Study says cooking could be hazardous to your health

Insight on the News, Jan 28, 2002 by Sean Paige

Basking in the aroma of a homecooked meal is one of life's simple yet sublime pleasures. But like all of life's little pleasures in the Age of Anxiety, efforts are under way to cast a cloud of suspicion over something as benign as stopping to smell the pot roast.

A three-year, $300,000 study commissioned by the California Air Resources Board (ARB) -- and paid for by taxpayers -- warned that sitting down to a home-cooked meal is an action fraught with danger beyond those presented by your stepmother's tuna casserole. Home cooking often entails exposure to potentially harmful air pollutants, according to the study, and frequently results in violations of the state's indoor air standards.

Using a "test home" near Humboldt State University, researchers found that cooking up a storm exposed cooks and innocent bystanders alike to carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, formaldehyde and other air pollutants, often in quantities exceeding the state's indoor-air-quality guidelines. (And we thought those sleepy Thanksgiving afternoons were the result of a second helping of pumpkin pie!) Broiling, baking and frying on a gas stove sometimes produced particulates in concentrations 28 times higher than the state allows and of a microscopic size that can lodge deep in a person's lungs, the study concluded.

The ARB debated whether to release the study before the holidays, but decided that the public had a right to know of the dangers it confronted from baking, broiling, roasting and sauteing. "We don't want to rain on anyone's Christmas feast" an ARB spokesman told the Sacramento Bee. "But we want people to understand they can be exposed to some dangerous compounds while cooking and [to] take appropriate measures."

Whether more direct action by the state will be required to force California's killer kitchens into compliance remains to be seen. It's probably only a matter of time before houses are raided by state eco-enforcers yelling, "Hold it right there, lady! Put down that chimichanga and step away from the frying pan."

SEAN PAIGE IS A WRITER FOR Insight.