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Would you ditch your gas hob over health, fire and emission worries?

The writer had simmering gas-pollution concerns, but what made her get rid of the gas cylinder was another sort of threat.

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Scientists warned that gas can produce pollutants like nitrogen dioxide, carbon monoxide, formaldehyde, hydrogen cyanide and more.

Scientists warned that gas can produce pollutants like nitrogen dioxide, carbon monoxide, formaldehyde, hydrogen cyanide and more.

PHOTO: UNSPLASH

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I was just a bit taller than a gas stove when I first learnt how to light one. It smelled like rotting vegetables, sulphur and fear as I nervously struck a match after turning the knob to let the hob exhale from its gas-cylinder lung.

That’s the way it was manually lit back then, not with the safer electric igniter, but with a naked flame on a matchstick held by a child to combustible gas. To avoid wasting a single matchstick, I was also taught to light it with a flame borrowed from a lit burner with a twist of old newspaper.

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