Frying pan PM2.5 is pollution, and has been linked to increased childhood asthma, on of the easier and more immediate readouts from exposure. Linking dementia to that is a far harder scientific task due to the amounts of exposure and variability over time. Here's one blog post going over some of the evidence linking gas stoves to asthma:
https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/have-a-gas-stove-how-to-...
Gas stoves produce NO2, not PM2.5.
https://www.cieh.org/ehn/environmental-protection/2025/april...
Quote: Research shows cooking on domestic gas hobs can cause two of the most harmful air pollutants, NO2 and PM2.5, to exceed WHO guidelines
Frying pans produce PM2.5, gas stove or no. I am talking about PM2.5. What is your point?
The point is that your link seems to be almost entirely talking about something else (pollutants from burning gas inside, which is primarily NOx)! There is one passing mention of gas stoves producing some extra PM2.5 (which I expect will be different in composition to the PM2.5 produced in the pan) but all of the rest of it seems to be focused on the NOx
You link to a report about gas stoves not frying pans.
OH! Thank you for pointing out the error! I seem to have pasted the wrong link, and am not on my computer that I was doing the searching on before... please accept this short book chapter instead, though it is far more dry than the page I remember reading before.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK385529/
Apologies!
Ah - that makes more sense.
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> Children living in households that use gas stoves for cooking are 42% more likely to have asthma, according to an analysis of observational research. While observational studies can't prove that cooking with gas is the direct cause of asthma, data also show that the higher the nitrogen dioxide level, the more severe the asthma symptoms in children and adults.
Nobody is saying frying some eggs is equivalent to sucking the tail pipe of a 50s era car. You're arguing with yourself.
Makes me wonder if cooks, who (in many countries) stand in front of a gas stove for long hours every day have a statistically higher chance of asthma?
Even worse than asthma
https://preventcancer.org/article/lung-cancer-asian-american...
> Environmental exposures, such as cooking oil fumes and secondhand smoke, have long been identified as risk factors for lung cancer among women in Asia who do not smoke
Those exposures are completely unrelated to the burner used in the kitchen.
How is that related to what GP wrote?
That poster seemed to be saying that frying pan PM2.5 was not a health risk:
> Heck, my PM2.5 meter skyrockets whenever I cook anything in a frying pan, because many of the aerosolized oil droplets are PM2.5.
I'm not sure how they determined that PM2.5 is not a neurotoxin, or the full extent of their claims, but frying pans inside are a common cause of minor health problems.
> That poster seemed to be saying that frying pan PM2.5 was not a health risk
They said that the category "small particles" is not equal to the category "neurotoxic".
Much like how "Walks on Two Legs" is not "Men", there may be some overlap in the categories, but the first does not reliably indicate the second. (Or vice-versa.)
The point was that PM2.5 is a measurement of particle size, and that by itself allows no judgement about its toxicity. The same way you cannot argue that things of 5 centimeter diameter are healthy.
The toxicity judgement comes from the information what substance has the form of PM2.5, and the journo managed to omit that.
> The point was that PM2.5 is a measurement of particle size, and that by itself allows no judgement about its toxicity.
This does not logically follow at all. The size indicates where it can reach in the lungs, whether cilia can eject it, etc.
A 5cm ball shot at the head at high speed is indeed dangerous. We are talking about inhalation of particles causing irritation, and the size is indeed the major factor. Content as well, but frying pan particles filled with carbon chains that have gone through who knows what reactions are indeed of concern. Lots of extremely nasty things are easily accessible from chains of hydrocarbons, from toluene to formaldehyde.
> The toxicity judgement comes from the information what substance has the form of PM2.5, and the journo managed to omit that.
I believe the journalist is not at fault here in the least. The scientific papers I have seen usually class all PM2.5 together, and perhaps by source. But the size itself is of great concern due to the size allowing easy entry to the body that is not possible for larger sizes.
There is nothing inherently impossible about the idea that all airborne substances of some specific size are harmful to breathe. It simply requires that they be bad because they physically fit into somewhere that shouldn't have foreign substances of any kind in it rather than because of something specific to the substance.
To be just a touch pedantic, that all particles of a certain size are harmful is a silly assertion.
Water and sugar particles, for instance, are almost certainly harmless below some reasonable threshold.
Small enough particles can easily pierce the blood brain barrier. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10141840/ They also appear to interact with human gut microbiota. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11056917/
What they do there is up for further study.
Many studies show a high correlation with childhood respiratory defects and living near roads (or even attending school near roads) specifically a road with diesel truck traffic, and a recent study showed a decrease in effects when air filters are installed in the schools. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6949366/