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Embargoed for release: Thursday, August 26, 10:15 a.m., Eastern Time

Here’s a “Did You Know?â€� challenge for hungry family and friends lurking while you tend hot dogs, burgers, ribs, veggies, and other fare on that charcoal grill. They are fresh from a presentation here today at the American Chemical Öйú365betÖÐÎĹÙÍø (ACS) 240th National Meeting & Exposition. The presenter was Michael J. Antal, Jr., Ph. D., one of the world’s foremost authorities on charcoal.

Did you know that:

• Charcoal may have been the first synthetic material produced by humans.
• Scientific evidence indicates that Cro-Magnon Man produced the first charcoal 38,000 years ago.
• Making charcoal was a technological tour de force, requiring the knowledge and skill to ignite, control, and sustain a fire, and to extinguish it quickly.
• Our prehistoric relatives used charcoal artistically, to draw scenes of animals and hunters on the walls of caves. Some of those cave sketches still exist today.

And finally, a “Believe It or Not.� Despite being a world authority on charcoal, you’ll never find Antal tending a barbecue. “I’m mostly a vegetarian,� he noted. “I suppose I could grill vegetables, but I’m just not interested in grilling.� Although Antal never grills food, members of his lab at the University of Hawaii at Manoa do, and he says that they ignite the charcoal with paper and kindling using a chimney-type charcoal starter, to avoid the air pollution emissions cause by liquid fire-starters. For a charcoal review paper by Antal, go to .