A US study has found a 70% drop in hospital admissions and days off from work or school when people with poorly controlled asthma had their gas stove and hob replaced with electric.
Ohio’s publicly owned MetroHealth began the study in December 2024 but funding was terminated early by the incoming Trump administration. It had been designed to investigate if replacing gas cooking improved asthma for 1,200 people living near Cleveland, Ohio.
Prof Ash Sehgal of Case Western Reserve University, the project’s leader, said: “We had completed the project at fewer than 100 households. As a result, over 1,100 households were unable to benefit. We also had to lay off about 20 project staff.”
The team finished the stove replacements that were under way and closed the project, but to the researchers’ surprise, the benefits could be clearly detected even in the scaled-down study of 72 homes.
Sehgal said: “We were surprised when we analysed the results and found a very large effect size. The improvements in asthma symptoms following stove change were similar to – or even greater than – those reported in clinical trials of commonly used asthma medications.”
Air pollution was measured in 44 of the homes. On average, nitrogen dioxide dropped 70%.
Sehgal A, Schuellerman P, Dolata J, et al. Asthma Control Before and After Changing Gas Stoves to Electric Stoves. The Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology: In Practice, 2026. link
Some of us actually subscribe to consumer reports. And I read the article when it first came out.
But here it is for you:
https://www.consumerreports.org/appliances/indoor-air-quality/is-your-gas-range-a-health-risk-a6971504915/
Also just for the record i don’t accept the “Not every study needs a control group”. I worked for 30 years as a health physicist attached to the US army’s primary standards lab. I reject your assertion that this study should be pushed in the public eye.
The people commenting in this thread seem more about pushing and agenda rather than evaluating a study.