The chemist using curry to understand indoor air pollution

If you’re cooking a curry, Ashish Kumar has a piece of advice – switch on your extractor fan. Or, if that’s not an option, open a window. Why? Because his research shows that cooking curries in poorly ventilated spaces can lead to high levels of volatile organic compounds (VOCs), some of which are linked to negative health effects with regular exposure.

Outdoor air quality has long been on the agenda of chemists, policymakers and others. But our understanding and regulation of indoor pollution is at a much earlier stage. Most people spend about 90% of their time indoors, either at home or at work, yet ‘we have very little information on what we are breathing and what sort of pollutants are present inside our homes,’ explains Kumar. However, the data we do have suggests that these pollutants can sometimes be about five times higher in concentration than in the outside air, he adds.