Electric stoves could help people with asthma breathe easier

For people with asthma, switching from a gas stove to an electric one might be a breath of fresh air. The combustion that creates the flame of a gas stove or oven releases pollutants, including nitrogen dioxide, which can trigger asthma symptoms. After a research-backed electric stove replacement, people reported more symptom relief than is often achieved with asthma medications.

“We were really surprised at how large the benefit was,” says Ashwini Sehgal, a clinician who studies community health at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. With funding from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency during the Biden administration, Sehgal and colleagues spearheaded a project to install electric stoves in Cleveland households that had at least one person with asthma.

Eighty-five participants who had poorly controlled asthma were given a questionnaire a few months after the switch. They reported symptom improvement that was roughly two to three times as large as what’s typical with medication. Those with the worst symptoms saw the biggest improvement. Participants also reported fewer emergency room or hospital visits and said they missed work or school less often.

One 38-year-old woman told Sehgal’s team that whenever she cooked on her gas stove, she felt like her throat was closing. But the sensation disappeared after she switched to electric. Another participant, a 36-year-old man, found it difficult to walk uphill and play with his kids. With the stove swap, “he described how much better he felt as ‘magical,’ ” Sehgal says.

While heating, steaming or frying on a gas stovetop, nearby NO2 levels can skyrocket, reaching hundreds of parts per billion. That’s much higher than the EPA’s one-hour outdoor air quality standard of 100 parts per billion. NO2 exposure is linked to increased asthma symptoms. For example, research in children has found the pollutant can boost wheezing, coughing and asthma attacks.

The project was initially funded to follow 1,200 households for 12 months. But the Trump administration terminated the EPA’s Community Change Grants early, which drastically reduced the number of study participants. Yet even with this small group, the symptom improvement was significant.

The decision to replace a gas stove “depends on how much you are struggling with your own illness,” says environmental epidemiologist Carrie Breton of WashU Bursky School of Public Health in St. Louis. As a trial run, Sehgal suggests using an electric hot plate and a toaster oven to see if keeping the gas stove off helps improve symptoms.

If a stove swap isn’t in the budget, reducing NO2 exposure is still worthwhile, says pulmonologist Laura Paulin of Dartmouth Health. She recommends using kitchen ventilation, either via an exhaust hood that vents to the outside or an open window. A HEPA filter with a carbon insert can trap NO2 to decrease airborne concentrations. And try to keep children with asthma out of the kitchen when the stove is on, Paulin says. “It is a daunting task to replace a stove, but it doesn’t have to be an all-or-nothing thing.”

For researchers, the next step would be to measure lung function before and after a stove switch, Breton says. It would also be helpful to account for more factors, such as seasonal effects. “Many things can trigger people’s asthma,” Paulin says. Researchers could do a randomized trial in which some people get the electric stove right away while others wait for six months, Sehgal says, to allow time for comparison.

If electric stoves continue to be linked with fewer trips to the emergency room, fewer hospitalizations and better symptom control than medication can provide, “health insurance companies should consider paying for or subsidizing” stove swaps, Sehgal says. “If it truly works this well,” Breton says, “it’s got a bigger bang for your buck.”