New York: The smell of food cooking at restaurants, food trucks and street vendors might be negatively impacting air quality, says a new study.
The researchers at Chemical Sciences Laboratory (CSL) of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) found what they said "underappreciated sources" of urban air pollution.
The study focused on three US cities including Los Angeles, Las Vegas and Boulder in Colorado measured human-caused volatile organic compounds (VOCs) related to cooking.
"If you can smell it, there's a good chance it's impacting air quality," researchers reportedly said in the study.
They were measuring all sorts of different VOCs from different sources like vehicles, wildfire smoke, agriculture and consumer products, when they discovered the new source.
"We kept seeing a specific class of compound in the urban measurements, what we call long-chain aldehydes, that we couldn't explain from these other sources," study author Matt Coggon was quoted as saying.
They found that Las Vegas with highest number of eateries in the country has persistent air quality issues.
NOAA noted that on average 21% of the total mass of VOCs present in the city came from ‘cooking activities’.
High levels of VOCs were recorded in Los Angeles and Pasadena, California, the report said adding that air pollution from cooking could account for nearly a quarter of VOCs in urban areas.
"Cooking emissions could be the single largest missing source of urban VOCs in current air quality models, which could have important ramifications for air quality management," the study said.