Author(s)

PREM K. PERUMAL, JAMES C. MATTHEWS, MATTHEW D. WRIGHT, IAN J. CRADDOCK, DUDLEY E. SHALLCROSS, M. ANWAR H. KHAN

Abstract

Cooking is a major source of indoor aerosols and thus has strong implications on public health. A series of cooking experiments were performed within a well instrumented house (SPHERE) and measured the size distributions of the particulate matter and particle number concentrations during the cooking and post-cooking periods. Cooking activities generated rapid increases in ultrafine particle number concentrations (10⁵–106 cm⁻³), followed by measurable inter-room and inter-floor transport with observable time delays and attenuation between source and receptor locations. The measurements of the size distributions of the ultrafine particulate matter by Scanning Mobility Particle Sizer and Counter (SMPS+C) from cooking experiments showed that frying cooked meal produced more aerosols with smaller size, at least one order of magnitude larger in number and two-fold smaller in size than the oven cooked meal. Frying generates rapid increases in particle number concentration and is transported to other areas of the building, often several orders of magnitude above background levels. Although transient, cooking represents a major contributor to short-term exposure, particularly for ultrafine particles. Ventilation significantly reduced particle concentrations, particularly in the source room, although variability increased in locations further from the source.

Keywords

kitchen, ultrafine particle, indoor pollution, frying, size distribution, decay, exposure