Cooking emissions rival fossil fuels as an ozone pollution source in Los Angeles
NOAA, CIRES, and partner scientists incorporate cooking emissions into air quality model
As the adoption of cleaner-burning engines and electric vehicles drives fossil fuel emissions lower, scientists have discovered that a surprising pollution source is playing a significant role in cooking up ozone in the air over Los Angeles.
According to new research from NOAA, CIRES, and partners, the potent and often pungent volatile organic compounds (VOCs) given off from cooking food are now responsible for over a quarter of the ozone production from VOCs generated by human activity in the LA basin. This is roughly equal to the amount of ozone produced by VOCs from on-road and off-road motor vehicles.
The new study, published in Atmospheric Chemistry & Physics, takes a more complete look at the mix of VOCs in urban air by adding chemical compounds specific to cooking emissions to an air quality model set up to replicate the conditions in and around Los Angeles.
The pie chart on the left side depicts the fractional contribution to 8-hour ozone readings in Pasadena, California from human-generated sources of VOCs. Volatile chemical products (purple shading), fossil fuels plus area emissions (yellow shading), and cooking (blue) emissions. The graph on the right side shows the absolute contribution to ozone pollution from background ozone, anthropogenic, and biogenic emission sources, averaged along trajectories arriving in Pasadena at 3 pm local time.