Identification of carcinogens in cooking oil fumes

According to earlier studies, fumes from cooking oils were found to be geno toxic in several shortterm tests such as the Ames test, sister chromatid ex change, and SOS chromotest. Fume samples from six different commercial cook ing oils (safflower, olive, coconut, mustard, vegetable, and corn) frequent ly used in Taiwan were collected. Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) w ere extracted from the air samples and identified by high-performance liqui d chromatography and confirmed by gas chromatography/mass spectrometry. Ext racts of fumes from safflower oil, vegetable oil, and corn oil contained be nzo[a]pyrene (BaP), dibenz[a, h]anthracene (DBahA), benzo[b]fluoranthene (B bFA), and benzo[a]anthracene (BaA). Concentrations of BaP, DbahA, BbFA, and BaA were 2.1, 2.8, 1.8, and 2.5 mu g/m(3) in fumes from safflower oil; 2.7 , 3.2, 2.6, and 2.1 mu g/m(3) in vegetable oil; and 2.6, 2.4, 2.0, and 1.9 mu g/m(3) in corn oil, respectively. The authors constructed models to stud y the efficacy of table-edged fume extractors used commonly by Taiwanese re staurants. Concentrations of BaP were significantly decreased when the fume extractor was working (P < 0.05) and the average reduction in percentage w as 75%. The other identified PAHs were undetected. These results indicated that exposure to cooking oil fumes could possibly increase exposure to PAHs , which may be linked to an increased risk of lung cancer. The potential ca rcinogenic exposure could be reduced by placing table-edged fume extractors near cooking pots. (C) 1999 Academic Press.