The day my daughter accidentally left our gas stove on still haunts me. So many things could have gone wrong. So many things did go wrong. It was the final straw that pushed our family to switch to a safe and efficient induction cooktop.

I remember I was reading something, so engrossed that I didn’t notice the smell at first. Like a frog who doesn’t realize she’s being slowly boiled until it’s too late, I was completely oblivious to the danger we were in.

Then, suddenly, I was overwhelmed by the nauseating yet frighteningly familiar smell of rotten eggs. Years of living in the Peace country where hydrogen sulfide leaks from fracking wells or gas plants kickstarted my sense of emergency. Adrenaline rushing through me, I ran to the kitchen where I saw to my horror that the gas stovetop was on with no flame to be found. 

I panicked. I wasn’t thinking straight. By this point, the air was so thick with gas, I could barely breathe. I felt like I was choking. It was then that I made what could have easily been a fatal mistake. Without so much as a thought, I rushed to the stove and turned it off as fast as I humanly could. 

Our old stove had an igniter that created sparks when the gas knob was turned in either direction – on or off. I could have blown up our kitchen.

I don’t know if it was because the igniter didn’t work that time, or because my house is so old and drafty that the gasses weren’t accumulating enough to explode (it didn’t smell that way!!) but for some miracle reason the extremely flammable methane gas cloud in my kitchen did not ignite. 

It was so stupid. And I, of all people, should have known better. After all, as an anti-fracking activist I’ve known for years that (un)natural fracked gas is dangerous. But I panicked and all I could think about was turning it off and throwing open the doors so we could breathe again. Which I did, successfully – but I should have done it in reverse order. If I had been thinking clearly, I would have done it in the reverse order: doors first, then the leak. 

It wasn’t until much later that I realized the folly of that moment and how close I came to blowing up my family. But then I thought – why is that my fault? Why do we have gas appliances in our homes that not only cause explosions, but leak toxic fumes into our living space 24/7? 

This happened the year before I started working for Dogwood when I was only just beginning to get a sense of how bad gas stoves are for our health. While the science on the health impacts of using (un)natural fracked gas in our homes was relatively new to me at that time, I knew all about the harmful ways fracked gas poisons nearby communities, causes earthquakes, and drives climate change. 

I guess there’s always been a bit of a disconnect in many of our minds between the fracking that’s taking place up north and the gas it produces that we use to heat our homes and cook our food. It wasn’t until I read that 1 in 8 cases of childhood asthma can be attributed to the use of gas stoves in homes that I began to realize that the gas we’re using to power our homes is just as toxic and dangerous to our health as it is to the people who live near where it’s being produced. 

Fracked gas is toxic to all of us, whether it’s poisoning a farmer’s well or poisoning our children in our very own kitchen. It’s literally the same stuff. 

And it’s shocking how many people don’t know what exactly is in this stuff. It’s not well advertised. In fact, it’s largely covered up. When was the last time you saw a major media outlet in B.C. talk about fracking in our province, let alone how the gas we use in our homes comes from fracking and is toxic to our health? 

Not only is it covered up, the fossil fuel industry has spent millions greenwashing fracked gas labeling it with the misnomer “natural” and claiming it’s a “low carbon” climate solution. How they get away with these straight up lies is unfathomable because it could not be farther from the truth. 

If people knew what was really in this stuff they wouldn’t want to let it go anywhere near their homes, let alone their children. And if they knew the truth about how it actually impacts our climate, FortisBC and all of the other gas peddlers would be in big trouble.

The fact is, (un)natural gas is methane – and unburned methane warms up our planet 84 times faster than carbon dioxide. It’s a major greenhouse gas and it’s accelerating the climate crisis. 

While the fossil gas industry claims its gas is a climate solution because it burns cleaner than other fossil fuels, it still emits carbon dioxide when it is burned. In fact, 11 per cent of B.C.’s carbon emissions comes from burning (un)natural gas in our homes and that number goes up to 40 per cent in our cities. And those numbers do not even account for all of the fugitive methane emissions that come from extracting/fracking, producing, refining, transporting and using that fracked gas in the first place.  

Using (un)natural gas is a disaster for our climate. There’s no arguing that. It’s a fact. 

But that’s not what worries me when I think about the day we had our gas leak. 

It’s the benzene. 

While over 90 per cent of the gas in our homes is made up of methane, a huge number of other, carcinogenic and toxic chemicals can be found in the stuff. The most alarming of which is benzene, a known carcinogenic that is not safe in any amount. It’s why the communities near fracking rigs have such high rates of cancer and it’s why that gas leak still haunts me to this day as I think about how much of it my kids breathed in that day. 

The last couple of weeks I’ve been thinking about it a lot, with an increasingly sick feeling in my stomach. A recent study shows that Vancouver (and presumably surrounding areas in B.C.) have the highest levels of benzene in our (un)natural gas in all of North America. 

We need to stop putting dangerous toxic gas in our homes. We need to stop exposing our loved ones to it. 

I was fortunate to be able to get rid of my gas stove last Christmas but it wasn’t easy. We had to save up for it. Many British Columbians do not have the option to get rid of their gas stove or to get gas out of their homes. It can be cost prohibitive to get a heat pump or an induction stovetop. It shouldn’t be so hard to make sure our homes are safe for our family. 

That’s why we’re calling on the B.C. government to make sure that all new buildings in B.C. come equipped with electric heat pumps and stovetops, because it’s their responsibility to ensure that our homes are built safe in the first place. 

Our homes are where we raise our future generations and take care of our loved ones. Let’s make sure they’re benzene free. Sign the petition and join our movement for Safer Homes in B.C.