6 ms·

Frying Eggs and Air Quality Tests

72 points by crescit_eundo 1y ago

Terretta 1y ago
This result runs contrary to my observations with a $750 German device selected based on reviews of the sensor used (and a roundup writeup about these air quality sensors that had been here on HN years back).
- jstanley 1y ago
  What are your observations?
  - jawilson2 1y ago
    Contrary.
    - jstanley 1y ago
      You mean contrary to: > PM2.5 peaks at 11 ug / m^3 and then comes down once I stop frying. ? Just saying "Contrary" doesn't give away much information. It doesn't come down when you stop frying? It peaks at a different number? It never goes up at all? It actually goes down when you start frying?
- HackerNewt-doms 1y ago
  What device exactly?
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
Tade0 1y ago
Those eggs appear to be on a non-stick pan, so without oil. Try cooking with oil and you'll see PM levels go to enormous heights.
- progbits 1y ago
  Indeed, and I prefer short period of increased air pollution + ventilation and air filters, to nonstick pan and eating PFAS which is unavoidable (and unmeasurable at home).
  - onli 1y ago
    Afaik the nonstick pans are not emitting pollution in that sense, the food does not get contaminated, even if the surface peels off that is supposed to be benign. The problem is the production process, having already contaminated the drinking water of the whole world with PFAS - and that's the route where we get contaminated for real as well. But who knows, maybe those pans are even more dangerous than currently known.
  - cassianoleal 1y ago
    If it's Teflon / PTFE, as long as you don't let it smoke you should be fine. The polymer chain is too large to enter your cells, so your body just expels them intact. That's not to say you should go out and buy everything coated in PTFE. It generates tons of pollution when it's synthesized. I'm just saying there's no need to rush to throw away the ones you may already have at home - that might be counter-productive as you're now generating waste unnecessarily.
- chao- 1y ago
  Do people normally not use oil with nonstick pans? I always use some regardless of pan because it crisps better and adds flavor.
  - nkrisc 1y ago
    Same. The primary benefit of the oil, I’ve found even in a non-stick pan, is better and more even transfer of heat and more even browning.
    - lotsofpulp 1y ago
      I couldn't imagine cooking without oil. Pan frying spices in oil is pretty much the first step of cooking for me. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempering_(spices) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempering_(spices)
pxeger1 1y ago
> Someone once said to me that cooking can increase particle pollution in the air to dangerous levels. Is this true? I suspect not. Were they talking about gas hobs? Surely that's much worse than the electric/induction one you appear to be using.
- infecto 1y ago
  Gas combustion absolutely contributes to poorer air quality but I would argue that actually cooking (not what’s happening in this test) is much worse. Heating oil and cooking proteins will quickly fill a house. If you can smell it, the air quality has been reduced.
- crazygringo 1y ago
  No, gas combustion doesn't generate any significant amount of particles. It produces CO2, NO2 and some CO. But it's not going to show anything on a PM2.5 meter. The particles when frying come from the oil turning into smoke, as well as just aerosolization even well below the smoke point. These are what send PM2.5 levels skyrocketing. When I sear a steak in cast iron, my PM2.5 levels go from their baseline of ~2 ug/m^3 to ~200–400. And course you can smell it in the air.
vintermann 1y ago
Low PM count in his bedroom? Good for him, but try right after making your bed. Nobody is so perfectly defoliated that they don't have dust in their bedroom. Also, cooking of all kinds spikes PM levels in my experience. Maybe eggs in a 100% clean non-stick pan are an exception, but I doubt it if you can smell it.
- hombre_fatal 1y ago
  I have a Winix air purifier from Costco in my bedroom, and it has a small air quality indicator light (blue -> yellow -> red) though I'm too lazy to look up what it's measuring. Surprisingly, making the bed, shaking out the sheets, or vacuuming doesn't make it change color. But farting in the room makes it red for minutes. An ever amusing phenomenon that makes my girlfriend and I chuckle on a weekly basis.
  - jerlam 1y ago
