Los Angeles Times

Cooking with a gas stove may be as bad as breathing secondhand cigarette smoke, study finds

A burner on a stove emits blue flames from natural gas Sept. 21, 2005, in Des Plaines, Illinois.

LOS ANGELES — Cooking with gas-fired stoves can cause unsafe levels of toxins to accumulate inside homes, exposing people to roughly the same cancer risk as breathing secondhand cigarette smoke, according to a new study.

Researchers from Stanford University and nonprofit PSE Healthy Energy tested gas and propane stoves in 87 homes across California and Colorado and found that every appliance produced a detectable amount of cancer-causing benzene — a chemical with no safe level of exposure.

It only took 45 minutes for a single burner on high, or an oven set to 350 degrees, to boost benzene levels above well-established health base lines, according to the

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