Environmental Health Perspectives, October 2011
Indoor PM Pollution and Elevated Blood Pressure: Cardiovascular Impact of Indoor Biomass Burning
Bob Weinhold
Elevated blood pressure leads to increased risk of cardiovascular disease, stroke, and kidney disease. Indoor air pollution, including exposure to fine particulate matter (PM2.5), has been hypothesized to contribute to elevated blood pressure, although little epidemiologic research has been conducted on this potential link. To investigate the issue further, a team of U.S., British, and Chinese researchers assessed the link between blood pressure and PM2.5 emitted during indoor burning of wood, coal, or crop residues used for heating and cooking [EHP 119(10):1390–1395; Baumgartner et al.]. These fuels and the poorly vented, inefficient stoves in which they are typically burned are a significant source of indoor air pollution exposure for almost half the world’s population.
The researchers evaluated the blood pressure of 280 Chinese women, aged 25–90, in conjunction with their personal exposure to PM2.5, as measured by a device the women wore or set nearby during two to six 24-hour periods over the course of a year. Blood pressure was measured immediately before and after each 24-hour PM2.5 measurement. The researchers were able to account for other factors that affect blood pressure, including age, education, height, weight, physical activity, salt intake, medication use, smoking, secondhand smoke exposure, caffeine consumption, pregnancy, medical history, air temperature, season, and socioeconomic status.
Asia Pac J Public Health. 2011 Sep 13.
Monitoring and Respiratory Health Assessment of the Population Exposed to Cooking Fuel Emissions in a Rural Area of Jalgaon District, India.
Indoor air pollution is an ongoing problem in developing countries. Respiratory diseases are common worldwide in rural communities. This study was undertaken to estimate the respirable particulate matter (PM(10)) concentrations emitted from cooking fuels and their effects on the respiratory health of the rural population of Jalgaon district. The respiratory status of the exposed population was assessed by conducting pulmonary function tests in the study area. The levels of forced vital capacity and forced expiratory volume in 1 second were lower, and difficulty in respiration and frequent coughing were more common with higher odds ratios (OR) of 2.53 (95% confidence interval [CI] = 1.1-2.83) and 1.84 (95% CI = 0.95-2.10) in agrowaste-user female subjects.
Ventilatory impairment among the agrowaste-user subjects was higher than among users of gas and wood. Difficulty in respiration and frequent coughing were strongly associated in wood-user female subjects as well with ORs of 2.10 (95% CI = 0.85-2.49) and 1.79 (95% CI = 0.91-1.98), respectively. Chest pain was significantly associated in agrowaste- and wood-user female subjects. This study confirms an association between the reductions in lung efficiency with high PM(10) exposure in the rural population. The result of this study reveals an association between respiratory diseases symptoms and indoor air quality in the biomass-using rural population of Jalgaon district.
Indoor Air. October 2011
Indoor air pollution and self-reported diseases – a case study of NCT of Delhi.
Firdaus G, Ahmad A.
People in modern societies often spend 80-90% of their time in indoor environments. It is, therefore, imperative to analyze indoor air quality (IAQ) and its determinants and to consider the contribution of IAQ to possible health outcomes at the household level. Based on empirical data collected from 5949 households from 35 wards of Delhi, it can be summarized that higher proportions of residents live in degraded indoor environmental conditions.
The highest risks to health were attached to use of traditional fuels (64%), lack of a kitchen (59%), exposure to environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) (55%), and poor ventilation (55%). Acute respiratory infections (43%) were identified as one of the most prevalent health problems confronted by residents and are strongly associated with use of traditional fuels (adjusted OR 2.7, 95% CI 2.3-3.1). Asthma shows a significant relationship with the use of traditional fuels (adjusted OR 3.8, 95% CI 3.4-4.3), exposure to ETS (adjusted OR 2.5, 95% CI 2.2-2.7), and poor ventilation (adjusted OR 1.26, 95% CI 1.13-1.41). Lung cancer (adjusted OR 1.54, 95% CI 1.38-1.71) and cardiovascular diseases (adjusted OR 2.25, 95% CI 2.01-2.53) also show a strong relationship with ETS exposure. More research is neeeded.
PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS: The present study can help to create new insights in understanding the gravity of indoor air quality problems in Delhi and can therefore provide interesting material to social scientists, public health officers, planners, and decision makers. The information can be utilized to help formulate comprehensive policies and planning with a humanistic approach for proper urban indoor environments that will be applicable at all administrative levels, viz. local, national, and international, and will also provide an important background for additional research in this area.
Environ Int. 2011 Oct;37(7):1157-63.
Evaluation of exposure reduction to indoor air pollution in stove intervention projects in Peru by urinary biomonitoring of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon metabolites.
Z Li, et al. email: ZJLi@cdc.gov
Burning biomass fuels such as wood on indoor open-pit stoves is common in developing regions. In such settings, exposure to harmful combustion products such as fine particulate matter (PM(2.5)), carbon monoxide (CO) and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) is of concern. We aimed to investigate if the replacement of open pit stoves by improved stoves equipped with a chimney would significantly reduce exposure to PAHs, PM(2.5) and CO. Two stove projects were evaluated in Peru.
Program A was part of the Juntos National Program in which households built their own stoves using materials provided. In Program B, Barrick Gold Corporation hired a company to produce and install the stoves locally. A total of 30 and 27 homes participated in Program A and B, respectively. We collected personal and kitchen air samples, as well as morning urine samples from women tasked with cooking in the households before and after the installation of the improved stoves.
Median levels of PM(2.5) and CO were significantly reduced in kitchen and personal air samples by 47-74% after the installation of the new stoves, while the median reduction of 10 urinary hydroxylate PAH metabolites (OH-PAHs) was 19%-52%. The observed OH-PAH concentration in this study was comparable or higher than the 95th percentile of the general U.S. population, even after the stove intervention, indicating a high overall exposure in this population.
Indoor Air, Sept. 2011.
Indoor air pollution and lung function growth among children in four Chinese cities
Ananya Roy, et al.
Ambient air pollution has been associated with decreased growth in lung function among children; but little is known about the impact of indoor air pollution. We examined relationships between indoor air pollution metrics and lung function growth, among children (n=3,273) aged 6-13 years living in four Chinese cities. Lung function parameters (FVC and FEV1) were measured twice a year.
Among children living in houses where coal was used as a fuel and no ventilation devices were present adjusted FVC and FEV1 growth respectively were 37% and 61% that of the average growth per year in the full cohort. This suggests that household coal use may cause deficits in lung function growth, while using ventilation devices may be protective of lung development.
Top-down Assessment of Air Pollution and GHGs for Dhaka, Bangladesh: Analysis of GAINS Derived Model Data, 2011.
Scott Randall, Norwegian Air Research Institute.
The city of Dhaka was chosen for this assessment due to the current ongoing project Bangladesh Air Pollution Management (BAPMAN), which concentrates mostly on the capital city Dhaka. Through the BAPMAN project, a total bottom-up emissions inventory is currently being performed, and it is useful to the project to compare top-down emissions data results.
Results from the GAINS model assessment for Dhaka shows that for 2010 the total PM2.5 emissions were 35000 tons/year, and the total PM10 emissions were 45000 tons/year. The top sectors making up the PM emissions included Industry and Residential sectors, where the specific sub-sectors were brick/cement production and residential cooking respectively. The top fuels making up the emissions were “no fuel use” and “fuelwood direct”.
PLoS Med 8(9): Sept 2011.
Setting Research Priorities to Reduce Global Mortality from Childhood Pneumonia by 2015
Full-text
I Rudan, et al.
This paper aims to identify health research priorities that could assist the rate of progress in childhood pneumonia mortality reduction globally, as set out in the United Nation’s Millennium Development Goal 4.
The authors applied the Child Health and Nutrition Research Initiative methodology for setting priorities in health research investments. The process was coordinated by the World Health Organization.
Forty-five leading childhood pneumonia researchers suggested more than 500 research ideas, which were merged into 158 research questions that spanned the broad spectrum of epidemiological research, health policy and systems research, improvement of existing interventions, and development of new interventions.
Within the short time frame in which gains were expected globally, the research priorities were dominated by health systems and policy research topics (e.g., studying barriers to health care seeking and access, as well as barriers to increased coverage with available vaccines; and evaluating the potential to safely scale up antibiotic treatment through community health workers).
Sept. 28, 2011 – The developers of the fuel-efficient Berkeley-Darfur Stove for refugee camps in central Africa are at it once again, this time evaluating inexpensive metal cookstoves for the displaced survivors of last year’s deadly earthquake in Haiti.
Scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have teamed up with students from the University of California (UC), Berkeley to run a series of efficiency tests comparing the traditional Haiti cookstove with a variety of low-cost, commercially available alternatives. The long-term goal is to find the safest and most fuel-efficient stove—or to design a new one that would win favor with the cooks of Haiti—and tap the resources of nonprofit aid organizations to subsidize its manufacture in local metal shops.
“A more efficient cookstove would not only save Haitian families and aid organizations money on fuel, but could also reduce pressure to cut down trees in this already heavily deforested island nation,” says Haiti Stove Project leader Ashok Gadgil, director of the Environmental Energy Technologies Division at Berkeley Lab and the driving force behind development of the Berkeley-Darfur stove. “More efficient stoves that emit less carbon monoxide and smoke could also help reduce the adverse impacts of these emissions on the health of the cooks in Haiti, who are mostly women.”
The Haitian government estimates that 316,000 people were killed and more than 1 million made homeless by the January 12, 2010 magnitude 7.0 quake that left the capital city of Port-au-Prince in ruins (although some international organizations estimate the casualties to be lower). That suffering and devastation was readily apparent when Gadgil sent a team to Haiti three months after the quake on a mission to evaluate the need for cookstoves among survivors.
Their findings underscored both the promise and challenges facing any attempt to apply the Darfur cookstove experience to the Haitian situation. “The Darfur stove is a wood-burning stove. It didn’t work as well in Haiti, where most people cook with charcoal,” says UC Berkeley combustion engineering graduate student Katee Lask, who is supervising the stove-testing. “Since there were already so many charcoal stoves on the market, we decided to look at the ones that were already being disseminated there and provide an unbiased assessment. This is valuable information for the nongovernmental organizations, or NGOs, who do not have the technical capacity for assessment of efficiency and emissions.”
The team brought back for testing a traditional Haiti stove, which is typically fabricated with perforated sheet metal, and several “improved” commercial designs also available there. In a scientific kitchen set up with a fume hood in a warehouse at Berkeley Lab, the performance of the traditional stove was compared with that of four alternatives made of metal or metal-ceramic combinations. UC Berkeley undergraduates carried out most of the combustion efficiency tests. One set of experiments matched the five charcoal stoves’ performance at the simple task of boiling water; a second set of experiments involves cooking a traditional Haitian meal of beans and rice.
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US to host event in Chennai to raise awareness on cook stoves
Sep 24,2011
The United States will host an event in Chennai to raise public awareness about the need for ‘clean’ cookstoves in India and around the globe. It has also entered into an alliance with silicon technology company Dow-Corning, the Confederation of Indian Industry and Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce & Industry as part of diplomatic and technical activities to give a push to cook stoves and the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves.
Since its launch one year ago by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves has become an important US diplomatic and development priority. It has roped in actress Julia Roberts and celebrity chef Jose Andres to serve as its Ambassadors. On the first-year anniversary of the alliance, the United States has made additional financial commitments to the alliance of up to USD 55 million, taking the total commitment of the United States in the first five years to up to USD 105 million.
The funds will be used to research effective strategies to influence behaviour change related to cookstove adoption in Uganda and India and provide 30,000 stoves to drought-affected women and their families in the Horn of Africa. The Centre for Disease Control and Prevention has more than doubled its original commitment to build on and expand health evaluation and research efforts begun last year in Kenya, Guatemala and India with respect to cookstoves.
Source
Pioneering Africa Venture Safeguards Lives, Dramatically Reduces Emissions
Sept 22, 2011 – Thousands of charcoal-burning cookstoves in Mozambique, Africa will be replaced with cleaner ethanol stoves, thanks to an innovative business model being launched by leading cleantech company Novozymes (CPH:NZYM B) and CleanStar Ventures, a green venture development group.
Announced at the Clinton Global Initiative Annual Meeting, the companies are jointly establishing CleanStar Mozambique, which will safeguard lives endangered from charcoal smoke, increase farmer incomes by up to 500%, save thousands of acres of forest every year, and dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
CleanStar Mozambique will work with small farmers to implement sustainable farming practices, create a food and ethanol cooking fuel production facility, and lay the groundwork for economically and ecologically sustainable communities in Sub-Saharan Africa. The business will address a range of problems, including land degradation, poor health, and energy poverty.
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