A system to analyse volatile organic compounds emitted during cooking

There is nowadays more awareness on the impact on health of pollutants emitted even during cooking both from commercial as well as from domestic activities. Cooking processes like frying, roasting, grilling, boiling and broiling, contribute to emissions of pollutants, particularly in closed, poorly ventilated areas where air quality is deeply influenced on their presence1. Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are a large group of carbon-based chemicals that easily evaporate at room temperature, but while some VOCs are odorous, many of them can not be detected by our senses, even if their inhalation may be associated with health risks2. Thus, given the importance of monitoring VOCs emissions during cooking activities, the objective of this study is to set up and assess the applicability of a new system allowing to analyse these compounds. In order to address this task, air samples obtained from different cooking techniques, were sampled in olfactometric bags and analyzed using solid-phase microextraction and gas chromatography coupled to mass spectrometry (SPME-GC-MS). The bag allows to transport the sample to the instrument location and to perform the SPME extraction of the sampled air. Despite several applications have been developed in different field, this kind of sampling system combined to SPME-GC-MS, has never been exploited to study the emissions of VOCs formed during cooking and based on the first results, it seems to be successful to this purpose. Thus, preliminary results will be presented and discussed. References: 1) Kim, K.H.; Pandey, S.K.; Kabir, E.; Susaya, J.; Brown, R.J.C. Journal of Hazardous Materials 2011, 195, 1-10. 2) Wang, S.; Ang, H.M.; Tade, M.O. Environment International 2007, 33, 694-705.