Even the healthiest plate can harbor invisible threats. When you grill a steak, smoke salmon, or roast vegetables at high heat, chemicals called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons—PAHs—can form on the food's surface, created when fat and juices drip onto hot surfaces and release smoke that deposits these compounds back onto your meal. Some PAHs are known carcinogens, which is why scientists have long sought reliable ways to detect them in the foods we eat every day.
The challenge has been that conventional testing methods for PAHs are slow, labor-intensive, and chemical-heavy—hardly practical for the routine food safety checks that protect public health. But researchers at Seoul National University of Science and Technology have developed a solution. Led by Professor Joon-Goo Lee, the team refined a method called QuEChERS (Quick, Easy, Cheap, Effective, Rugged, and Safe) to detect PAHs faster, safer, and more efficiently than ever before.
In their 2025 study published in Food Science and Biotechnology, Lee's team used QuEChERS to measure eight different PAHs in food samples, including benzo[a]pyrene and other known cancer-causing compounds. Using acetonitrile to extract PAHs and testing multiple purification strategies, they achieved remarkable accuracy. All eight PAHs showed calibration curves with R² values above 0.99—a measurement of linear reliability so tight it signals a highly precise detection system. When applied across different food types, recovery rates ranged from 86.3 to 109.6%, with precision values staying between just 0.4 and 6.9%.
The real-world implications became clear when the team analyzed what people actually eat. Among the foods tested, soybean oil showed the highest PAH levels, followed by duck meat and canola oil—staples in kitchens worldwide. This specificity matters enormously. "This method not only simplifies the analytical process but also demonstrates high efficiency in detection compared to conventional methods," Professor Lee explained. "It can be applied to a wide range of food matrices."
Since the Seoul team's breakthrough, other researchers have continued building on QuEChERS-based approaches. A 2025 study in the journal Foods tested 302 retail samples and found highest PAH concentrations in kezuribushi, a smoked and dried fish product. The same research flagged grilled chicken feet as a possible concern based on European Food Safety Authority standards. Another 2025 study focusing on cereals found that while chrysene appeared in 17% of cereal samples from Romania, no PAHs were detected in cereal-derived products—suggesting that different foods require different scrutiny.
What makes this progress genuinely significant is that it transforms food testing from a bottleneck into a scalable tool. Better detection methods help regulators, researchers, and food companies understand where contamination occurs and how to reduce it. The National Cancer Institute notes that while animal studies show PAHs can cause cancer, human population studies haven't yet established a definitive link between cooked meat exposure and disease—which is precisely why more accurate measurement tools are so valuable. They fill knowledge gaps and guide better safety standards.
For people who care about what goes on their plates, the message isn't to avoid grilling or cooking at high heat. It's that science is catching up to the kitchen, making sure that even our most nutritious meals can be better understood—and safer.