The substance in grilled meat is a hundred times more likely to cause cancer!

Newly discovered chemical compounds produced by combustion in car engines and when grilling meat may be hundreds of times more carcinogenic than the substances that create them.

Researchers at Oregon State University conducted experiments simulating the chemical reactions that occur in the combustion of car exhaust and barbecued meat. They found that these reactions, while known to produce some substances, also create new compounds that have never been seen before and are hundreds of times more likely to cause DNA mutations that lead to cancer.

All types of combustion, from wood burning to lighting cigarettes, create compounds called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). There are about 10,000 different compounds considered PAHs, including Benzopyrene, Anthracene, and Fluorene. And while PAHs are known to be harmful to health in highly polluted areas where they are concentrated, it is unclear how harmful they are.

However, the researchers found that when some PAHs interact with nitrogen, to form NPAHs, their ability to cause DNA mutations – also known as cancer-causing mutations – increases from 6 to 432 times compared to the original PAH when combined with one nitrogen group, and increases from 272 to 467 times when combined with two nitrogen groups.

“Some of the newly discovered compounds are much more carcinogenic than previously thought, and may be present in the environment as a result of air pollution from motor vehicles or from certain types of food processing,” said Staci Simonich, a chemistry and toxicology instructor at the University of Oregon College of Agriculture. Because of the technicalities of mutagenicity testing, the true toxicity of these compounds has not been fully assessed and could be much more severe. However, it is not yet clear how much that might be.

According to dantri.com