    Winix air quality sensors (at least the ones I have) measure volatile organic compounds (VOCs), which is a little ironic since HEPA purifiers do little to remove VOCs from the air. Some other air purifiers like Coways measure particle pollution.
    - adolph 1y ago
      Winix and many other brands can be equipped with activated charcoal filters which do absorb VOCs. For consumers looking for a way to remove VOCs in their homes and offices, Kroll adds, “air cleaning using activated carbon filters, a tried-and-true technology that doesn't rely on chemical reactions, is still the way to go.” https://news.mit.edu/2021/study-finds-indoor-air-cleaners-fall-short-removing-volatile-organic-compounds-1029 https://news.mit.edu/2021/study-finds-indoor-air-cleaners-fa...
shireboy 1y ago
Stealing from the comments: “I bet the eggs taste better”
AdmiralAsshat 1y ago
My favorite method of frying an egg is in a wok with oil. It gets amazingly crispy, rather than floppy, which is how it usually turns out in a conventional nonstick pan. But it pretty consistently sets off the Coway air purifier in my kitchen when I do it...so I would assume frying with oil to the point of smoking does adversely affect air quality.
- namibj 1y ago
  >smoking >bad air quality .... That should be obvious though, right?
  - AdmiralAsshat 1y ago
    Sure, although it's interesting to see how long those pollutants linger, based on how long it takes my air purifier to return to "normal" quality. The egg fry will make it angry for about five minutes, maybe. By contrast, every time I fry up some bacon, the indicator will stay in the red zone for 15-20 minutes.
    - onli 1y ago
      To me measuring the air quality was interesting and surprising. Because like you said, how long the pollution lingers is surprising. And to me it wasn't obvious how bad the values get when cooking. I was aware of the kitchen smell traversing into the apartment, but hadn't realized how bad the air quality gets because of that.
infecto 1y ago
Frying would require some sort of oil or fat and it’s hard to tell but the pan looks clean. Anything with oil will dramatically bump up those numbers. It’s intuitive just cleaning your kitchen, grease being cooked travels. My one wish is the west adopted Chinese style kitchens. Even in new condo builds the kitchen will be isolated in a room you can close off, with an exterior wall and powerful exhaust vents. I always found it perplexing how ok folks are with what feels like cooking food in their bedroom.
- namibj 1y ago
  My new kitchen will be separated from any other living spaces for exactly that reason; though the exhaust may need juicing.
  - infecto 1y ago
    After being in a number of Chinese condo apartments I realize how awesome it was. Most had sliding glass doors so you could open it up if you want but if you were cooking something heavy, you could close the doors or internal windows, open that window or balcony door outside and let the cooking commence.
- dfxm12 1y ago
  what feels like cooking food in their bedroom Aside from studio apartments, where space is at a huge premium, I'm having a hard time understanding what you mean by this. Can you elaborate?
  - infecto 1y ago
    Have you been into a western home? The stove may not have a hood, if it does have one it’s usually inadequate. The kitchen will be in an open space so anything you cook travels everywhere. The number of homes without range hoods is wild to me. Hence cooking in your bedroom, you cook and the whole house smells.
    - wffurr 1y ago
esafak 1y ago
> Something weird though is that turning on my extractor fan didn’t really do much. Was it one of those useless microwave ones?
mttch 1y ago
Two things, no oil as others have suggested but also frying eggs does not require a very high temperature, around 150 Celsius and your eggs don’t look particularly browned (which is how I prefer them too) so you aren’t exercising the Maillard reaction, which generates the PM2.5. Try again with browning a fatty cut of beef or pork steak in oil which require higher temperatures where lots of browning is occurring and you are also closer to the smoke point of the oil.
- casualphysics 1y ago
  I used oil but not a lot. I didn't know about the Maillard reaction, and this is good info. Thank you, and I'll do this for next time. I want to figure out an easy way to make PM2.5 to test my air purifier.
ssimpson 1y ago
Not sure about yours, but many extractor (vent) fans will just suck the air over a very loose filter and throw it back into the room. Many in the US are part of the over stove microwave and rarely vent at more than 250cfm (~7 m3/min) where specific vent fans that go outside can move upwards of 700-800cfm (20m3/min).
