Is Your RV Stove Harming You and The Environment?

Above, the galley area of my motorhome. Photo by Armand Vaquer.

First, they were going after cows for methane emissions. Now they're going after your RV stove.

Some wacko at Popular Science wrote an article saying that your RV's stove is harming the environment by emitting methane. 

According to an article in RV Travel:

“Your gas stove could be hurting everyone around you,” shouts the headline from a recent issue of Popular Science. The subtitle, “A new report has found that stoves are constantly emitting fumes—warming the planet and endangering your health.” Is your RV stove a guilty party?

The Popular Science article trots out information from a recent report from Stanford University. The research says kitchen stoves are “constantly emitting methane” that has “a climate impact comparable to adding a half a million gas-powered cars to the roads.” It doesn’t matter, say researchers, whether the stove is actively cooking something, or not. “We found that over three-quarters of the methane emissions from stoves are emitted while the stove is off,” said Eric Lebel, the lead author of the study. “So these little tiny leaks from the stoves, they really do add up.”

Is your RV stove, while looking shiny and innocent, really adding to global warming? In a word, “No.” While there are concerns that RVers need to address in terms of safety, your RV kitchen appliance is not contributing in any great way to global warming. Does this fly in the face of the Stanford study?

To read the full article, go here.