White Paper 1/5: The Grease Filter That Was Never a Solution

Every commercial kitchen has one: a mechanical grease filter above the stove. It's the oldest, most familiar layer of kitchen ventilation, and the one every buyer takes for granted when a kitchen is designed.

Independent research tells a different story about what that filter actually catches. IARC's own risk assessment defines cooking fumes as fundamentally submicron, and RISE field measurements at a Swedish McDonald's show that most of the particle mass sits between 0.5 and 2.5 micrometers, a size class where even the best mechanical filtration still leaves a significant share unaffected.

In the first part of this five-part series, we look at what the grease filter is actually built to catch, where the industry's own regulations already acknowledge its limits, and what that gap costs in maintenance, fire risk, and downstream wear.

Read White Paper 1/5 →