- casualphysics 1y ago
  Author here. I really want to figure out if my extractor fan is actually doing anything good.
ur-whale 1y ago
Was this on an electric or a gas stove? Now if we're cooking with gas (as the east Germans use to say in the 80's), that generates quite some PM2.5 in an of itself. Also, anyone cooking eggs without getting to the Maillard reaction (or for that matter, with oil instead of butter) should never again legally allowed to approach a frying pan :D
- mikeyouse 1y ago
  Gas typically doesn’t result in too much pm2.5 - but you do get a lot of combustion byproducts that are similarly unhealthy in the form of NOx, benzenes and other VOCs.
- justinrubek 1y ago
  I like eggs fried crispy. I like eggs fried in butter. Eggs fried gently and soft are luxurious. Oil cooked eggs are lovely. You can do it in a wok and get them puffy with a crispy bottom and a soft top. Or you can make the top crispy. Sometimes butter brings extra flavor when I really want the egg flavor. There are many valid ways to make eggs.
- casualphysics 1y ago
  Author here. I have an induction hob! Unfortunately, I use oil :)
tensorlibb 1y ago
I've found just opening a window does the most to make a difference - in most European / US homes (even with propane / gas service) the "exhaust" just blows into the same room or a cabinet! That said, I personally use the Breathe Airmonitor Plus [1] - I kept having issues with calibration with the temtop unit. Mostly decided on this one since it uses an NDIR sensor similar to my Aranet which I carry with me all the time. 0 - https://amzn.to/423AAaj https://amzn.to/423AAaj
- hnuser123456 1y ago
  If only externally-extracting fans were a codified standard for stove hoods in the way that bathroom fans and dryer vents are.
  - tensorlibb 1y ago
    It's actually just wild - my last apt in Manhattan was built in 2018 and had a gas range. The "exhaust fan" just vented back into the kitchen and the only "exhaust" per se was a vent in the bathroom that "sucked" all the way to the roof with negative pressure. If I ran my stove for more than 15 min my carbon monoxide / fire alarm would go off.
    - amanaplanacanal 1y ago
      Wow! Do building codes allow that? I thought natural gas stoves had to be vented to outside.
ksab 1y ago
As someone who once did lab-based cooking studies (with a mass spectrometer), you would be surprised what is emitted from frying with oil. I suggest frying some bacon and report back.
amo1111 1y ago
> Something weird though is that turning on my extractor fan didn’t really do much. Does your extractor fan vent to the outside, or just recirculate through a filter? In my experience, people often overestimate how much protection ventilation provides. It mostly dilutes contaminants rather than removing or isolating them. For example, with moderately hazardous compounds, a fume hood works fine under normal use, but in the event of a spill it can’t bring levels back down quickly enough to protect the operator. In that kind of situation, an isolator makes far more sense or adding PPE, though that can be burdensome. What really surprised me is how high the values get from just a single pan. It makes me wonder what it’s like in a commercial kitchen with multiple pans at higher temperatures, especially if the extractor fan fails and there’s no time to shut down operations to fix it.
- Mistletoe 1y ago
  >In my experience, people often overestimate how much protection ventilation provides. Do you have references to back this up that I could read? Assuming the same fan size, ventilation would act like a perfect filter and remove everything out of the room that the fan pushes, whereas a filter will allow some particles to pass and recirculate. Especially useless if it is those metal fiber filters that are in a range hood that just remove some grease.
  - amo1111 1y ago
    Yes, ventilating out > recirculating no question! I just wanted to raise awareness that ventilation is not instantaneous. It takes time to bring things back to safe levels in case of spikes. A quick search brings up the CDC guidance, where they discuss air changes per hour for a room. This will be for HVAC units, which operate on a completely different magnitude of airflow compared to a kitchen extractor fan. https://www.cdc.gov/infection-control/hcp/environmental-control/appendix-b-air.html https://www.cdc.gov/infection-control/hcp/environmental-cont... This also matches my experience in industrial applications, you only need a single failure point such as a spill or a large enough leak and ventilation alone is no longer enough to keep people safe. This is why it's worth considering a glove box/isolator. You could make the argument that a glove box can also leak and I'm starting to sound like a safety engineer. Anyway at home either will be fine with outside ventilation being superior if done right.
