Indoor air quality IAQ of a restaurant has increasingly received a lot of public concerns in Hong Kong.
Unfortunately, there is limited data about the IAQ of Hong Kong restaurants. In order to characterize the current
IAQ of local restaurants, four restaurants in metropolitan Hong Kong including a Korean barbecue style restaurant,
a Chinese hot pot restaurant, a Chinese dim sum restaurant and a Western canteen were selected for this study. The
results of this study showed that the mean concentrations of CO at restaurants with gas stoves for food cooking in 2
dining areas exceeded the range from 40 to 60% indoor CO concentrations at restaurants without gas stoves in 2
dining areas. The average levels of PM and PM at the Korean barbecue style restaurant were as high as 1442 10 2.5
and 1167 gm3, respectively. At the Korean barbecue and Chinese hot pot restaurants, the levels of PM2.5
accounted for 80
93% of their respective PM concentrations. The 1-h average levels of CO observed at Korean 10
barbecue style and hot pot restaurants were 15100 and 8000 gm3, respectively. Relatively high concentrations of
CO , CO, PM , PM benzene, toluene, methylene chloride and chloroform were measured in the dining areas of 2 10 2.5
the Korean barbecue style and the Chinese hot pot restaurants. The operations of pan-frying food and boiling food
with soup in a hot pot could generate considerable quantities of air pollutants.