A federal agency is considering a ban on gas stoves amid rising concern about the health risks associated with indoor air pollution from the appliances, particularly among children.

The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, which can issue mandatory standards or ban consumer products if no feasible standard would adequately protect the public, plans to take action to address the gas pollution that has long been linked to health and respiratory problems. Richard Trumka Jr., a U.S. Consumer Product Safety commissioner, tweeted on Monday that “gas stoves can emit dangerous [levels] of toxic chemicals—even when not in use—and @USCPSC will consider all approaches to regulation.”

New regulatory action could require all new homes be built with electric stoves or high efficiency exhaust vents. Trumka told Bloomberg, which first reported the news, that “any option is on the table” and “products that can’t be made safe can be banned.”

Here’s what this means for consumers.

What the CPSC is saying

Despite calls for regulation, CPSC said in a statement to TIME that any regulatory action by the commission would involve a lengthy process, and no action on gas stoves is currently imminent.

The agency plans to open public comment on hazards posed by gas stoves in March, according to the agency’s yearly operating plan. Trumka clarified that the agency would not be able to physically remove gas stoves from everyone’s homes—but instead require all new products to comply with their regulations.

“To be clear, CPSC isn’t coming for anyone’s gas stoves,” Trumka tweeted on Monday. “Regulations apply to new products.”

“For Americans who CHOOSE to switch from gas to electric, there is support available—Congress passed the Inflation Reduction Act which includes a $840 rebate,” he added.

Natural gas stoves are currently used in about a third of households in the U.S., or about 40 million homes.

More from TIME

Several lawmakers weighed in on the issue last year, though the debate over gas cooking’s health hazards began nearly 50 years ago when researchers in England and Scotland surveyed the parents of more than 5,000 children and found a positive correlation between gas cooking and asthma symptoms.

Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, an Illinois Democrat who served as chairman of the House subcommittee on Economic and Consumer Policy during the last term of Congress, wrote a letter to CPSC in August calling on the agency to establish safety standards and warnings to consumers addressing the health risks posed by indoor air pollution from gas stoves.

“CPSC has the authority either to issue mandatory standards and require warning labels or to work with industry to develop voluntary standards and labels that would address indoor air pollution from gas stoves,” Rep. Krishnamoorthi said. “Despite this authority, the Commission has failed.”

In December, a group of lawmakers including Sen. Cory Booker, a New Jersey Democrat, and Rep. Don Beyer, a Virginia Democrat, wrote a letter to CPSC that called gas stove emissions a “cumulative burden” on Black, Latino, and low-income households that are already disproportionately affected by air pollution. The letter states that these communities are “more likely to be located near a waste incinerator or coal ash site, or living in smaller homes with poor ventilation, malfunctioning appliances, mold, dust mites, secondhand smoke, lead dust, pests, and other maintenance deficiencies.”

What the science says

Several studies have found that cooking with gas stoves releases nitrogen dioxide with other tiny airborne particles known as PM2.5—30 times smaller than the width of a human hair—both of which are lung irritants and have been linked with childhood asthma.

A new peer-reviewed study published last month in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health found that more than 12% of current childhood asthma cases in the U.S. can be attributed to gas stove use. Brady Seals, a manager in the carbon-free buildings program at the nonprofit clean energy group RMI and a co-author of the study, tells TIME that in-home gas cooking produces about the same level of risk for children to develop asthma as does exposure to secondhand smoke.

Certain populations, such as children or people who already have asthma, are more susceptible to diseases from gas stove pollution, Seals says. That’s because children still have developing immune systems and lungs, as well as higher breathing rates than adults. “This gets into the health equity issues since we know asthma is a profoundly unequal disease as Black children are almost three times more likely to have asthma than white children,” Seals says.

Read more: The Best Stove for Your Health and the Environment

Jonathan Levy, the chair of Boston University’s Department of Environmental Health and a professor, tells TIME that there’s increasingly strong evidence that gas stoves can also cause people to develop asthma even if they don’t already have it.