koolba 1y ago
> Something weird though is that turning on my extractor fan didn’t really do much. I need to look into that! Where the device is relative to the pan and fan would clearly matter. It should be across the room to get a better estimate of the net effect. Not right next to the pan.
alberth 1y ago
Just having a natural gas stovetop will significantly worsen your homes indoor air quality. People forget your breathing in the exhaust of burning a fossil fuel.
- adolph 1y ago
  Iirc, the primary problem with gas stoves is nitrogen oxides which are created by just about any burning process that uses atmosphere as the oxygen source since air is about 78% nitrogen. In other words, the problem doesn't have to do with the methane being a fossil fuel. If we had stoves with a source of gaseous or liquid oxygen, then the NOx emissions would be greatly reduced.
jnordt 1y ago
I have been tracking my airquality with a device called AirQ Pro / Science What i like about this device that they give a very precisce and clear physical definition of each metric and explain by what quantitative factors the metric is influenced. incl. potential measurement error sources and ability's to reset sensors. Definitely recommend this over other air quality devices that try to simplify all the measurements into good/bad.. (Note: Just a happy user no affiliation whatsoever with the company)
asdff 1y ago
The biggest surprise for me in this thread is that people actually like crispy eggs.
- virtualbluesky 1y ago
  It is possible to have both a crispy base and liquid yolk.
  - asdff 1y ago
    I just find nothing palatable about the crispy edge. If it happens when I cook an egg I cut it off. It has no flavor beyond the oil it was cooked in and all the mouthfeel of an orange peel left in the sun for three weeks.
cameldrv 1y ago
One thing that frustrates me about air quality is that we have sensors for various types of gasses, but when it comes to particulates, the sensors are just telling you the size. The composition of the particle has to make a huge difference in terms of the effects. Metal dust from a brake pad or rubber from a tire must do very different things to your lungs than vegetable oil.
- adolph 1y ago
  If you look at how a CO2 sensor works [0], you see that it is tuned for a specific material. Characterizing any possible material would be the job of a gas chromatograph [1], which are typically an industrial/scientific instrument as opposed to a more limited mass produced device. Maybe one day the cost (both material and ongoing maintenance) will be low enough to have in one's home. 0. https://www.co2meter.com/blogs/news/co2-carbon-dioxide-detector https://www.co2meter.com/blogs/news/co2-carbon-dioxide-detec... 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_chromatography%E2%80%93mass_spectrometry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_chromatography%E2%80%93mas...
seemaze 1y ago
I've taken to performing much of my higher temperature (and presumably higher aerosolization) cooking outdoors. Mostly to reduce the heat load to my home, but also so I can smoke and fry and sear with abandon. As a side effect, I now have a collection of very well seasoned cast iron.
kccqzy 1y ago
I have a much cheaper Temtop unit in my kitchen. Its maximum reading for PM2.5 is 500. Usually if I apply too much heat it will stay at 500. And it detects PM2.5 way faster than my nose can smell smoke or burning.
JaggerFoo 1y ago
I wonder if there are any studies of professional chefs and their long-term health. I see video after video of chefs cooking in close proximity to oil cooked food, wood burning setups (BBQ), waiting for cooking oil to smoke, even smoking while cooking, etc. If there should be a cohort that would be the canary in the coal mine, it would be professional chefs, who day-in and day-out cook for a living over several hours per day. Yet, I have not heard of any studies raising alarms for the profession. Cheers
0xbadcafebee 1y ago
> Someone once said to me that cooking can increase particle pollution in the air to dangerous levels. Is this true? I suspect not. Man, I wish I had the confidence to just disregard science and research done by professionals.
bhy 1y ago
This kind of cooking generate a lot of ultra fine particles, which is too small to be measurable with PM2.5 sensors.

