To the Editor:

There’s been a bit of an uproar lately caused by the Consumer Product Safety Commission considering stopping the sale of new gas stoves. It turns out that “clean natural gas” was never all that clean, both because it leaks out of stoves and creates harmful indoor air pollution when it burns.

They are not going to take away existing gas stoves, found in about 38% of homes. But if you can, you might want to do that on your own.

I cooked on gas stoves for decades. Instant on, instant off, you could see how much heat there was. I’d had electric stoves in a couple of apartments, and learned to adjust to the lead times, but I definitely preferred gas.

Then I began to become aware of hazardous indoor air pollutants from gas stoves. So first we got a microwave range hood, and later a much larger, more powerful one. But the evidence about emissions kept piling up, and there was a new kid on the block: the induction stove.

About a year ago we made the switch to induction. There were no subsidies, and it wasn’t cheap. We had to get the higher voltage circuit for an electric stove, and the induction stove was about $1200. Some of our cookware wouldn’t work with induction, so we had to buy four saucepans and a pressure canner. (The cast iron frying pans and Dutch oven work fine.)

Expensive, right? You could get a portable induction cooktop for less than $100 to try it out, but the cost will soon drop sharply anyway. The Inflation Reduction Act will have instant rebates for induction stoves of up to $840, and can even pay for installation and electrical work. We’ll have to see how New York State implements its version later this year, but you should be pleasantly surprised.

The performance is amazing. We still have instant on and instant off, although now we have to look at the numbers instead of the flame size. And the power output is much, much greater than a gas stove, so cooking is a lot faster, especially for anything that involves boiling a large amount of water.

We switched to induction because of the pollution from gas, but the performance of induction means we’ll never want to go back.

All in all, induction is far superior to gas, and you’ll breathe much more easily.

Will Siegfried
Potsdam