Cooking and Clean Air in California Homes Study
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Recipient
Berkeley, CA
Recipient Location
9th
Senate District
14th
Assembly District
$0
Amount Spent
Active
Project Status
Project Update
The online cooking and ventilation survey is being developed with a complete draft expected in August 2025. The team is working on the protocol for the survey, including specifying incentives, outreach, and recruitment procedures. The team has also started to develop plans for the indoor air monitoring and 2-3 units each of two different models of ultrafine particle counters have been obtained for evaluation testing and cross calibration under controlled but realistic conditions. A plan for the technical advisory committee was submitted in August 2025.
The Issue
Many indoor air pollutants are generated by chemical reactions that occur from both the cooking of food and from the use of cooking burners. Prior research supported by the Energy Commission has shown that air pollutants formed in substantial quantities from both combustion burners and from cooking itself can reach levels that are hazardous to sensitive individuals, with the highest short-term levels occurring in the smallest housing units, which are predominantly apartments. Emissions vary based on cooking fuel, cooking practices, and amount of cooking; and the resulting air concentrations depend on emissions, the size and layout of the home, and on the use of kitchen ventilation. Newly constructed multi-family homes in California are required to have kitchen exhaust ventilation that meets strict performance standards designed to mitigate cooking-related pollutants exposures, as well as a mechanical system that ensures an adequate amount of ventilation for the dwelling unit. Many existing homes have ineffective or no cooking area exhaust ventilation and few have a general mechanical ventilation system, leading at times to unacceptable dwelling unit ventilation. Insufficient data currently exists to accurately quantify exposures to cooking-related air pollutants in the highest potential exposure scenarios nor the benefits of using extant control equipment including mechanical and natural ventilation and air filtration.
Project Innovation
This project will quantify air pollutant concentrations and exposures in apartments and focus on those that have the highest cooking frequencies to inform the need for interventions. It will collect data from homes that use gas, conventional electric, and induction technologies, and homes with varying qualities of kitchen ventilation to inform building owners and residents about the potential benefits of mitigations including education campaigns to use available kitchen ventilation, to add kitchen ventilation, or to swith cooking fuels. Surveys of cooking and ventilation practices among households from California’s communities will provide additional, important context about variations in cooking practices and overlaps of high emissions, small spaces and infrequent or no use of ventilation. This will provide information to various stakeholders about the potential to reduce the highest exposures using established interventions.
Project Goals
Project Benefits
This project aims to provide ratepayer benefits of increased safety by reducing in-home exposures to air pollutants generated by cooking with both gas and electricity. The project will focus on quantifying factors that are most predictive of potentially hazardous air pollutant exposures and on the potential effectiveness of controls that can be implemented in apartments throughout the state. Since the research is expected to be particularly valuable to households living in the smallest dwelling units, which broadly are lower cost than larger units, it is expected to contribute to more affordable housing in the state. The project also aims to identify and verify the lowest-cost options for reducing the frequency of high air pollutant exposures from cooking.
Affordability
The project aims to identify and verify the lowest-cost options for reducing the frequency of high air pollutant exposures from cooking.
Environmental Sustainability
This project will quantify factors that are most predictive of potentially hazardous air pollutant exposures and assess the potential effectiveness of controls that can be implemented in apartments throughout the state.
Safety
This project will support increased safety by informing efforts to reduce in-home exposures to air pollutants generated by cooking with both gas and electricity.
Key Project Members
Brett Singer
Subrecipients
Central California Asthma Collaborative
Association for Energy Affordability
University of California, Berkeley