72 points by crescit_eundo 1y ago

This result runs contrary to my observations with a $750 German device selected based on reviews of the sensor used (and a roundup writeup about these air quality sensors that had been here on HN years back).

jstanley 1y ago
What are your observations?
- jawilson2 1y ago
  Contrary.
  - jstanley 1y ago
    You mean contrary to: > PM2.5 peaks at 11 ug / m^3 and then comes down once I stop frying. ? Just saying "Contrary" doesn't give away much information. It doesn't come down when you stop frying? It peaks at a different number? It never goes up at all? It actually goes down when you start frying?
HackerNewt-doms 1y ago
What device exactly?
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]

Tade0 1y ago

Those eggs appear to be on a non-stick pan, so without oil. Try cooking with oil and you'll see PM levels go to enormous heights.

progbits 1y ago
Indeed, and I prefer short period of increased air pollution + ventilation and air filters, to nonstick pan and eating PFAS which is unavoidable (and unmeasurable at home).
- onli 1y ago
  Afaik the nonstick pans are not emitting pollution in that sense, the food does not get contaminated, even if the surface peels off that is supposed to be benign. The problem is the production process, having already contaminated the drinking water of the whole world with PFAS - and that's the route where we get contaminated for real as well. But who knows, maybe those pans are even more dangerous than currently known.
- cassianoleal 1y ago
  If it's Teflon / PTFE, as long as you don't let it smoke you should be fine. The polymer chain is too large to enter your cells, so your body just expels them intact. That's not to say you should go out and buy everything coated in PTFE. It generates tons of pollution when it's synthesized. I'm just saying there's no need to rush to throw away the ones you may already have at home - that might be counter-productive as you're now generating waste unnecessarily.
chao- 1y ago
Do people normally not use oil with nonstick pans? I always use some regardless of pan because it crisps better and adds flavor.
- nkrisc 1y ago
  Same. The primary benefit of the oil, I’ve found even in a non-stick pan, is better and more even transfer of heat and more even browning.
  - lotsofpulp 1y ago
    I couldn't imagine cooking without oil. Pan frying spices in oil is pretty much the first step of cooking for me. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempering_(spices) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempering_(spices)

pxeger1 1y ago

> Someone once said to me that cooking can increase particle pollution in the air to dangerous levels. Is this true? I suspect not. Were they talking about gas hobs? Surely that's much worse than the electric/induction one you appear to be using.

infecto 1y ago
Gas combustion absolutely contributes to poorer air quality but I would argue that actually cooking (not what’s happening in this test) is much worse. Heating oil and cooking proteins will quickly fill a house. If you can smell it, the air quality has been reduced.
crazygringo 1y ago
No, gas combustion doesn't generate any significant amount of particles. It produces CO2, NO2 and some CO. But it's not going to show anything on a PM2.5 meter. The particles when frying come from the oil turning into smoke, as well as just aerosolization even well below the smoke point. These are what send PM2.5 levels skyrocketing. When I sear a steak in cast iron, my PM2.5 levels go from their baseline of ~2 ug/m^3 to ~200–400. And course you can smell it in the air.

vintermann 1y ago

Low PM count in his bedroom? Good for him, but try right after making your bed. Nobody is so perfectly defoliated that they don't have dust in their bedroom. Also, cooking of all kinds spikes PM levels in my experience. Maybe eggs in a 100% clean non-stick pan are an exception, but I doubt it if you can smell it.

