The Consumer Product Safety Commission is still thinking about your gas stove.
The independent federal agency will be issuing a request for information in the Federal Register “seeking public input on chronic hazards associated with gas stoves and proposed solutions to these hazards.” The CPSC is interested in knowing about chemical hazards from gas-stove use. It wants feedback from consumers, manufacturers, other government agencies, researchers, and nonprofits.
A request for information is not a proposed regulation, and there is no regulatory action currently being taken on gas stoves. CPSC chairman Alexander Hoehn-Saric said at a recent conference that the agency is seeking to address any possible hazards and allow public input on the issue.
A request for information is “one of the few legal terms that actually means what it sounds like,” said John Kerkhoff, an attorney with the Pacific Legal Foundation. It just means the agency is allowing people to submit comments formally to the agency. “It’s really a preliminary step, but it indicates that an agency is interested in an issue,” he said. After a request for information, an agency can go different ways on what it decides to do or not do.
Americans should provide the CPSC with information about gas stoves. In fact, every gas-stove consumer in the country should provide a comment to the agency, to tell the CPSC to mind its own business and let Americans cook in peace. Unaccountable, power-hungry bureaucrats don’t even need to be interested in how we cook.
Stay tuned to this space for directions on how to submit comments once the request is published in the Federal Register.