How Your Gas Stove Was Drafted Into the Culture Wars
Speaking of hot topics, have you heard that the federal government might ban gas stoves — and perhaps even confiscate the beloved big burner you have in your kitchen?
Rest easy, the Biden administration says. No such raids are planned to snatch your stove or any other home appliances. But to some influencers, particularly of the right-wing persuasion, the rumor itself was too tantalizing to be encumbered by anything so quaint and tiresome as facts.
“Now not only is (President Joe) Biden coming for your paycheck, he’s also coming for your stove,” announced Fox News host Sean Hannity on Jan. 10. “You heard me right. The White House is now attempting to ban all gas ovens and burners.”
“I’ll NEVER give up my gas stove,” tweeted Republican Rep. Ronny Jackson of Texas. “If the maniacs in the White House come for my stove, they can pry it from my cold dead hands. COME AND TAKE IT!!”
Rest easy, Ronny. Reassurance comes from no less than Richard Trumka Jr., a Biden appointee to the Consumer Product Safety Commission, which is responsible for regulating more than 15,000 household products and appliances, including stoves.
Trumka inadvertently ignited rumors about gas stove ban by telling Bloomberg that the agency could soon increase regulation of the stoves and was considering a ban, but only on new stoves, not the one that might be in your kitchen now.
Why? Among other reasons, more than 12% of current childhood asthma cases in the U.S. can be attributed to gas stove use, Trumka noted, citing new peer-reviewed research published last month in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health.
Consumer Reports also urged consumers in October to consider going electric in their next oven purchase after tests found high levels of nitrogen oxide gas from gas stoves.
“We are not looking to go into anyone’s homes and take away items that are already there,” Trumka said. “We don’t do that.”
Please don’t. But the suspicion that they do is flourishing, particularly in the conservative outrage industry and among others who happily mock liberal political correctness, as in the popular TikTok meme “My gas stove identifies as electric.”
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