Page 46 - Green Builder Magazine Sept-Oct 2021

Take a

Breath

Invisible dangers. Cooking at the
kitchen range sends health-
and Vent house—pollutants that include
threatening materials into the

fine particulate matter, carbon
monoxide and nitrogen dioxide.
CREDIT: FG TRADE/ISTOCK

Microwave exhaust fans are While there are many sources of indoor air pollution, one of the
among the most commonly ignored prime culprits is the ubiquitous microwave exhaust fan.
These have been given the appropriate nickname of “forehead
features in today’s kitchens. Don’t greasers” by the expert team at Lawrence Berkeley National Labo-
ratory, which has done in-depth research on how to effectively
put your health on the back burner: remove kitchen contaminants, according to Nathan Kahre, busi-
improve your kitchen ventilation for ness development manager for EnergyLogic in Denver. “Unfortu-
nately, it’s still a common practice to install recirculating micro-
healthier living. BY MICHELE LERNER wave range hoods that pull air from the cooktop through a small
filter and then blow that air back out into the kitchen,” says Kahre,
a member of Green Builder Media’s Next Generation Influencer
Group. “They do nothing more than distribute these contami-
nants far out into the kitchen and the rest of the living space.”
HEN ATLANTA REAL ESTATE AGENT
W band installed indoor air quality moni- No matter how little cooking you do or how neat a chef you
SWEEPING DIRT UNDER THE HOOD
Christopher Matos-Rogers and his hus-
tors to track radon, they quickly learned
are, your stove is one of the dirtiest things in your house when
a big lesson. Cooking without adequate
it comes to indoor air quality, says Ken Nelson, northwest
regional sales manager for Panasonic Life Solutions in Olympia,
ventilation contributed heavily to the
volatile organic compounds (VOCs),
Washington.
“Even if you do something as simple as boil a piece of spaghetti,
PM2.5 fine particulate matter and car-
bon dioxide (CO2) in their home.
says Nelson. “When you inhale it, you’re also inhaling the outgas-
“Being home during the pandemic
put a greater focus on the health and safety of our home’s indoor you’re creating vapor that includes the starch from the spaghetti,”
sing from other materials in your home that cling to the vapor, all
air quality,” says Matos-Rogers, a member of Green Builder of which ends up in your lungs and can cause health issues.”
Media’s Next Generation Influencer Group. “Properly venting our Cooking is one of the largest producers of fine particulates and
over-the-range microwave was done as part of a larger ventila- VOCs in our homes, says Kahre.
tion project we completed early this year, including installing an Among the pollutants found in cooking emissions are particu-
energy recovery ventilator (ERV) on both floors, upgrading our late matter, nitrogen dioxide, carbon monoxide and toxic chemi-
bathroom exhaust fans and venting the microwave to the outside.” cals such as formaldehyde and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons,

44 GREEN BUILDER September/October 2021 www.greenbuildermedia.com