Impact of vegetarian and vegan cooking on indoor air quality

Plant-based diets are increasingly popular nowadays due to their benefits for human health and the environment. Vegan cooking activities also generate pollutants that might affect human health. Compared to outdoor air quality, indoor air quality (IAQ) is still underrated. Moreover, there is a lack of guidelines for pollutants generated in commercial and residential kitchens. The aim of this review was to characterize emission of pollutants arising from cooking of plant-based dishes and necessary instrumentation. Due to scarcity of studies focusing on IAQ for vegan cooking, emission data on the most common indoor air pollutants—fine particulate matter, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, aldehydes, and ketones as well as volatile organic compounds—during cooking of plant-based and vegetarian dishes as well as of edible oil published in the past 10 years were used to estimate IAQ in kitchens. Attempt to define guideline values for air pollution in kitchens has also been made.