Skip to main content
PMC home page
Environmental Health Perspectives logoLink to Environmental Health Perspectives
. 2003 Apr;111(4):483–487. doi: 10.1289/ehp.5518

Emission of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and their carcinogenic potencies from cooking sources to the urban atmosphere.

Chun-The Li 1, Yuan-Chung Lin 1, Wen-Jhy Lee 1, Perng-Jy Tsai 1
PMCID: PMC1241432  PMID: 12676603

Abstract

Traffic has long been recognized as the major contributor to polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) concentrations. However, this does not consider the contribution of cooking sources of PAHs. This study set out, first, to assess the characteristics of PAHs and their corresponding benzo[a]pyrene equivalent (B[a]Peq) emissions from cooking sources to the urban atmosphere. To illustrate the importance of cooking sources, PAH emissions from traffic sources were then calculated and compared. The entire study was conducted on a city located in southern Taiwan. PAH samples were collected from the exhaust stacks of four types of restaurant: Chinese, Western, fast food, and Japanese. For total PAHs, results show that the fractions of gaseous PAHs (range, 75.9-89.9%) were consistently higher than the fractions of particulate PAHs (range, 10.1-24.1%) in emissions from the four types of restaurant. But for total B[a]Peq, we found that the contributions of gaseous PAHs (range, 15.7-21.9%) were consistently lower than the contributions of particulate PAHs (range, 78.1-84.3%). For emission rates of both total PAHs and total B[a]Peq, a consistent trend was found for the four types of restaurant: Chinese (2,038 and 154 kg/year, respectively) > Western (258 and 20.4 kg/year, respectively) > fast food (31.4 and 0.104 kg/year, respectively) > Japanese (5.11 and 0.014 kg/year, respectively). By directly adapting the emission data obtained from Chinese restaurants, we found that emission rates on total PAHs and total B[a]Peq for home kitchen sources were 6,639 and 501 kg/year, respectively. By combining both restaurant sources and home kitchen sources, this study yielded emission rates of total PAHs and total B[a]Peq from cooking sources of the studied city of 8,973 and 675 kg/year, respectively. Compared with PAH emissions from traffic sources in the same city, we found that although the emission rates of total PAHs for cooking sources were significantly less than those for traffic sources (13,500 kg/year), the emission rates of total B[a]Peq for cooking sources were much higher than those for traffic sources (61.4 kg/year). The above results clearly indicate that although cooking sources are less important than traffic sources in contributing to total PAH emissions, PAH emissions from cooking sources might cause much more serious problems than traffic sources, from the perspective of carcinogenic potency.

Full Text

The Full Text of this article is available as a PDF (153.6 KB).

Selected References

These references are in PubMed. This may not be the complete list of references from this article.

  1. Coggon D., Pannett B., Osmond C., Acheson E. D. A survey of cancer and occupation in young and middle aged men. II. Non-respiratory cancers. Br J Ind Med. 1986 Jun;43(6):381–386. doi: 10.1136/oem.43.6.381. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  2. Henderson B. E., Louie E., SooHoo Jing J., Buell P., Gardner M. B. Risk factors associated with nasopharyngeal carcinoma. N Engl J Med. 1976 Nov 11;295(20):1101–1106. doi: 10.1056/NEJM197611112952003. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  3. Krewski D., Thorslund T., Withey J. Carcinogenic risk assessment of complex mixtures. Toxicol Ind Health. 1989 Oct;5(5):851–867. doi: 10.1177/074823378900500520. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  4. Mi H. H., Lee W. J., Chen C. B., Yang H. H., Wu S. J. Effect of fuel aromatic content on PAH emission from a heavy-duty diesel engine. Chemosphere. 2000 Dec;41(11):1783–1790. doi: 10.1016/s0045-6535(00)00043-6. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  5. Mi H. H., Lee W. J., Chen S. J., Lin T. C., Wu T. L., Hu J. C. Effect of the gasoline additives on PAH emission. Chemosphere. 1998 Apr;36(9):2031–2041. doi: 10.1016/s0045-6535(97)10088-1. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  6. Nisbet I. C., LaGoy P. K. Toxic equivalency factors (TEFs) for polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). Regul Toxicol Pharmacol. 1992 Dec;16(3):290–300. doi: 10.1016/0273-2300(92)90009-x. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  7. Petry T., Schmid P., Schlatter C. The use of toxic equivalency factors in assessing occupational and environmental health risk associated with exposure to airborne mixtures of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). Chemosphere. 1996 Feb;32(4):639–648. doi: 10.1016/0045-6535(95)00348-7. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  8. Sheu H. L., Lee W. J., Lin S. J., Fang G. C., Chang H. C., You W. C. Particle-bound PAH content in ambient air. Environ Pollut. 1997;96(3):369–382. doi: 10.1016/s0269-7491(97)00044-4. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  9. Teschke K., Hertzman C., Van Netten C., Lee E., Morrison B., Cornista A., Lau G., Hundal A. Potential exposure of cooks to airborne mutagens and carcinogens. Environ Res. 1989 Dec;50(2):296–308. doi: 10.1016/s0013-9351(89)80011-8. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  10. van Houdt J. J., Jongen W. M., Alink G. M., Boleij J. S. Mutagenic activity of airborne particles inside and outside homes. Environ Mutagen. 1984;6(6):861–869. doi: 10.1002/em.2860060612. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]

Articles from Environmental Health Perspectives are provided here courtesy of National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences

RESOURCES