Epidemiologic studies have established that Chinese women who are exposed to cooking oil fumes (COFs) at home suffer from high risks of respiratory diseases (1), lung cancer (2-, bladder cancer (9), and cervical intraepithelial neoplasm (10). However, studies have not investigated the health effects of exposure to COFs on cooks in Chinese restaurants, who may have potentially high occupational exposure to COFs. Two studies have yielded inconsistent results regarding the mortality of cooks in the United Kingdom. One prospective cohort study showed that cooks who had retired from the British Army suffered excess mortality from lung and large intestinal cancers, ischemic heart disease, cerebrovascular disease, and digestive disease over that of the general population (11). The other retrospective study found that the mortality of cooks by all causes was markedly lower than that of the general population of England and Wales (12).

COFs are produced and released into the environment when food is fried, stir-fried, or grilled using cooking oil at high temperatures. The degradation of sugar, the pyrolysis of proteins and amino acids, and the degradation of fat during the high-temperature treatment of food can generate harmful degradation products (13), such as particulate matter (PM), polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH; ref. 2), aromatic amines (9), nitro-PAHs (2, 5), and aldehydes (13, 14). Traditional Chinese cooking includes stir-frying and deep-frying, which generate significant amounts of COFs (15). Reactive oxygen species in living cells may cause oxidative damage to nucleic acids, proteins, and lipids. Such damage is regarded as being associated with aging, cancer, and other degenerative diseases. 8-Hydroxy-2′-deoxyguanosine (8-OHdG) is the most common DNA lesion that is induced by the reaction of hydroxyl radicals with guanosine at the C-8 position in DNA (16). DNA damage may be repaired by the base excision repair pathway, and the resulting repair product, urinary 8-OHdG, is affected by neither diet nor cell turnover (17). Exposure to COFs promotes the lipid peroxidation of lung epithelial cells according to an in vitro study (15). Oxidative stress caused by COFs may be implicated in the development of lung cancer in Chinese women (18). The measurement of urinary 8-OHdG is useful in evaluating risks of lung cancer (19) and other oxidative stress-related source=http://cebp.aacrjournals.org/content/17/12/3351.full i hope you have now been sufficiently warned against the dangers of COF BY THIS TIMELY LIFE SAVING HEALTH SIGNALS AND ALERT