When you make toast and it stinks up the house, this odor, although overwhelming, is non harmful, right?

Question

Just wondering. When the whole kitchen and subsequently the entirety of the house takes up a greasy stench after making toast, does this disburse any carcinogens, mutagens, or neurotoxins up into the air.... if so, would they be in sufficient quantities to actually /do/ anything inside the human body? I realize that making toast produces acrylamide, but does this chemical enter into the air or is it only contained inside the actual food itself?

Answer 1

If it burns, you do release some harmfull particles into the air. But if it just bakes, and smells, no harm is done :)

Answer 2

this might just be the reason all the people who have died to date have died.

Answer 3

Although I don't believe there have been studies on the surrounding air of burnt toast, there have been studies that confirmed the presence of Benzopyrene (a carcinogenic chemical) in burnt toast.  However, I would imagine that small levels of Benzopyrene would also be in the smoke from burnt toast since Benzopyrene is found in other smoke (like tobacco and wood).  I wouldn't imagine it could be too harmful unless this is a frequent occurance.

UPDATE- Every harful chemical I can think of is concentration dependent, and it just so happens that the benzopyrene content of burnt bread is fairly low ~.25 micrograms/Kg.  Also, most of that would be taken care of during digestion, and the rest, as you say would be easily taken care of by our cells.  However, we don't know the concentration of benzopyrene in the smoke from the toast, which I would assume is greater than in the actual bread.  I'm guessing the benzopyrene concentration in the smoke of burnt bread wouldn't be great enough to be harmful unless you are burning lots of bread in a short period of time.

Answer 4

it's burnt bread.. nothing harmful there....