Food Poisoning Caused by Smoke
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Smoke Can Poison Your Food
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If you are what you eat, then eating chemicals or things that do not belong in your body can make you sick. Many things that burn which should not be ingested release poisonous carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide. Many times people enjoy an afternoon barbecue with family or friends only to wind up with a terrible stomachache later that they attribute to undercooked food. What they may have contracted is food poisoning from the smoke of something that burned under the grill. But how can smoke, which is nothing more than air, actually cause food poisoning?
Odor Has Weight
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Many people don't realize that odor has weight and actual substance. Keep that in mind the next time you smell a noxious odor in a confined space. What you smell are ultrafine molecular particles of whatever caused the particular scent. Your nose is sensitive, and your stomach and digestive system can be sensitive as well. Keeping this in mind is one of the keys to understanding how smoke can cause food poisoning. What your nose may warn you of when biting into something that smells "not-quite-right" your body may take serious issue with when it attempts to digest it.
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Not All Smoke Is Poisonous
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Food poisoning by smoke does not happen with just any old smoke. Smoke from prepared wood chips that give food a "hickory" flavor is not going to cause you problems, nor is smoke from other burning food or most other things found in nature. Where smoke can get dangerous is when it is caused by burning something artificial or toxic such as plastic, which sometimes happens when food is prepared in an improper container or when a plastic utensil melts during cooking.
Smoke has virtually all of the characteristics of whatever is burning that causes it. This means that if you burn wood chips for flavor, you are actually eating fine wood particles. Wood is not harmful, but if a small piece of plastic ends up on the charcoal under your sizzling burger, all of the toxicity in that plastic can easily drift up and into your meat as it cooks---the particles stick to the food---and then into your gut as you eat it. This is actually worse than simply swallowing the toy, which your body is likely to pass without much digestion, but fire releases everything in the toy as poisonous smoke.
If you have food that has been exposed to a type of smoke that it was not supposed to be, especially from a plastic, you should throw it out and not consider eating it. This is why it is a good practice to throw out any unsealed food in your house if there has been a house fire that caused substantial smoke damage, because most of that food is now likely toxic by being covered with the smoke particulates. Further cooking will do nothing to deal with this poison.
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