A leading respiratory specialist from Southampton has issued a stark warning about the health risks associated with indoor air pollution, particularly from everyday cooking activities. In a recent article on the BBC News website, Dr Thom Daniels of University Hospital Southampton (UHS) explained that fumes released during cooking, along with pollutants from dust, cleaning products, and household materials, can significantly damage respiratory health. These pollutants often go unnoticed, yet they may pose a greater risk indoors than the outdoor air pollution that typically draws public concern.
Dr Daniels highlighted that exposure to indoor pollutants can aggravate asthma, allergies, and other chronic lung conditions. Of particular concern are kitchens without adequate ventilation, where harmful gases and fine particulates generated during cooking can build up to unsafe levels.
You can read the article on the BBC News website here.
In recognition of Clean Air Day on June 19, 2025, Dr Daniels called for urgent action to improve indoor air quality. One of the most effective solutions is to install proper mechanical ventilation in line with UK Building Regulations. Ensuring that your kitchen is equipped with a compliant extraction system helps remove harmful cooking emissions at the source, preventing them from circulating throughout the home.
Addressing cooking-related air pollution is a vital step toward creating healthier living spaces for everyone, so let's look at some of the top options available:
Best Overall Options for Improved Air Quality:
There are three choices here from three different categories that we recommend, and which is best for you will depend on your installation situation.
Continuous extract ventilation (our top choice): Tornado ST100DMEVS
These excellent 4" continuous running units are ideal for a new kitchen fan installation. At 4"/100mm, they are more discreet than the usual 6"/150mm intermittent kitchen fans, but meet regulations for extraction due to being continuous-running. We suggest the standard version over the humidity and timer variant for kitchens, as this gives you the manual control to boost and trickle as required. Tornado has also released a conversion mounting plate, allowing you to replace an existing 6"/150mm fan with this smaller 4"/100mm unit if desired.
Single room heat recovery: Envirovent HeatSava range
These discreet single-room heat recovery units from Envirovent are a fantastic option for kitchens. They are available in both 4"/100mm and 6"/150mm variants, and both meet building regs requirements for kitchen extraction. The 6"/150mm units are designed to replace existing 6"/150mm units, whereas the 4"/100mm units allow you to install the smaller form, more discreet models for new installations.
The HeatSava's party trick is that you can mount the unit in any orientation on an external wall, which means you can mount the unit horizontally, out of sight above kitchen cabinets. The HeatSava also adds the bonus of not just extracting, but also supplying fresh filtered air back into the kitchen. Both size options have multiple models with different length heat exchangers, allowing you to pick the right length to match the depth of your wall.
Installation during initial house construction or whole-house major renovation: MVHR
By far, the top dog for improving indoor air quality is whole-house Mechanical Ventilation with Heat Recovery. These systems are integrated into your home, extracting from bathrooms, utility rooms, kitchens and any other problematic places and supplying fresh, filtered air that is warmed by the outgoing air via a heat exchanger through a centralised unit - usually housed in loft spaces.
However, unless you are incorporating an MVHR system into your new build or major renovation work on your home, retrofitting these systems will be a very intrusive and disruptive experience.
Top manufacturers include Vent Axia, Domus, Blauberg and Envirovent, but we suggest having a system like this professionally specified to meet your home's needs. If you are in the market for MVHR, we recommend contacting our specification site, Clean Air Direct, for more details.
Best 6" Intermittent: Envirovent SIL150S
6"/150mm fans have been the staple of kitchen fans for decades due to the requirement of a minimum of 60l/s extraction required for intermittent fans by the UK Building Regulations. Although with the advent of continuous running units, this now doesn't need to be the case anymore.
However, if you are replacing an existing 6" fan or you don't like the idea of a continuously running unit, our pick of the crop is the fantastic Envirovent SIL150S. This sleek and discreet unit is quiet and powerful, and is ideal to replace a simple on/off installation.
Best Inline: Tornado TT100PROS
For those of you with enough space in a ceiling void or loft space in bungalows above your kitchen, installing a powerful inline fan is a no-brainer. Inline fans are powerful, and the Turbo Tube from Tornado is a perfect example of this, extracting at over 83l/s! By installing the unit in the loft space, inline fans can be bigger, leading to greater power and ease of grille positioning. This means you can install a grille directly above your main cooking area or hob to maximise extraction from the source.
As before, we favour fans without overrun timers for kitchens, giving you complete control over when the fan is operating so that you can turn it off as soon as you are satisfied with the extraction, returning your kitchen to a more peaceful environment. If you're anything like me, when you have guests over, you invariably congregate in the kitchen, so having the control to turn off the fan when entertaining or for a sit-down meal in a kitchen-diner is imperative!
Best Centrifugal: Vent Axia Centrif Duo & Quadra Ranges
Finally, before the explosion of highly affordable and compact dMEV continuous running units, the only way to install a 4"/100mm fan in your kitchen that could reach the required 60l/s extraction rate was to install a powerful centrifugal fan unit. These usually bulky units are often overlooked these days, but two models by Vent Axia deserve a special mention.
The Vent Axia Centrif Duo and Quadra ranges have a neat trick up their sleeve… actually, it's up their grille! Both of these models can have a filter added to catch grease and other food particulates that can become airborne during cooking. The filter helps to trap these particulates to stop them from passing through the fan and ducting, which keeps the system cleaner and minimises layers of grease and gunk forming within the unit and duct. These filters are washable and replaceable, adding an extra layer of protection to both your lungs and your fan unit.
On top of that, if you can ceiling mount either unit, Vent Axia also sell a flush mounting kit which enables you to hide the majority of the boxy design!