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Comment by jartelt | Hacker News Reader

People in some countries have been cooking with indoor wood-fired stoves forever, yet we know for sure that these stoves are bad for respiratory health. That doesn't mean all the research is wrong!

I think the big take away is that you should pretty much always turn on the exhaust hood over your stove top when you cook. Doing so removes many of the particles generated by cooking.

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For the same reason, the evidence is clear that indoor fireplaces are harmful to health ("It is at least as bad for you as cigarette smoke, and probably much worse."), yet most people refuse to accept implications of the findings.

* The Fireplace Delusion

https://samharris.org/the-fireplace-delusion/

But there is no connection to an actual outcome. Is this reducing my expected lifespan by a year? Two years? Or ten years? I might care about the latter, hard for me to get worked up about the former.

The fact that we’ve been doing this a long time means the effect couldn’t be all that large, or else we would’ve noticed something (e.g. a stark difference between those who cook at home and those who eat out).

I don't know why you're getting downvoted so much. People should be more concerned of sensationalism than VOCs for now. Stress kills far more people than this potentially broad category of compounds which could include harmless and vital smells. Is the media now going to try to sterilize our sense of smell as well as our sense of taste.

Ban salt, fat, (but not sugar, just tax it even more), flavour and smells! The hysteria over how to eat and what to eat has killed potentially hundreds of millions of people at this point. Sensationalism motivates culture and is absolutely to be feared.

Of course we shouldn't live in sealed up caves with no vents. We shouldn't live in moldy apartments either. Tell us something we don't know.

In most homes the "exhaust hood" doesn't vent to outside. It filters the big particles out and mixes the rest. I'm not sure if this is better or not, but the difference isn't much, and after a short time they are the same.

The big particles are not what is most dangerous. Range hoods that recirculate air are not helpful. All kitchens should have externally-exhausted vent hoods, and it's even more important when using gas ranges, since a lot of harmful combustion byproducts are also being created (NO2, CO, etc). Sadly as you point out, this is far less common than it should be.

In my experience [in the US, particularly the PNW] most single family homes vent outside, but it isn't uncommon for dinky apartments with retrofitted exhaust hoods to simply filter and recirculate.

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