I Never Cook Without an Air Purifier—and You Shouldn’t Either

My Roman Empire? The fact that cooking is the primary source of air pollution in most homes.

“When you smell food cooking, you’re smelling the chemicals that the food naturally gives off during that process,” Dennis French, an air quality expert and Indoor Air Quality Association board member based in Alberta, Canada, told me in 2023.

Every time you fire up your cooktop, you’re releasing pollutants like oil mist and smoke into the air. Without proper ventilation, those particles can drift deep into your lungs, where they can cause irritation (or worse).

Since becoming privy to this information, I’ve been vigilant about ventilation (and real fun at dinner parties). Unfortunately, the only exhaust in my otherwise lovely apartment is the seemingly-useless fan built into my over-the-range microwave—though, according to French, even restaurant-quality systems can’t capture all the smoke and oil mist produced during cooking.

So now, whenever I’m cooking on high heat, I crack a window—even in the dead of winter. When it’s not so cold out, I open both kitchen windows and set up a reverse fan. And on the rare occasion I deep-fry something, I do it on the front porch.

Still, no matter what or how I’m cooking, the responsive air purifier that lives semi-permanently in my kitchen goes to work the moment things heat up.

A dedicated kitchen air purifier is important because it will collect far more oil residue, food particles, and airborne debris than one in any other room of the house. For that reason, they’ll also require more frequent maintenance and filter changes (this, says French, is precisely why most brands advise keeping their purifiers away from your stove).

Still, proximity matters. The whole point of a dedicated kitchen air purifier is to capture and filter as many grease and smoke particles as you can before they settle somewhere they don’t belong, be it your lungs or the decorative dishes you keep on top of your upper cabinets. The closer your purifier is to the source of the pollution, says French, the more particles it can contain.

However, as French pointed out, to sustain that kind of performance, you’ll need to stay on top of cleaning the machine and swapping filters well before the manual or warning lights tell you to.

And while replacement filters can add up, French says that if you’re relying on an air purifier as your main defense against cooking fumes, it’s worth investing in a high-quality machine (and its ongoing maintenance costs) from the start.