Even greater reductions could be achievable with improved hoods that capture pollutants more effectively, or quieter hoods that people are more likely to turn on.
We simulated vented hood use by reducing all pollutant emission rates by 55%; this value reflects the mean capture efficiency reported in a measurement-based study of range hoods installed in California homes (Singer et al. 2012).
The model estimated that the mean number of acute exceedances per week among homes in which exceedances occurred ranged from 2.4 for summer to 3.6 for winter scenarios without range hood use, depending on the pollutant and season (Table 2).
We showed previously that use of a vented range hood can dramatically reduce concentrations of pollutants from cooking burners (Delp and Singer 2012).
The possible magnitude of this effect is discussed in the Supplemental Material, p. 2. Our results suggest that in homes using NGCBs without venting range hoods, a substantial proportion of occupants experience pollutant concentrations that exceed health-based standards and guidelines.
It is indicated that fume hoods prevent the dispersion of pollutants and make pollutant concentration distributions different from conventional ventilation systems.
A capture efficiency of 50% means half the pollutants generated during cooking were captured by the hood.
This study investigates gaseous pollutant transmission characteristics in a typical chemical laboratory with a fume hood under different scenarios using a Computational Fluid Dynamic (CFD) program, which is validated by a face velocity measurement.
This metric is calculated by sampling pollutant levels inside the test kitchen after using the stove without running the hood and comparing them to pollutant levels in the ducts after using the stove with the hood switched on.
Among its requirements for new homes was kitchen ventilation capable of exhausting pollutants to the outdoors, typically through the use of an overhead range hood.
