the hood often helps very little in practice, although in theory you are right.
Or they have a fan that just redirects the exhaust into the house
My stove has a “hood”/fan that runs through the microwave and into a cabinet and that’s it. What can I do? After reading all this I intend to keep the window open nearby when cooking, and I always have two large air purifiers running in the living room attached to the kitchen.
Since this article is specifically about pm 2.5, I’m going to chime in and say I have a gas range with no extractor, and the only time my pm2.5 sensor picks anything up is when frying generates smoke and oil aerosols. That’s more a function of cooking temperature than fuel, and my induction hotplate will generate just as much.
CO2? Definitely more with gas. Trace chemicals? Probably more with gas, but all the studies I’ve seen are just about running the cooktop, with no food, in a sealed room. Run the extraction hood or open a window when you cook - it’s not just heat source.
idk - there should be some very clear cancer statistics to back up such a claim between countries like Sweden (<1% gas stoves, all are electric) vs other countries then.
One cause of cancer like this probably won’t be visible on a national scale, too many other factors come into play that will muddy the data
However, it’s not “idk”, the current science on gas stoves being bad for your health is quite clear. Not just cancer, but also for other lung-related issues like asthma: https://www.cancercenter.com/community/blog/2024/09/are-gas-stoves-bad-for-your-health
You’re right - the report they link to here (Table 2 is good) makes that quite clear.
I overall agree with technology connections on this with two caveats.
I have, in my day, used some truly craptastic electric stoves that seriously struggled to get a normal sized pot of water to a rolling boil. This was definitely the cheapest, crappiest stove that an Airbnb owner could possibly find to furnish the kitchen with.
I’ve also used some really crappy gas stoves but none have struggled that hard. So I think if you’re scraping the bottom of the barrel for budget brand stoves, you may find yourself really frustrated with some electric options.
Also, my home stove is a somewhat less craptastic electric stove, but still not at all high end. I find that for some of my cookware the burners are too small resulting in some serious hotspots in the middle while you can barely cook on the outer edges even after letting the pan preheat for a decent amount of time. You’re always going to have some amount of a hotspot with almost any stove, but this one is really drastic, and I’ve never experienced anything so bad on gas stoves, probably because the heat escaping around the edges manages to heat the outer parts of the pan a little better.
I’m not exactly pining for a gas stove, and I can’t have one in this house even if I wanted one, but it is a little frustrating sometimes as someone who likes to cook, which technology connections has admitted is not one of his many niche interests.
My next stove will be induction, and probably every stove I ever buy after that.
I guess the overall takeaway from this is, if you’re buying an electric stove and actually like to cook, don’t cheap out and make sure you get one where the burners can handle the size cookware you might use.
I’ve also used some really crappy gas stoves but none have struggled that hard.
You must not be going to the right crappy AirBnBs, I’ve had gas stoves struggle to stay lit, which is not just bad for boiling water, now you’ve got a gas leak in the house!
The only thing I know gas stoves to be better at than other methods is traditional wok. But that’s hardly a reason to jeopardize your health for.
You can actually get induction wok thingys.
The induction magnet is bowl shaped, so that when placed in it, the wok is heated all over.
They work, but apparently the really good ones are priced for business kitchens.
Cool, had no idea this existed.
I’ve got one, just a 120V, home-use thing, but it gets far hotter, faster than on my stove. Tends to have a cool spot in the very center, maybe 3" diameter, unless you circulate the wok, and you can’t flame food by tossing it in the fire (which you can’t really do on a residential stove, either). It’s a decent approximation of a wok jet for home cooks.
If you really want to
burn your house downflame your home wok, you can always get a handheld blow torch to do the finishing ignition. Could probably flame 1000 wok dishes for a single torch canister.
Only if you have the proper high btu burner
Exactly this. I went from a cheap gas stove to a nicer induction and my work cooking has improved greatly.
Which most people don’t. Also I could buy a portable gas burner suitable for a wok and gas canister for less than the standing charge of gas for a year. Unless you are using a wok extremely often its not worth it.
I don’t have a wok, high temperature cooking would be nice for a few things like searing steak though. But that can be done over a BBQ. Kinda want to try heating a cast iron griddle when the coals are still orange hot and searing steak on that. Although steak isn’t something I cook very often partly because its really expensive. Presumably a fair bit less cooking time than the packaging recommends. I guess get the iron hot enough for the leidenfrost effect to start and then cook until nicely brown on each side and then take off the heat? With hot charcoal that would probably be something like 30-60 seconds each side.
I’ve been looking into a Wok-Pan for my glass top stove or my induction heater. I wonder how well those work.
