Thread: New dust source - high smoke point cooking oils.

come to our place when Iam trying to have a sleep in and wifey decides bacon n eggs is her breakfast.

I realize I did not make it all that clear where the particles are coming from. They are not smoke from the high smoke point oil but rather from what is being cooked being converted into particles because of the higher temperatures being used with these oils. Either way it's not good for you.

I'm not surprised, given that most domestic rangehoods are less useful that a 1hp dust collector on a good day.

In one rental place we had a rangehood that could barely hold up an A4 sheet of paper on full blast. I worked out that the major restriction was the charcoal filter, which had a layer of that crappy tissue paper/calico stuff you see underneath cheap chairs to contain the charcoal pellets; I cut it off and hot-glued fibreglass flyscreen on instead and saw a huge increase in airflow. Didn't really matter, because it exhausted back into the room anyway.

There are some restaurants that I find it hard to breathe in because of all the stuff in the air.

I was curious to see what the workplace exposure limits for cooking oils was and in British Columbia (couldn't find the information here in Saskatchewan) it is 3 mg per cubic meter in 8 hours. They have wood dust listed as 1 mg for allergenic and hardwoods and 2.5 for the softwoods as a comparison. I don't know how that compares to other countries. Bob how high would your particle counter have to be reading to get to those exposure levels? It also begs the question of how much cooking can we do without having to wear a respirator?

Pete

I agree and don't go to most places due to the smell of over cooked oil that is a health hazard cooking with rancid oil is a no-no in my limited knowledge.

Originally Posted by QC Inspector

I was curious to see what the workplace exposure limits for cooking oils was and in British Columbia (couldn't find the information here in Saskatchewan) it is 3 mg per cubic meter in 8 hours. They have wood dust listed as 1 mg for allergenic and hardwoods and 2.5 for the softwoods as a comparison. I don't know how that compares to other countries. Bob how high would your particle counter have to be reading to get to those exposure levels? It also begs the question of how much cooking can we do without having to wear a respirator?

Pete

I wasn't rigorously monitoring the particulate levels coming from the cooking but I did see numbers over 500 ppm, but what concerned me was how long they hung around indicating the particles are very small.

Here in Oz , for wood dust we are still using British 1960's OHS levels of 5mg/m^3 (5ppm) for "oak" as a typical hardwood, AND 1mg/m^3 (1ppm) and "pine" as typical softwood. MDF and WRC have levels of 0.5 (0.5 ppm). These OHS standard show their age by not mentioning particle sizes. There has also not been any recognition of the higher than usual toxicity of some Aussie woods.

The rest of the world seems to seems to have moved on with respect to ALL dust.
•EnvironmentCanada acceptable air quality sets a limit of fine particulate matter of 0.03 ppm (PM10)
•US EPAis 0.15 ppm (PM10) + 0.035 ppm (PM2.5) [24 hours] 0.01ppm [1 year]
•Medical/EuropeanStandard limit is 0.1ppm for fine (PM10) ANY airborne dust

Just a reminder, it's not just the smoke or particulates coming direct from cooking coils themselves that may be the problem, its the temperatures that they operate at that burn or char whyatever they are cooking. The high the smoke point the higher the temperature you can cook which converts more or what you are cooking into fine particle. These are so small they can't be seen.

If I didn't have much else to do I would do some testing. Might set the recording particle counter running and see what it says over a week of cooking etc.

Originally Posted by BobL

... 5mg/m^3 (5ppm)...

I'm a little confused here. Why do you call 5mg/m^3 5ppm? What is the reference density?

Originally Posted by dmorse

I'm a little confused here. Why do you call 5mg/m^3 5ppm? What is the reference density?

1 cubic metre of air at STP has a mass of 1.225 kg or roughly 1000g

5mg in 1000g is 0.005g in 1000g, OR 5 micro grams per gram or air - "micrograms per gram" is often abbreviated as "ppm" (although one should strictly stipulate that this is "by weight")

Originally Posted by BobL

1 cubic metre of air at STP has a mass of 1.225 kg or roughly 1000g

5mg in 1000g is 0.005g in 1000g, OR 5 micro grams per gram or air - "micrograms per gram" is often abbreviated as "ppm" (although one should strictly stipulate that this is "by weight")

Ok, so your reference density is approximately that of air. Interesting way to look at it.

Anyone want to predict how our wives are going to take it when we tell them the house air is dirtier than our shops and the kitchen has to have a Cessna sized propeller ventilation fan? I predict more barbecue and outdoor cooking in your future. In our climate we'll have to be content to chew on frozen blubber.

Thanks Bob for the conversions.

Pete