Thread started by alec at 02.20.08 - 8:25 pm

At a lecture I attended recently, the speaker mentioned the number one cause of particulate air pollution in Los Angeles comes from cooking food- grills, restaurants, etc. And that it far surpassed car exhaust. The speaker did not mention any resources for statistics and I can’t find any. Has anyone else heard this? Solving the number one cause of any problem is obviously the most effective.

reply

It depends how you define pollution. In the US, we have traditionally defined it to include the smog and health-affecting pollutants like carbon monoxide, nitrous oxides, ozone, and particulates, but not CO2. With modern catalytic converters, cars produce very very small quantities of the "pollutants" which are formed due to incomplete combustion. However, there is nothing you can do about CO2 except to burn less gas.

It would not be surprising at all if cooking caused more of this type of pollution, since stoves and grills don't have catalytic converters to burn off the trace pollutants.

However, if you consider CO2 a pollutant, cars are going to produce a lot more--the production of CO2 is pretty much directly related to how much fuel you burn, not how well you clean up the process.



stevestevesteve
02.20.08 - 8:42 pm

reply