Cooking with an air fryer produces far fewer harmful airborne particles than deep frying or shallow frying, even when cooking fatty foods, according to a study published in the American Chemical Society’s journal ES&T Air. However, the authors want that letting the appliance get dirty can start to undo those benefits.
This study is one of the first to examine in detail the range of pollutants produced by air frying. It found that air fryers emit significantly fewer volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and ultra-fine particles than conventional frying methods, both of which are linked to health concerns.
Researchers used specially designed air quality chambers to measure pollutants produced while cooking a range of foods with different fat contents, including frozen fried food, fresh low-fat food and fresh high-fat food.
Fattier foods, including bacon and onion rings, produced more emissions in the air fryer than other foods, but cooking those same foods in a deep fat fryer produced 10 to 100 times more VOCs. “This study is the latest that shows the potential benefits for indoor air quality of using air fryers for cooking. While our previous study only looked at one type of food – lean chicken – we wanted to look at a greater range of foodstuffs including ones with higher fat content to see how they compare specifically when cooked in an air fryer,” said Professor Christian Pfrang, lead author of the study.
“The results confirmed that while foods with high fat content do produce more emissions in the air fryer, they produce only a fraction of what we see in cooking methods such as shallow or deep-fat frying. Using a bespoke air quality chamber for this latest study has allowed us to get a much more detailed look at emissions from air frying too, helping us to focus only on the contributions to air pollutants from cooking,” added first author Ruijie Tang, a final year PhD student at the University of Birmingham.
However, the study raised an important warning about cleaning. When the team tested an air fryer that had been used more than 70 times, they found it emitted 23% more cooking-related VOCs and more than twice as many ultra-fine particles as a clean machine, even with an empty tray. The researchers attributed this to residue building up in parts of the appliance that are hard to reach and clean.
“Our study shows that repeated use of air fryers without being able to clean the more inaccessible cooking surfaces can negate some of the benefits for indoor air quality. While the effects are not producing emissions that families should be concerned about, this finding does make a case for air fryer design that allows for a deep clean to keep emissions low in the long term. Air quality in the home and other indoor environments is being increasingly recognised as an important factor, and our body of work will provide households with a better understanding of how kitchen activities affect the air we breathe in our homes,” concluded Professor Pfrang.
Ruijie Tang, Yizhou Su, William Joe F. Acton, Lara K. Dunn, and Christian Pfrang. Quantification of Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs), Nitrogen Oxides (NOx), and Ultrafine Particles (UFPs) Emitted by Domestic Air Fryers: A Chamber Study of Indoor Air Quality Impacts. ACS ES&T Air 2026 3 (2), 473-487, DOI: 10.1021/acsestair.5c00363