Pollution from your COOKER cuts short the lives of 4,000 people every year – are you at risk?

POLLUTION from gas cookers cuts short the lives of 3,928 people in the UK each year, new research has revealed.

The popular cookers spew out dangerous gases linked to cancer as well as heart and lung disease – but experts warn there is little awareness of their dangers. 

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On average, using a gas stove shaves nearly two years off a person’s life, according to a study of households in the EU and UK.

“The extent of the problem is far worse than we thought,” said lead author Juana María Delgado-Saborit, from Jaume I University in Spain.

The scientists linked 36,031 early deaths each year to gas cookers in the EU and a further 3,928 in the UK.

However, they caution that, in reality, gas cookers are likely associated with many more deaths than their findings indicate.

Their estimates are conservative, as they only account for the health effects of nitrogen dioxide (NO2) and not other harmful gases like carbon monoxide and benzene.

Previous studies have linked the cookers – and gases the cookers emit – to several types of blood cancer, asthma in children and coronary heart disease, which increases the risk of heart attack.

“Way back in 1978, we first learned that NO2 pollution is many times greater in kitchens using gas than electric cookers,” said Juana,

“But only now are we able to put a number on the amount of lives being cut short.”

One in three households in the EU cook with gas, rising to 54 per cent of households in the UK – which request to around 36million people.

Meanwhile, more than 60 per cent of the homes in Italy, the Netherlands, Romania and Hungary have gas cookers.

The cookers burn fossil gas and push out harmful substances that inflame airways.

The report, which was supported by the European Climate Foundation, builds on other research which suggests that cookers may be very harmful.

This allowed researchers from Jaume I University and the University of Valencia to work on the ratios of indoor to outdoor air pollution when cooking with gas, allowing them to map indoor exposure NO2.

They then applied risk rates of disease, found from studies on outdoor NO2 pollution, to work out the number of lives lost.

“The main uncertainty is whether the risk of dying found with outdoor NO2 from mainly traffic can be applied to indoor NO₂ from gas cooking,” said Steffen Loft, an air pollution expert at the University of Copenhagen, who was not involved in the research.

“But it is a fair assumption and required for the assessment.”

The EU plans to introduce updated regulations for gas cookers later this year, focusing on pollution restrictions, including those for nitrogen dioxide (NO2) later this year.

The UK, however, currently does not have specific regulations to address the health risks from these appliances, particularly concerning NO2 emissions.

Sara Bertucci, EPHA policy manager for global public health, said: “For too long it has been easy to dismiss the dangers of gas cookers.

“Like cigarettes, people didn’t think much of the health impacts and like cigarettes, gas cookers are a little fire that fills our homes with pollution.

“The true impacts are likely greater than predicted in this study. Knowing that governments should take a lead in helping us quit gas, just like they helped us quit cigarettes.”

How pollution can destroy your health

WHEN you think about the impact air pollution has on the body, the first thing that probably springs to mind is lung disease.

But fast-growing evidence suggests dirty air can cause harm across the body – from your heart and womb right to your brain.

In fact, the World Health Organisation estimates nearly seven million people die prematurely every year from a range of conditions triggered by poor air.

The thinking is that tiny particles in air pollution called PM2.5 could carry antibiotic-resistant bacteria that humans then breathe in.

Professor Frank Kelly, chair in community health and policy, at Imperial College London, told Sun Health these ultra-fine particles cause damage in “nearly every organ in the body”:

He said: “Once these reach the lungs, they seep into the bloodstream and are transported to and cause havoc in other parts of the body.”

Sun writer Isabel Shaw revealed what you need to know here – and what you can do to protect yourself.