IAP in Pakistan | Tools to Assess Development & Measure Exposure | CNN – How cooking can be a deadly chore | Cook Stove Design Competition | HAP: Health Risks and Research Priorities
Dan Campbell
Indoor particulate matter in developing countries: a case study in Pakistan
JUNE 18, 2013 · 0 COMMENTS
Indoor particulate matter in developing countries: a case study in Pakistan and potential intervention strategies. Environ. Res. Lett. 8 (2013) 024002.
Zaheer Ahmad Nasir, et al.
Around three billion people, largely in low and middle income countries, rely on biomass fuels for their household energy needs. The combustion of these fuels generates a range of hazardous indoor air pollutants and is an important cause of morbidity and mortality in developing countries. Worldwide, it is responsible for four million deaths. A reduction in indoor smoke can have a significant impact on lives and can help achieve many of the Millennium Developments Goals.
This letter presents details of a seasonal variation in particulate matter (PM)concentrations in kitchens using biomass fuels as a result of relocating the cooking space. During the summer, kitchens were moved outdoors and as a result the 24 h average PM10, PM2:5 and PM1 fell by 35%, 22% and 24% respectively. However, background concentrations of PM10 within the village increased by 62%. In locations where natural gas was the dominant fuel, the PM concentrations within the kitchen as well as outdoors were considerably lower than those in locations using biomass. These results highlights the importance of ventilation and fuel type for PM levels and suggest that an improved design of cooking spaces would result in enhanced indoor air quality
Assessing Pollution’s Effects on Infant Development | Source: Diana Austin, June 2013 |
Household air pollution (HAP) from cooking fires is a killer, causing 3.5 million deaths worldwide in 2010, including 300,000 deaths among children under 1 year of age, according to a study published in December 2012 in The Lancet.
UCSF School of Nursing faculty member Lisa Thompson knows these dangers well. As a co-investigator on the landmark RESPIRE (Randomized Exposure Study of Pollution Indoors and Respiratory Effects) study, she examined the links between exposure to HAP and acute respiratory infections in rural Guatemalan children.
Lisa Thompson
She observed that infants born to mothers who had received a plancha – a special woodstove with improved ventilation – during the prenatal period had higher birthweights than those whose mothers used traditional open-fire stoves. To build on that research, Thompson, who has spent a decade investigating the effects of air pollution on babies and young children, is conducting a pilot study to test methods to examine the effects of HAP on infants’ and young children’s neurodevelopment.
“The study builds on the infrastructure that’s been there for 10 years, so we have the same location, we have the same people working for us, and we’re enrolling participants in the same communities,” says Thompson. Titled NACER (Newborns and Children Exposed to Respiratory Pollutants), after the Spanish word for “to be born,” the study is following 36 pregnant women and their infants from 16 weeks’ gestation through one year after birth, measuring both pre- and postnatal exposure to pollutants and assessing infants’ growth and neurodevelopment.
Looking at New Tools to Assess Development and Measure Exposure
As part of the study, Thompson is using a new comprehensive assessment procedure that specially trained fieldworkers can use to make a rapid assessment of infant neurodevelopment. Pediatric neurologist Naila Zaman Khan, head of the Department of Pediatric Neuroscience at Dhaka Shishu (Children’s) Hospital and academic director of Bangladesh Institute of Child Health, developed the instrument – which doesn’t require assessors to have special expertise in child development – for use in low-resource settings.
Exposure to wood smoke increases arterial stiffness and decreases heart rate variability
JUNE 18, 2013 · 0 COMMENTS
Part Fibre Toxicol. 2013 Jun 6;10(1):20.
Exposure to wood smoke increases arterial stiffness and decreases heart rate variability in humans.
Unosson J, Blomberg A, Sandström T, Muala A, Boman C, Nyström R, Westerholm R, Mills NL, Newby DE, Langrish JP, Bosson JA.
BACKGROUND: Emissions from biomass combustion are a major source of indoor and outdoor air pollution, and are estimated to cause millions of premature deaths worldwide annually. Whilst adverse respiratory health effects of biomass exposure are well established, less is known about its effects on the cardiovascular system. In this study we assessed the effect of exposure to wood smoke on heart rate, blood pressure, central arterial stiffness and heart rate variability in otherwise healthy persons.
METHODS: Fourteen healthy non-smoking subjects participated in a randomized, double-blind crossover study. Subjects were exposed to dilute wood smoke (mean particle concentration of 314+/-38 mug/m3) or filtered air for three hours during intermittent exercise. Heart rate, blood pressure, central arterial stiffness and heart rate variability were measured at baseline and for one hour post-exposure.
