Turn on the range hood when you stir-fry or deep-fry, from the moment you light the stove until you finish cooking

Cost

If you already have a range hood, only a little more electricity. If you don't, buying one with installation costs a few hundred to over 1000 CNY. The hard part is remembering to turn it on every time you cook, and not turning it off because it's noisy.

What you get

Pooling 10 case-control studies, all of non-smoking Chinese women. A case-control study compares lung cancer patients with people without the disease and asks about past habits. People exposed to cooking fumes had about 1.74 times the odds of lung cancer (odds ratio, 95% CI 1.57–1.94, the plausible range). Among these, 4 studies compared people exposed to fumes who did not use a range hood, at about 2.11 times (1.54–2.89). A Taiwan study compared 1302 non-smoking women with lung cancer against 1302 women without the disease. Looking only at those who had cooked for 10 years or more: those who used the range hood for more than two thirds of those years had about half the risk of those who used it for one third or less (odds ratio 0.49, 0.32–0.76). A Shanghai study that followed people forward in time followed 71,000 (7.1万) non-smoking women from 1996 to 2009 and found 429 lung cancer cases. Those who said they had lived in a house with a poorly ventilated kitchen had about 49% higher risk of lung cancer (HR 1.49, 1.15–1.95). Those who burned coal and had poor ventilation for 20 years or more had about 2.03 times (HR 2.03, 1.35–3.05). Looking only at whether they had ever burned coal, no difference was seen (HR 1.03, 0.84–1.26). Which kind of oil was used for stir-frying also showed no difference.

Notes

Disputed: the numbers supporting the range hood come mainly from case-control studies. Patients recalling the past after diagnosis tend to under-report how often they used the hood, so the numbers may be too large. In the Shanghai forward-looking study, the raised risk fell mainly on households that burned coal and had poor ventilation. For households using only gas, that study cannot give a separate figure for how much using the hood or not matters. So the evidence grade is only B, and the benefit is rated large based on the roughly twofold risk difference. For cooking without coal and firewood, see §2.29 (don't cook or heat with coal and firewood). The person who benefits from this item is mainly whoever does most of the cooking at home.

Evidence grade

B : Supported by research but without a precise number, or based on small or single studies.

Sources

1. Xue Y, Jiang Y, Jin S, Li Y (2016). Association between cooking oil fume exposure and lung cancer among Chinese nonsmoking women: a meta-analysis. OncoTargets and Therapy, 9, 2987-2992. https://doi.org/10.2147/OTT.S100949
2. Chen TY, Fang YH, Chen HL, 等 (2020). Impact of cooking oil fume exposure and fume extractor use on lung cancer risk in non-smoking Han Chinese women. Scientific Reports, 10, 6774. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-63656-7
3. Kim C, Gao YT, Xiang YB, 等 (2015). Home kitchen ventilation, cooking fuels, and lung cancer risk in a prospective cohort of never smoking women in Shanghai, China. International Journal of Cancer, 136(3), 632-638. https://doi.org/10.1002/ijc.29020

Translated from the Chinese original. Original book, section 2, tip 42. This section is about health and medicines. It is general information, not a substitute for a doctor’s diagnosis or prescription. Content may be out of date and rules differ by place. When you actually deal with an agency, a doctor or a court, follow what local officials, doctors and lawyers tell you. Disclaimer