hombre_fatal 1y ago
I have a Winix air purifier from Costco in my bedroom, and it has a small air quality indicator light (blue -> yellow -> red) though I'm too lazy to look up what it's measuring. Surprisingly, making the bed, shaking out the sheets, or vacuuming doesn't make it change color. But farting in the room makes it red for minutes. An ever amusing phenomenon that makes my girlfriend and I chuckle on a weekly basis.
- jerlam 1y ago
  Winix air quality sensors (at least the ones I have) measure volatile organic compounds (VOCs), which is a little ironic since HEPA purifiers do little to remove VOCs from the air. Some other air purifiers like Coways measure particle pollution.
  - adolph 1y ago
    Winix and many other brands can be equipped with activated charcoal filters which do absorb VOCs. For consumers looking for a way to remove VOCs in their homes and offices, Kroll adds, “air cleaning using activated carbon filters, a tried-and-true technology that doesn't rely on chemical reactions, is still the way to go.” https://news.mit.edu/2021/study-finds-indoor-air-cleaners-fall-short-removing-volatile-organic-compounds-1029 https://news.mit.edu/2021/study-finds-indoor-air-cleaners-fa...

shireboy 1y ago

Stealing from the comments: “I bet the eggs taste better”

AdmiralAsshat 1y ago

My favorite method of frying an egg is in a wok with oil. It gets amazingly crispy, rather than floppy, which is how it usually turns out in a conventional nonstick pan. But it pretty consistently sets off the Coway air purifier in my kitchen when I do it...so I would assume frying with oil to the point of smoking does adversely affect air quality.

namibj 1y ago
>smoking >bad air quality .... That should be obvious though, right?
- AdmiralAsshat 1y ago
  Sure, although it's interesting to see how long those pollutants linger, based on how long it takes my air purifier to return to "normal" quality. The egg fry will make it angry for about five minutes, maybe. By contrast, every time I fry up some bacon, the indicator will stay in the red zone for 15-20 minutes.
  - onli 1y ago
    To me measuring the air quality was interesting and surprising. Because like you said, how long the pollution lingers is surprising. And to me it wasn't obvious how bad the values get when cooking. I was aware of the kitchen smell traversing into the apartment, but hadn't realized how bad the air quality gets because of that.

infecto 1y ago

Frying would require some sort of oil or fat and it’s hard to tell but the pan looks clean. Anything with oil will dramatically bump up those numbers. It’s intuitive just cleaning your kitchen, grease being cooked travels. My one wish is the west adopted Chinese style kitchens. Even in new condo builds the kitchen will be isolated in a room you can close off, with an exterior wall and powerful exhaust vents. I always found it perplexing how ok folks are with what feels like cooking food in their bedroom.

namibj 1y ago
My new kitchen will be separated from any other living spaces for exactly that reason; though the exhaust may need juicing.
- infecto 1y ago
  After being in a number of Chinese condo apartments I realize how awesome it was. Most had sliding glass doors so you could open it up if you want but if you were cooking something heavy, you could close the doors or internal windows, open that window or balcony door outside and let the cooking commence.
dfxm12 1y ago
what feels like cooking food in their bedroom Aside from studio apartments, where space is at a huge premium, I'm having a hard time understanding what you mean by this. Can you elaborate?
- infecto 1y ago
  Have you been into a western home? The stove may not have a hood, if it does have one it’s usually inadequate. The kitchen will be in an open space so anything you cook travels everywhere. The number of homes without range hoods is wild to me. Hence cooking in your bedroom, you cook and the whole house smells.
  - wffurr 1y ago

esafak 1y ago

> Something weird though is that turning on my extractor fan didn’t really do much. Was it one of those useless microwave ones?

mttch 1y ago

Two things, no oil as others have suggested but also frying eggs does not require a very high temperature, around 150 Celsius and your eggs don’t look particularly browned (which is how I prefer them too) so you aren’t exercising the Maillard reaction, which generates the PM2.5. Try again with browning a fatty cut of beef or pork steak in oil which require higher temperatures where lots of browning is occurring and you are also closer to the smoke point of the oil.

casualphysics 1y ago
I used oil but not a lot. I didn't know about the Maillard reaction, and this is good info. Thank you, and I'll do this for next time. I want to figure out an easy way to make PM2.5 to test my air purifier.

ssimpson 1y ago

Not sure about yours, but many extractor (vent) fans will just suck the air over a very loose filter and throw it back into the room. Many in the US are part of the over stove microwave and rarely vent at more than 250cfm (~7 m3/min) where specific vent fans that go outside can move upwards of 700-800cfm (20m3/min).

