/oss/taxonomy/term/1169/all en /oss/article/health-and-nutrition/concerns-about-smoked-foods-heat <hr /> <p><em>This article was first published in <a href="https://montrealgazette.com/opinion/columnists/the-right-chemistry-concerns-about-smoked-foods-heat-up">The Montreal Gazette.</a></em></p> <hr /> <p>Cavemen in the Stone Age didn’t have many luxuries. They had, however, learned to make fire by banging together flintstones or rubbing two sticks together, and that at least made their cold and dingy dwellings more comfortable.</p> Fri, 12 Jul 2024 17:01:14 +0000 Joe Schwarcz PhD 10000 at /oss /oss/article/environment-health-news-toxicity/dont-get-burned-polycyclic-aromatic-hydrocarbons <p>With every breath we take we come closer to death. And if those breaths contain a good dose of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, or PAHs, we may be getting to the end faster. These compounds are nasty pollutants, associated with respiratory disease, but the big concern is that several of them are known carcinogens. They are composed of carbon atoms joined together in various ring structures, very much like chicken wire. Indeed their chemistry is often referred to as chicken-wire chemistry.</p> Wed, 07 Aug 2013 00:02:07 +0000 Alexandra Pires-Ménard, OSS Intern 1996 at /oss /oss/article/science-science-everywhere/mothballs-and-steaks <p>One wouldn’t expect that frying a steak exposes the cook to the same chemical that is used in mothballs, but it does. Researchers at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology were interested in exploring the potential risk of exposure to cooking fumes because previous work had established that heating meat to high temperatures results in the formation of compounds capable of causing cancer in test animals, and possibly in humans. For example, Taiwanese women experience a high rate of lung cancer even though only ten percent of them smoke.</p> Mon, 10 Oct 2011 19:42:28 +0000 Joe Schwarcz 1622 at /oss