// tool 03 · cooking
Cooking Air-Quality Simulator
The biggest air-quality event in most homes happens at dinnertime. In controlled tests, pan-frying peaked at 92.9 µg/m³ of PM2.5 while boiling barely registered. Pick how you're cooking and see the spike, and how long you'll be breathing it.
oil + high heat = the worst offender.
// estimate scaled from Tang et al. (2024). your real kitchen will vary
What's going on
Hot oil is the culprit. When oil reaches frying temperature it aerosolises into fine particles, which is why pan- and stir-frying dwarf boiling. Tang et al. measured peaks of 92.9 and 26.7 µg/m³ versus 0.7 for boiling. Deep-frying is lower than you'd guess (7.7) because the oil stays in the pot, and air-frying is the cleanest hot method at 0.6.
Ventilation decides how long it hangs around. Real-world monitoring found a closed kitchen ran nearly 29% higher than an open one, and simply opening internal doors cut exposure by more than half. On a gas stove there's a second problem the PM2.5 number doesn't show: NO₂ from the flame, linked in a 2022 analysis to roughly an eighth of US childhood asthma.
How the estimate works: the peak starts from Tang et al.'s per-method values, then scales for stove type, ventilation and kitchen size, and decays first-order as the air clears. It's a simplified model for intuition. Your real kitchen depends on the dish, the oil, the pan and a dozen other things.
Frequently asked questions
Why is cooking such a big source of indoor PM2.5?+
Hot oil is the main culprit. When oil reaches frying temperature it aerosolises into fine particles, which is why pan-frying and stir-frying produce far more PM2.5 than boiling. In Tang et al.'s controlled tests, pan-frying peaked at 92.9 µg/m³ while boiling barely registered at 0.7 µg/m³.
Is a gas or induction stove worse for air quality?+
Gas combustion adds its own particles and, more importantly, NO₂ from the flame, which a 2022 analysis linked to roughly an eighth of US childhood asthma. Electric and induction stoves add none of that combustion pollution, though the food itself still produces PM2.5 from the oil. In this simulator gas carries the highest factor and induction the lowest.
Does opening a window or running the range hood really help?+
Yes, and it is the single biggest lever you control. Real-world monitoring found a closed kitchen ran nearly 29% higher than an open one, and simply opening internal doors cut exposure by more than half. A range hood vented outdoors does the most because it captures particles at the source. The simulator treats these as escalating scenarios; in practice a hood plus an open window is close to the best case.
How long does cooking pollution take to clear?+
It decays first-order as fresh air and surface deposition remove particles, so the more ventilation the faster it falls. A heavy pan-fry in a closed kitchen can stay above the WHO 24-hour guideline for an hour or more, while the same dish with a window open clears in a fraction of that time. The 'clears in' figure estimates the minutes to fall back below 15 µg/m³.
Is air-frying really cleaner than pan-frying?+
By PM2.5, yes. Because the food and oil are enclosed, air-frying was the cleanest hot method in the measurements at about 0.6 µg/m³, below typical indoor background. Deep-frying is also lower than people expect, at 7.7 µg/m³, because the oil stays in the pot rather than spattering across a hot pan.
Sources
- Tang et al.: Impact of Cooking Methods on Indoor Air Quality, Indoor Air / Wiley (2024)
- Zhang et al.: Ultrafine Particles and Other Pollutants Emitted by Cooking, IJERPH (2010), PMC2872333
- Lawrence Berkeley National Lab: Cooking PM2.5 emission-rate compilation (OSTI)
- UK apartment ventilation study: cooking PM2.5 vs ventilation (2025), PMC12910602
- UC Davis Environmental Health: gas stoves, NO₂ and childhood asthma
See your real cooking air quality.
A simulator can tell you pan-frying is bad. Partycle tells you exactly how bad your kitchen got tonight, and whether opening the window actually fixed it.