How Cooking Impacts Your Home’s Indoor Air Quality
There are some everyday actions that hurt a home’s indoor air quality but are overlooked by homeowners because of how essential they are. One such action is cooking. Your eating habits inform the types of pollutants that get into your indoor air. Cooking anything from a piece of toast to chocolate chip cookies leads to differing levels of particulate matter and volatile organic compounds (VOCs) entering your air. Knowing what these pollutants are can help you take steps to improve your indoor air. How Different Cooking Sources Contribute to Indoor Air Pollution Cooking any amount or type of food will cause pollutants to enter your indoor air. However, the effects shouldn’t be harmful if your home is properly filtered. If your home is outfitted with gas ovens and cooktops, you will perform combustion of fossil fuels every time you cook. Any type of cooking that involves combustion is more harmful than non-combustion cooking methods like microwaves and electric ovens. When you use an electric oven and cooktop, your home shouldn’t become too polluted. However, a small concentration of harmful particles can still enter your indoor air. When you engage in methods of cooking like frying tortillas and stir-frying, particulate matter...
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