The Consumer Product Safety Commission is looking into banning gas stoves, and an uproar ensued. Now the president is saying that he is not for banning them and people in general are backtracking, but don't be fooled.
No one is coming for the gas stove you currently have. But the administrative state absolutely will (and the article above says as much) go forward making regulations for the production of new ones and the fitting of hookups in new builds (forbidding them). So your freedom to have a gas stove will certainly be restricted in the future.
Here is my little story about the dangers of an electric stove, and how the CPSC thinks that is all a big yawn.
Far from worrying about the imagined harms of a gas stove, I wish I had one. I don't because I live where there is no municipal gas and I don't have propane. If I am able to renovate my kitchen, I will certainly get a propane tank and a nice, big stove with great big blue flames!
As of nine years ago I had a pretty nice electric convection range. The oven worked very well and my bakes and roasts were always on point. The stovetop was, of course, sadly lacking, as all electric ones are. My water boiled aggravatingly slowly and my pans were hard to regulate. But I lived with it -- because I had to.
Until one day I happened to be in the kitchen (thank goodness) when the stove turned itself on. I noticed it heating up when it was turning red, actually, in the oven, so hot was it getting.
There was no way to turn it off. None of the buttons or dials had any effect, and the outlet for the oven was behind it and unreachable, since the oven was getting very hot. My husband had to run down to the basement and throw the circuit breaker.
We thought that there was perhaps some fluke and shakily plugged the range in again. Again it turned itself on and wouldn't cancel. Of course we disconnected it entirely.
I contacted the manufacturer and they said that the malfunction would have to be repaired at our own expense. I bought a new range, of course. I wasn't about to pay to have this one fixed and then spend my time worrying about it burning a hole through my kitchen!
I contacted the Consumer Products Safety Commission, which you would think would be interested in an event that certainly could have burned our house down, had I not been present in the kitchen, and perhaps killed us all in our beds.
The outcome of that interaction was... a duly noted reception of my file.
So it seems that the CPSC is interested in safety if it means exercising random, capricous power, and not if it means actually doing something about a dangerous ELECTRIC stove!
Why aren't the powers that be worried about the electromagnetic fields/radiation emitted by electric stoves? EMFs can accumulate in kitchens especially, creating a high level of radiation that is harmful to human health.
ReplyDeleteThe busy bodies are never happy unless they have a cause. They can't ever be satisfied with the status quo and let others live without interference, or let market forces drive innovation.
ReplyDeleteRecently I watched several YouTube videos about how horrible single use plastics are. But I remember when the environmentalists preached them as the salvation of the world, so we wouldn't waste trees making paper bags, or waste water washing glass bottles for reuse. It's as if they can't ponder and see the consequences of their petty fetishes. Or is it just that they've had a taste of power and control and can no longer back down from their addiction?
Leila, I had a similar experience with a glass top electric stove about a year ago. It was an expensive, stainless steel Maytag model that wasn't very old, either, only about 5 years old I believe. What happened was, the large burner at the front suddenly started getting VERY VERY HOT when I turned it on. I mean, like absolutely red-hot, it would boil water freakishly fast and then the water would boil like the pot was sitting in a volcano...the heat it threw off was terrifying. It was WAY hotter than it was supposed to be. Obviously I had to stop using that burner completely, and we threw the entire oven in the trash as soon as we could find a cheap used one (which we did quickly). In the meantime I was very nervous using the other burners because clearly there was a serious electrical problem with that oven.
ReplyDeleteScary what electrical appliances can do. We had a similar experience, Leila. An electric stove burner turned on by itself and heated an electrical outlet above it (microwave outlet) to the point of fire. We were not home and the house was a total loss. To be sure, there was nothing the stove manufacturer would own to. We now have a gas stove and I enjoy the peace of mind knowing it will not light /heat on its own.
ReplyDelete