Indoor measurements of particulate matter during steak cooking under different conditions

Abstract

Few studies on domestic indoor air pollution have given quantitative information on the variation of the characteristics of the indoor source of particulate matter (PM). This paper is intended to contribute to the understanding of this phenomenon referring to beef-steak cooking by means of natural gas, which is expected to be a cleaner source of PM, especially compared with biomass. The origin of this paper is based on the variability of the power of the cooker in order to study the sustainability of natural gas from the point of view of the induced indoor human exposure to PM. Measurements were made by a GRIMM analyzer, able to measure 16 granulometric classes from 0.3 to 20 μm. Using the biggest cooker, the PM10 production gave results 3 times higher than the case with the smaller one, even if the appearance of the cooked steaks was the same. In particular, this increase is higher for the finest fractions of PM. It is clear that good ventilation is compulsory to reduce human exposure to this kind of source. © 2013 WIT Press.