In a matter of days, environmental and public health advocates have found themselves embroiled in a culture war over whether to increase regulations on a deadly, polluting machine that has become so ubiquitous in American life that owning one feels, to many, like a constitutional right, even though it isn’t.

For once, that machine is not the automobile. (That “embroiled” pun should have been a hint.)

I’m talking, of course, about the gas stove, which has drawn the scrutiny of the Consumer Product Safety Commission following a recent study that found them responsible for roughly one in eight childhood asthma cases.