A doctor writing to a patient’s landlord or housing authority asking them to upgrade cookers and heaters may have some sway.
The humble kitchen gas stove causes up to 12% of childhood asthma. Here’s what GPs can do, and the unlikely sector which could turn out to be an ally.
It starts with a detailed patient history.
“As doctors providing asthma care, we should be asking about people’s asthma triggers,” Newcastle GP Dr Ben Ewald told The Medical Republic.
“Included in that is asking about what kind of stove they have in the kitchen and what sort of heating they have in the house.”
In a recent article for the Australian Journal of General Practice, Dr Ewald and colleagues wrote that the nitrogen oxides produced in gas combustion was directly associated with the development of asthma and asthma attacks.
Around two-thirds of houses in Australia have gas stoves or heaters.
Basing their estimates on a meta-analysis the researchers predicted that, for a child with current asthma who lives in a home with a gas stove, 30% of their asthma risk comes from the stove.
“In the situation where parents hear that and take it on, they normally start [thinking about] how they can reduce the exposure in their house, and changing how they use the appliances is the first thing and getting rid of the appliances is the second thing,” he said.
“For some people, there might be a role for a doctor in trying to help that process along.”
In instances where the patient lives in a rental property or public housing, Dr Ewald and colleagues recommend writing to the housing provider in support of installing externally ducted rangehoods and open-flue or room-sealed heaters.
According to Dr Ewald, who is also a member of Doctors for the Environment Australia, gas is likely going the way of the dodo anyway.
“There’s no feasible pathway for the gas distribution system to become zero carbon – people talk about changing over to hydrogen or filling it with bio-methane instead of fossil gas,” he said.
“But of the things I’ve read, none of those are really a feasible pathway … I think the future of homes is that they just won’t have gas connections.”
Canberra already has one suburb that has no gas connection, and from next year no new houses will be allowed to connect to the gas network.
In the rest of Australia, it’s still mandatory to install gas pipeline to a newly built subdivision.
Laying all those pipes, however, comes at a significant cost; property developers have recently taken an interest in lobbying for the mandate to be repealed, which would save them thousands of dollars per housing block.
“[There was] a group of some property developers and some doctors and some celebrity chefs who all got together a few weeks ago, and said ‘don’t worry about gas stoves, induction stoves are better’,” Dr Ewald said.
It’s not often that the interest of a big money sector like real estate development aligns with public health goals.
Dr Ewald said the natural gas industry probably wouldn’t go down without a fight, and predicted that it would hit back with a public relations campaign over the next few months.
Doctors for the Environment Australia, via Primary Health Networks, is offering education programs for GPs on gas and asthma.
Australian Journal of General Practice 2022, online 1 December