RESULTS: Central arterial stiffness, measured as augmentation index, augmentation pressure and pulse wave velocity, was higher after wood smoke exposure as compared to filtered air (p < 0.01 for all), and heart rate was increased (p < 0.01) although there was no effect on blood pressure. Heart rate variability (SDNN, RMSSD and pNN50; p = 0.003, p < 0.001 and p < 0.001 respectively) was decreased one hour following exposure to wood smoke compared to filtered air.
CONCLUSIONS: Acute exposure to wood smoke as a model of exposure to biomass combustion is associated with an immediate increase in central arterial stiffness and a simultaneous reduction in heart rate variability. As biomass is used for cooking and heating by a large fraction of the global population and is currently advocated as a sustainable alternative energy source, further studies are required to establish its likely impact on cardiovascular disease.Trial registration: ClinicalTrials.gov, NCT01488500.
CNN – How cooking can be a deadly chore
JUNE 18, 2013 · 0 COMMENTS
How cooking can be a deadly chore | Source: Allie Torgan, CNN, June 13, 2013 |
(CNN) — Whether it’s a weekend barbecue or roasting marshmallows on a camping trip, cooking over an open fire is a novelty that many Americans enjoy.
But for nearly half the world’s population, building and maintaining a fire is a daily — and often deadly — chore.
In remote villages and city slums, women tend to fires for hours on end, breathing in smoke that is the equivalent of smoking two packs of cigarettes a day, according to the World Health Organization. Many of these women have their children close by or strapped to their chest or back, and the dangerous pollutants from the smoke can result in severe damage to their lungs as well.
Nancy Hughes witnessed this firsthand while working with a medical team in Guatemala more than a decade ago.
“There were doctors on the medical team who could not put tubes down the babies’ throats because the throats were so choked with creosote,” said Hughes, a 70-year-old grandmother who lives in Eugene, Oregon. “Imagine you’ve got a new baby and you couldn’t save that baby’s life … and it’s because of cooking.”
Nancy Hughes, left, spent years working with engineers on a cleaner portable stove.
Inhaling this polluted air has also been linked to pneumonia, heart disease, lung cancer, low birth weight and respiratory infections, just to name a few.
Hughes spent years working with engineers to create the Ecocina, a stove that burns cleaner to make it safer for people and better for the environment. In 2008, she founded StoveTeam International, which she says has established factories that have produced more than 37,000 stoves and improved the lives of more than 280,000 people in Latin America.
Cooking shouldn’t kill,” she said.
An estimated 4 million people each year die from exposure to cookstove smoke, according to the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves (PDF). But Hughes and her group are trying to help change that. By using a cleaner combustion process, the Ecocina stove reduces carbon emissions and particulate matter by 70%. The quick-cooking unit is also cost-efficient and portable, and it requires no installation or external chimney.
Cornell University – Cook Stove Design Competition
JUNE 18, 2013 · 0 COMMENTS
Cornell University – Cook Stove Design Competition
The Center for Sustainable Global Enterprise at Cornell University’s Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management is accepting submissions for its “Cook Stove Design Competition.” This competition seeks out-of-the-box, innovative design ideas for cook stoves targeting low-income households in emerging markets. Designers, engineers and innovators from around the world are invited to submit ideas that may shape the features and design of clean cook stoves based on kerosene or biofuels through either iterations of existing technology or entirely new designs.
Household Air Pollution in Low- and Middle-Income Countries: Health Risks and Research Priorities
JUNE 5, 2013 · 0 COMMENTS
Household Air Pollution in Low- and Middle-Income Countries: Health Risks and Research Priorities. PLoS Med 10(6): June 2013.
Martin WJ II, Glass RI, Araj H, Balbus J, Collins FS, et al.
Summary Points
- Household air pollution (HAP) from solid fuel (biomass or coal) combustion is the leading environmental cause of death and disability in the world.
- Many governments, multinational companies and nongovernmental organizations are developing programs to promote access to improved stoves and clean fuels, but there is little demonstrated evidence of health benefits from most of these programs or technologies.
- A stakeholder meeting hosted by U.S. government sponsors identified research gaps and priorities related to the health effects of HAP and unsafe stoves in seven areas (cancer; infections; cardiovascular disease; maternal, neonatal, and child health; respiratory disease; burns; and ocular disorders) and gaps in four cross-cutting areas that are relevant to research on HAP (exposure and biomarker assessment, women’s empowerment, behavioral approaches, and program evaluation).
- It is vital that researchers partner with implementing organizations and governments to evaluate the impacts of improved stove and fuel programs to identify and share evidence regarding the outcomes of the many implementation programs underway, including the socio-behavioral aspects of household energy use