casualphysics 1y ago
Author here. I really want to figure out if my extractor fan is actually doing anything good.

ur-whale 1y ago

Was this on an electric or a gas stove? Now if we're cooking with gas (as the east Germans use to say in the 80's), that generates quite some PM2.5 in an of itself. Also, anyone cooking eggs without getting to the Maillard reaction (or for that matter, with oil instead of butter) should never again legally allowed to approach a frying pan :D

mikeyouse 1y ago
Gas typically doesn’t result in too much pm2.5 - but you do get a lot of combustion byproducts that are similarly unhealthy in the form of NOx, benzenes and other VOCs.
justinrubek 1y ago
I like eggs fried crispy. I like eggs fried in butter. Eggs fried gently and soft are luxurious. Oil cooked eggs are lovely. You can do it in a wok and get them puffy with a crispy bottom and a soft top. Or you can make the top crispy. Sometimes butter brings extra flavor when I really want the egg flavor. There are many valid ways to make eggs.
casualphysics 1y ago
Author here. I have an induction hob! Unfortunately, I use oil :)

tensorlibb 1y ago

I've found just opening a window does the most to make a difference - in most European / US homes (even with propane / gas service) the "exhaust" just blows into the same room or a cabinet! That said, I personally use the Breathe Airmonitor Plus [1] - I kept having issues with calibration with the temtop unit. Mostly decided on this one since it uses an NDIR sensor similar to my Aranet which I carry with me all the time. 0 - https://amzn.to/423AAaj https://amzn.to/423AAaj

hnuser123456 1y ago
If only externally-extracting fans were a codified standard for stove hoods in the way that bathroom fans and dryer vents are.
- tensorlibb 1y ago
  It's actually just wild - my last apt in Manhattan was built in 2018 and had a gas range. The "exhaust fan" just vented back into the kitchen and the only "exhaust" per se was a vent in the bathroom that "sucked" all the way to the roof with negative pressure. If I ran my stove for more than 15 min my carbon monoxide / fire alarm would go off.
  - amanaplanacanal 1y ago
    Wow! Do building codes allow that? I thought natural gas stoves had to be vented to outside.

ksab 1y ago

As someone who once did lab-based cooking studies (with a mass spectrometer), you would be surprised what is emitted from frying with oil. I suggest frying some bacon and report back.

amo1111 1y ago

> Something weird though is that turning on my extractor fan didn’t really do much. Does your extractor fan vent to the outside, or just recirculate through a filter? In my experience, people often overestimate how much protection ventilation provides. It mostly dilutes contaminants rather than removing or isolating them. For example, with moderately hazardous compounds, a fume hood works fine under normal use, but in the event of a spill it can’t bring levels back down quickly enough to protect the operator. In that kind of situation, an isolator makes far more sense or adding PPE, though that can be burdensome. What really surprised me is how high the values get from just a single pan. It makes me wonder what it’s like in a commercial kitchen with multiple pans at higher temperatures, especially if the extractor fan fails and there’s no time to shut down operations to fix it.

Mistletoe 1y ago
>In my experience, people often overestimate how much protection ventilation provides. Do you have references to back this up that I could read? Assuming the same fan size, ventilation would act like a perfect filter and remove everything out of the room that the fan pushes, whereas a filter will allow some particles to pass and recirculate. Especially useless if it is those metal fiber filters that are in a range hood that just remove some grease.
- amo1111 1y ago
  Yes, ventilating out > recirculating no question! I just wanted to raise awareness that ventilation is not instantaneous. It takes time to bring things back to safe levels in case of spikes. A quick search brings up the CDC guidance, where they discuss air changes per hour for a room. This will be for HVAC units, which operate on a completely different magnitude of airflow compared to a kitchen extractor fan. https://www.cdc.gov/infection-control/hcp/environmental-control/appendix-b-air.html https://www.cdc.gov/infection-control/hcp/environmental-cont... This also matches my experience in industrial applications, you only need a single failure point such as a spill or a large enough leak and ventilation alone is no longer enough to keep people safe. This is why it's worth considering a glove box/isolator. You could make the argument that a glove box can also leak and I'm starting to sound like a safety engineer. Anyway at home either will be fine with outside ventilation being superior if done right.

