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Many people would not think that fast food would cause pollution to their air quality. However, the impact of fast-food restaurants have on the air quality is becoming a major problem in America. San Francisco a law is in process of being passed that will require all chain driven commercial fast-food restaurants are going to be required to put an emissions control system on their grill. The reason that San Francisco is putting this requirement upon their fast-food chains is do to the amount of emissions they put off. A recent study that prompted San Francisco to pass this law was done in New Jersey. In the study they discovered that 16,000 restaurants released 2,226 tons of particulates. This was more pollution than all the heavy diesel vehicles in the state release, 1,329 tons.
An emissions control system is very similar to a Cadillac converter on a car. Cadillac converters are responsible for the dramatic reduction of automobile pollution. So similarly these emission control systems will act as a device that will lower the amount of pollution a grill will omit into the air. The reason Fast-food chains contribute to so much pollution is the way they cook. They are in fact called fast food restaurants therefore rely on cooking food very quickly. In order to get the food done fast, it requires the food be cooked at a very high temperature. When cooking at this high temperature they generate more smoke and release volatile organic compounds. Volatile organic compounds are gasses that are released from solid foods. They can cause long and short term health effects. Their health effects range from nose irritation to Cancer. Cooking four regular sized fast-food burgers it emits the same amount of volatile organic compounds as an economy car driving 1,000 miles.

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