How does cutting onions make you cry?

Onions eject eye-irritating chemicals that person a tear-inducing property. When you pierce the tegument of an onion, you are near with stinging eyes caused by chemicals released from the bulb that impact your nerves successful the cornea. And it seems the cutting method whitethorn person a relation to play arsenic well.

Onions chopped by alloy blades of varying sharpness and velocity matter, according to a survey published successful Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“Using high-speed visuals, we recovered that an bulb does not merchandise tear-triggering fluid successful 1 burst. Instead, the leaf archetypal punches retired a furniture of high-speed mist, past slower fluids drawback into drops,” the authors wrote.

Blunter blades and faster cutting speeds merchandise a larger fig of droplets “causing unit to physique nether the onion’s tegument earlier the droplets were ejected. Refrigerating the onions anterior to cutting produced an accrued fig of droplets of akin velocity, compared with the unchilled samples,” per the paper.

Using crisp knives “not lone reduces tears portion cutting onions but whitethorn besides trim the fig of imaginable pathogens released portion chopping different earthy foods, specified arsenic poultry”.