koolba 1y ago

> Something weird though is that turning on my extractor fan didn’t really do much. I need to look into that! Where the device is relative to the pan and fan would clearly matter. It should be across the room to get a better estimate of the net effect. Not right next to the pan.

alberth 1y ago

Just having a natural gas stovetop will significantly worsen your homes indoor air quality. People forget your breathing in the exhaust of burning a fossil fuel.

adolph 1y ago
Iirc, the primary problem with gas stoves is nitrogen oxides which are created by just about any burning process that uses atmosphere as the oxygen source since air is about 78% nitrogen. In other words, the problem doesn't have to do with the methane being a fossil fuel. If we had stoves with a source of gaseous or liquid oxygen, then the NOx emissions would be greatly reduced.

jnordt 1y ago

I have been tracking my airquality with a device called AirQ Pro / Science What i like about this device that they give a very precisce and clear physical definition of each metric and explain by what quantitative factors the metric is influenced. incl. potential measurement error sources and ability's to reset sensors. Definitely recommend this over other air quality devices that try to simplify all the measurements into good/bad.. (Note: Just a happy user no affiliation whatsoever with the company)

asdff 1y ago

The biggest surprise for me in this thread is that people actually like crispy eggs.

virtualbluesky 1y ago
It is possible to have both a crispy base and liquid yolk.
- asdff 1y ago
  I just find nothing palatable about the crispy edge. If it happens when I cook an egg I cut it off. It has no flavor beyond the oil it was cooked in and all the mouthfeel of an orange peel left in the sun for three weeks.

cameldrv 1y ago

One thing that frustrates me about air quality is that we have sensors for various types of gasses, but when it comes to particulates, the sensors are just telling you the size. The composition of the particle has to make a huge difference in terms of the effects. Metal dust from a brake pad or rubber from a tire must do very different things to your lungs than vegetable oil.

adolph 1y ago
If you look at how a CO2 sensor works [0], you see that it is tuned for a specific material. Characterizing any possible material would be the job of a gas chromatograph [1], which are typically an industrial/scientific instrument as opposed to a more limited mass produced device. Maybe one day the cost (both material and ongoing maintenance) will be low enough to have in one's home. 0. https://www.co2meter.com/blogs/news/co2-carbon-dioxide-detector https://www.co2meter.com/blogs/news/co2-carbon-dioxide-detec... 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_chromatography%E2%80%93mass_spectrometry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_chromatography%E2%80%93mas...

seemaze 1y ago

I've taken to performing much of my higher temperature (and presumably higher aerosolization) cooking outdoors. Mostly to reduce the heat load to my home, but also so I can smoke and fry and sear with abandon. As a side effect, I now have a collection of very well seasoned cast iron.

kccqzy 1y ago

I have a much cheaper Temtop unit in my kitchen. Its maximum reading for PM2.5 is 500. Usually if I apply too much heat it will stay at 500. And it detects PM2.5 way faster than my nose can smell smoke or burning.

JaggerFoo 1y ago

I wonder if there are any studies of professional chefs and their long-term health. I see video after video of chefs cooking in close proximity to oil cooked food, wood burning setups (BBQ), waiting for cooking oil to smoke, even smoking while cooking, etc. If there should be a cohort that would be the canary in the coal mine, it would be professional chefs, who day-in and day-out cook for a living over several hours per day. Yet, I have not heard of any studies raising alarms for the profession. Cheers

0xbadcafebee 1y ago

> Someone once said to me that cooking can increase particle pollution in the air to dangerous levels. Is this true? I suspect not. Man, I wish I had the confidence to just disregard science and research done by professionals.

bhy 1y ago

This kind of cooking generate a lot of ultra fine particles, which is too small to be measurable with PM2.5 sensors.