Since this is the stove thread:
I had a pot of salt water overflow from boiling on a electric stove and now there is this tough ring of residue around the burner caked on and it won’t scrub off. Is using a razor blade to scrape it off really the only option?
I’m worried I will scratch the stove top and the landleech will have an excuse to steal my security deposit.
Edit: thank you all for your helpful advice
Nothing stopping you from using diluted lye / oven cleaner and wiping it off, just be very sure you take the necessary precautions. Do not breathe that shit in or let it get on your skin.
as long as you’re careful, it will be fine. been using a razorblade on them my whole life
I legit used car polish once to clean my electric glass stovetop
Works fine as long as you work it by hand and wipe the residue off with a wet rag
I’ve used a razor for really stuck on bits on our glass top stove, but this cleaner also seems to do quite well: https://weiman.com/glass-cooktop-cleaner-polish
For the razor, keep it at a shallow angle (I tend to go around 20 or 30 degrees above the stovetop), and keep a small amount of water on the surface. I usually have a damp rag that I wipe the razor and stovetop with occasionally during the scraping process, to remove the small pieces that come off.
Also, if you are nervous about damaging the stovetop itself, maybe try something only lightly abrasive and warm water, and let the water work it’s magic. (I see you have already tried this, so maybe that isn’t helpful :/ ) From a chemistry perspective, salt water shouldn’t exactly leave behind an insoluble residue, but IDK what else was cooking in the water.
Magic eraser might be worth a shot. Melamine foam is the generic name for it and you can get a ton of it cheap. It destroys stains easily. Even if it doesn’t handle the burner stains I highly recommend it for cleaning around the house anyway.
BarTenders friend is really the best for everything in the kitchen, but leaving some CLR on it overnight should break it down enough to clean up with a warm sponge. Calcium is probably the white stuff.
Bartender’s Friend or Pink Stuff should take it right off.
*Bar Keepers Friend
I mean… paying for shit you damaged during your stay is kind of the point of a security deposit.
One thing I like about gas stoves is the ones with sealed burners are a hell of a lot easier to get clean-looking than the glass tops of electric stoves. They get nasty so quick I prefer the old-style coil ones.
For your problem I’d try soaking a paper towel in CLR cleaner. It’s probably lime from the water and not salt.
YSK: Everything causes cancer. Drinking water causes cancer. Living causes cancer.
Yes, but…
Cooking itself also does this. If you are searing or frying that will also release dangerous particulates. Make sure you have and use a vent hood that vents outside the living space when you cook regardless of fuel.
I can say from personal experience of using every kind of home stove, that gas is both the worst and slowest. Boiling water for my morning coffee is fastest on induction, which takes about half the time as resistive or radiant electric, and gas takes nearly three times longer than that.
Though it might just be the american style of burner that directs the flame away from the center of the pan. I’ve not yet tried any other kind.
It probably has to do with the type of burner I’m going to guess.
We’ve had both induction and electric stoves for our whole lives. And the home we recently moved into has a fancy dancy natural gas stove with star shaped burners.
It is night and day compared to anything else we’ve used before, water boils so much faster, I can actually sear a pen full of vegetables now instead of just making them mushy.
Honestly I love it. I just wish the hood wasn’t so shitty and actually had a hood to capture all of the output from the stove.
I’ve got a gas stove that I love, but my shitty little induction hotplate that I hate for anything other than searing is better at searing. It’ll get a cast iron pan up to 700-800 degrees and my carbon steel gets to like 900, which is perfect for searing.
But the damn thing turns off when I try to toss anything, and it can’t maintain a low temperature because the pulse-width modulation is 1Hz.
Check and see if you need to change the filter in the hood.
Oh dear Lord. The hood has a filter???
Yeah, that’s probably fucked up, none of the filters in anything in this house had been changed in years when we got the place. The filter for the furnace was black.
And it’s been over a year since then I’m sure if the hood fan has a filter it’s absolutely disgusting.
But I also meant that the hood could have a shape to it so that it collects air from the front burners which it doesn’t.
Yeah, fam… airborne grease particles. They’re the reason for hood fan filters, and the reason they clog. I would recommend getting a full box of nitrile gloves. And definitely clean the screen cover over the filter.
Edit: re-shaped for collection of fumes from the front burners… Idk, sometimes people change the stove but not the hood, or get a stove and think the hood that would work best with it “clashes” and gets an objectively shit hood instead. Beauty is pain. Or some shit. Idk. I put stones on top of other stones for a living…
What doesn’t?
Even tea causes cancer
