Study Shows These Home Appliances Could Be Putting Kids (And You) At Risk

Having kids in your home means you're responsible for their health and safety. While everyone knows the danger of household items like bleach, paint, and other chemicals, you might not suspect that your appliances could be harmful to your family's health. In October 2025, five engineers from three different universities in South Korea published a study in the Journal of Hazardous Materials outlining the health hazards of common home appliances. Devices with heating coils and brushed motors were likely to generate ultrafine particles (UFPs), defined as particulate emissions less than 0.1 microns across. For comparison, a sheet of paper is between 70 and 180 microns thick. Toasters, hair dryers, ovens, air fryers, vacuum cleaners, and irons were all implicated, and one of the things you should know before buying an air fryer is that they emit particularly large, dangerous particles. "The brushed motor-embedded hair dryers mostly produced nucleation-mode UFPs," the study states, "while air fryers and toasters generated Aitken mode-size UFPs." 

Aitken mode UFPs are five to 20 times larger than nucleation mode particles and can do extensive harm to the human respiratory tract, according to the non-profit scientific journal Aerosol and Air Quality Research. The South Korean engineering team found that some home appliances produced dangerous copper, silver, or titanium particles alongside carbon-rich combustion byproducts. Ultrafine particles are known to pose serious risks for cardiovascular and respiratory health, and their effect on children is even more pronounced due to their smaller lung volume. These appliances sometimes have no protective shielding to contain their emissions, and many are operated with people close by. The study concluded that air fryers released more UFPs than other frying methods and that "These particles persist in indoor environments and are gradually removed by coagulation, deposition, and ventilation."

UFPs represent a multi-layered threat to human health. Many ultrafine particles are too small to be filtered as they pass through the nose and respiratory tract, and once in the lungs they diffuse through tissue and find their way to the bloodstream. As they circulate, UFPs can cause tissue damage leading to hardening of the arteries, high blood pressure, and cancer. More directly, inhalation of UFPs can trigger or aggravate respiratory conditions like asthma, bronchitis, COPD, and pneumonia.

In 2020, Dr. Dean Schrufnagel of the University of Illinois-Chicago department of medicine published a study in the journal Experimental and Molecular Medicine outlining a link between ultrafine copper particles from brushed motors to diabetes and cancer. Ultrafine particles in air pollution also pose a potential heart attack risk, and increased academic interest in UFPs could prompt changes in how appliances are designed and manufactured. While governments across the world have improved ambient air quality with vehicle emissions laws and industrial regulation, the matter of UFPs in our homes has gone largely unaddressed.