Chinese Cooking- Cause of Pollution Indoors

Anything could be a source of pollution!

According to a study, the rate of lung cancer is the highest among chinese women. This is not attributed to the smoking of tobacco all the time, studies has shown that indoor pollution from wok cooking could be a cause.

The Chinese style of cooking frequently involves frying in a wok. This process puts the oil and food at very high temperatures and these oil and fatty acids can decompose to volatile products. The smoke from the oil can irritate the eyes and also the heated oils can emit toxic agents and some of them can be carcinogenic and harmful to the our bodies.

Therefore, its important to take note to make sure your kitchens are ventilated well when cooking! It is predicted that the chinese women face more risk of getting lung cancer because in regions further from the equator, where temperatures are lower, household prefers to isolate their indoor environments to the outdoors to stay warm. Thus, they are more susceptible to the VOCs emitted when cooking due to the lack of ventilation.

Other than that, in the rural areas of china, modern technologies of cooking might not be available to them, and cooking using the traditional charcoal or exposed fires might worsen this situation due to the pollutants released from the combustion of these materials.

How do you think the state can intervene to tackle this problem of indoor pollution due to cooking? Leave your comments at the comments sections!

References:

E. Benfenati, P. Pierucci, and D. Niego, 2014, A case study of indoor pollution by Chinese cooking

Toxicological & Environmental Chemistry Vol. 65 , Iss. 1-4,1998