The smell of cooking food is actually air pollution, study finds [Video]

(KTLA) – It’s hard to resist the delicious smell of food cooking at restaurants, food trucks and street vendors. However, a new government study suggests those aromas may be negatively impacting air quality.

Researchers from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) have released their findings from a multiyear study of what they call “underappreciated sources” of urban air pollution.

They focused on three cities: Los Angeles, Las Vegas and Boulder, Colorado, where they measured human-caused volatile organic compounds (VOCs) related to cooking.

“If you can smell it, there’s a good chance it’s impacting air quality,” researchers summarized.

“Over the years, we’ve measured all sorts of different VOCs across the U.S. from different sources, like vehicles, wildfire smoke, agriculture, and consumer products,” wrote Matt Coggon, the study’s lead author. “We kept seeing a specific class of compound in the urban measurements, what we call long-chain aldehydes, that we couldn’t explain from these …