Particle Deposition

Abstract

Although many papers explore the impact of cooking on indoor air quality, only a few of them report PM2.5 emission rate data and even fewer provide detailed cooking conditions. We collected cooking emission data for 541 cooking events from 13 studies. Through analysis of these data we found that the type of cooking device used (i.e. microwave vs. stove) and the type of cooking (cooking in the oven vs. cooking on the stovetop) resulted in distinctly different distributions of PM2.5 emissions. The remaining cooking parameters that showed significant impacts on emissions during individual studies, such as fuel type of stove and cooking method, did not show significant differences in emissions when data from multiple studies were compared. Incense burning was shown to have higher PM2.5 emissions than candle burning for the limited data available. This paper also includes an extensive annotated bibliography of studies that have examined indoor cooking and candle burning emissions, which can be useful for pollutant source research and assessments of indoor air quality.