One thing to make your kitchen safer for your lung

The silent killer

Lung cancer is number-one cancer killer which claims the lives of about 150000 people every year. Aside from smoking and second hand smoking which accounted for 75% of the case, fumes from frying is another important contributing cause. When you fry food especially fat, whether it belongs to animal or plant, toxic chemicals that able to cause genetic mutation are released into the air [1]. A Taiwan study discover that women who prepared meals using stir frying or deep frying and who waited for the cooking oil to reach high temperatures before beginning to cook had 2.5-fold significantly higher lung cancer risk. This cancer risk also depend on the food being fried. A study of women in China found that smokers who stir-fried meat daily was three times likely to get cancer than smokers who fried other food [2]. Another study in Poland shows that mothers merely exposed to meat fumes tended to give birth to babies with a small birth weight, smaller head size. Even living near a Chinese restaurant (which fried everything) for more than a day or two a month is discouraged by researchers because of potential health problem caused by fumes.

Nonsmokers have a very different landscape of genetic changes in their cancer

Outside is better

Study indicates that a quarter of an hour of cooking results in an equal or even greater particle deposition than an 8-h sleeping in all regions of the respiratory tract It also shows that the number of particles deposited into the lungs increase by a factor of ten when frying indoors vs outdoors [3]. So if you do need to inhale fume from frying egg or bacon, it would be safer to use a backyard grill.

A backyard grill.

No backyard, don’t worry

Good ventilation in the kitchen can reduce lung cancer risk caused by fume. A study conducted in China from 2003 to 2010 found that lung cancer inversely associated with good ventilation among people exposed to high temperature cooking oil fumes[4]. You may ask what is good ventilation?. If your kitchen don’t have multiple windows and fans like mine, you really need a good kitchen ventilator to effectively reduce the cancer risk . Better ventilator, better lung.

Ventilator in a restaurant.

Reference

1. Chiang TA, Wu PF, Wang LF, Lee H, Lee CH, Ko YC. Mutagenicity and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon content of fumes from heated cooking oils produced in Taiwan. Mutat Res . 1997;381(2):157–61.
2. Seow A, Poh WT, Teh M, et al. Fumes from meat cooking and lung cancer risk in Chinese women. Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev . 2000;9(11):1215–21.
3. Mitsakou C, Housiadas C, Eleftheriadis K, Vratolis S, Helmis C, Asimakopoulos D. Lung deposition of fine and ultrafine particles outdoors and indoors during a cooking event and a no activity period. Indoor Air . 2007;17(2):143–52
4. Jin ZY, Wu M, Han RQ, et al. Household ventilation may reduce effects of indoor air pollutants for prevention of lung cancer: a case-control study in a Chinese population. PLoS ONE . 2014;9(7):e102685