Did you know that a well-intentioned government scheme to boost the economy might have inadvertently worsened air quality in London? The 'Eat Out to Help Out' initiative, while successful in reviving the hospitality sector, has been linked to increased air pollution during a time when public health was already under strain. But here's where it gets controversial: while the scheme's role in the spread of Covid-19 has been widely debated, its impact on air quality has only recently come to light, and it’s raising important questions about urban pollution sources.
New research (https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-25-14825-2025) has uncovered that the UK government’s ‘Eat Out to Help Out’ policy, which subsidized meals at restaurants and pubs in August 2020, contributed to elevated levels of air pollution in London. This finding is particularly striking because it occurred during a period when the public was being urged to minimize pollution to protect vulnerable individuals shielding or isolating due to Covid-19 (https://iaqm.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Ian-McCrae-Competition-2020_Melody-Horan.pdf).
The scheme, designed to reboot the struggling hospitality industry, ran for three days a week throughout August 2020. Dr. Ian Chen, a researcher from Imperial College London (https://www.imperial.ac.uk/school-public-health/environmental-research-group/research/aerosol-science/), first noticed unusual pollution spikes while analyzing data from a monitoring site on Marylebone Road. Initially, he suspected traffic as the culprit. However, upon closer inspection, Chen found that soot from diesel exhaust was lower than the previous year, ruling out traffic as the primary cause.
The breakthrough came when examining the chemical composition of the particles. They contained fatty acids typically associated with cooking, but their timing didn’t align with the usual lunch, evening, or weekend patterns (https://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/16/13773/2016/). Instead, pollution peaks occurred consistently on Monday to Wednesday evenings—the exact days the ‘Eat Out to Help Out’ scheme was active. The biggest spike was recorded on a Bank Holiday Monday at the end of August.
And this is the part most people miss: the pollution pattern persisted into September and October, even after the scheme ended, suggesting a lasting impact on consumer behavior and air quality. Additionally, the pollution contained chemicals typically associated with wood stoves in winter, despite the warm August weather. Dr. Chen noted, ‘We usually detect emissions from frying food, but this time, we linked them to cooking fuels like wood and charcoal—a finding that had never been observed before.’
Commercial cooking has long been an overlooked contributor to air pollution (https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/oct/10/restaurants-contribution-to-air-pollution-revealed), despite being identified as a significant source in cities like London and Manchester over a decade ago (https://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/10/647/2010/). It’s estimated that about 8% of London’s particle pollution comes from commercial cooking (https://data.london.gov.uk/download/8d678913-6d58-4d72-9865-fef3ec84e047/8da23dcd-8b42-4499-b870-a0d3a9497bcb/LAEI2022-Emissions-Summary-Dashboards.zip), though this figure could be higher if emissions from wood and charcoal are included (https://sciencesearch.defra.gov.uk/ProjectDetails?ProjectId=21104).
Dr. David Green, also from Imperial College London, emphasized, ‘Our study highlights the need to address commercial kitchens as a significant and solvable source of urban air pollution. While we don’t yet know which restaurants are the most polluting, regulators now have enough evidence to take action.’
This isn’t just a London issue. A 2018 study in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.8b02654), found that particle pollution from restaurants can spread hundreds of meters into residential areas, often exceeding pollution levels from major roads. Similarly, air pollution from airline catering at Gatwick Airport has been detected in nearby countryside areas (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envint.2022.107092).
Dr. Chen concluded, ‘As vehicle emissions decline in European cities, commercial cooking is becoming a dominant source of particle pollution. Yet, there’s little regulation in place. Technologies to reduce these emissions exist and are already mandated in places like Hong Kong (https://www.epd.gov.hk/epd/sites/default/files/epd/english/greenrestaurant/guidelines/files/cf_control.pdf).’
But here’s the question: Should governments prioritize regulating commercial kitchens to improve air quality, even if it means higher costs for the hospitality industry? Or is this an unavoidable trade-off in urban environments? Share your thoughts in the comments—this is a conversation that needs to happen.
