Whether your stove/oven is gas or electric, cooking can generate a lot of unhealthy indoor particulate matter. And gas stoves can generate large amounts of other harmful pollutants, including oxides of nitrogen, carbon monoxide, and more.
2/ As such, it is important to use your range hood exhaust fan while cooking. Some advice on range hoods here: indoor.lbl.gov/news/article/r….
But can using a range hood lead to greater exposure to wildfire? Answer = Yes.
3/ Range hoods can exhaust large volumes of air from your kitchen and home (thankfully in terms of cooking emissions). But when local ventilation is used to exhaust air to the outdoors your home becomes negatively pressurized relative to outdoors. So, ....
4/ Air is drawn into your home when local ventilation (exhaust is used). So, while your range hood fan protects you from harmful emissions from cooking, it's use exposes you to more of the harmful components of wildfire smoke.
5/ A solution is to minimize cooking on stove tops and ovens when wildfires are making outdoor air extremely unhealthy. Consider take-out delivery to your home from a local restaurant (which also helps them), microwaving of prepared foods, or more raw fruits and veggies.
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The "Sources" chapter of @theNASEM
report on "Health Risks of Indoor Exposure to Fine Particulate Matter & Practical Mitigation Solutions" is approx 60 pages and full of source-specific details. Check out the report here: (some highlights in thread)
Cooking is a very large source, whether heating w/ natural gas, propane, electric. Emissions specific to natural gas for cooking & other heating processes considered in (2)
The "Sources" chapter of @theNASEM report on "Health Risks of Indoor Exposure to Fine Particulate Matter & Practical Mitigation Solutions" is approx 60 pages and full of source-specific details. Check out the report here: 👇 (some highlights in thread)
Cooking is a very large source, whether heating w/ natural gas, propane, electric .. Emissions specific to natural gas for cooking & other heating processes considered in (2)
(1) Americans spend the vast majority of their time indoors. Prior to the pandemic, on average Americans lived to be 79 yo (now lower) & spend almost 70 of those years indoors, 54 years insides residences.
(2) Most fine particulate matter (particles with diameters of 2.5 microns or less) are inhaled indoors. This is true for fine particles of both indoor as well as outdoor origin. (more on sources of fine PM in a future tweet).
(3) There is ample evidence that exposure to fine particulate matter causes a range of adverse health effects (will summarize in a future tweet).
1/ This CR Box (the one on the right!) has now totaled operational time equivalent to an entire in-classroom school year. Both it and its cohort of three other CR Boxes continue to perform with a high level of effectiveness across a wide range of particle sizes.
2/ Four CR Boxes were placed in different indoor settings on the UC Davis campus, from a relatively clean 4-person office suite w/ VCT flooring to a particle-challenged soils lab.
3/ Each CR Box consists of four 20" x 20" x 2" MERV-13 filters (3 boxes w/ filters from the same manufacturer and the 4th from a different manufacturer). A 20" x 20" box fan was used to draw air through each CR Box.
Judges will select from nominees (highest priority) as well as those not nominated but that we know made big splashes in 2023 & may have missed the deadline ....