The concentrations and exposure levels of pollutants emitted as a result of domestic energy and indoor cooking with biomass fuels (eg. wood, charcoal, dung) in less-developed countries have considerable public-health implications, conclude authors of a study in this week’s issue of THE LANCET.
Acute respiratory infections (ARI) are the leading cause of the global burden of disease, and have been causally linked with exposure to pollutants from domestic biomass fuels used by an estimated 2 billion people in less-developed countries. Majid Ezzati from the Center for Risk Management, Resources for the Future, Washington DC, and Daniel Kammen from the University of California, Berkeley, USA, used longitudinal health-data and detailed monitoring of personal exposure from more than 2 years of field measurements within a community in rural Kenya to estimate the exposure-response relationship for particulates smaller than 10 mm in diameter (PM10) generated from biomass combustion.
55 randomly-selected households in central Kenya were followed up for more than 2 years. Longitudinal data on ARI including separate recording of acute lower respiratory infections (ALRI) were recorded at weekly clinical examinations. The investigators found that ARI and ALRI was related to increased PM10 exposure, with the rate of increase of disease declining for exposures above about 1000-2000 mg/m3.
Majid Ezzati comments: “The benefits of reduced exposure to PM10 are larger for average exposure less than about 1000-2000 mg/m3. Our findings have important consequences for international public-health policies, energy and combustion research, and technology transfer efforts that affect more than 2 billion people worldwide.”
Contact: Dr Majid Ezzati, Center for Risk Management, Resources for the Future (RFF), 1616 P Street NW, Washington DC 20036, USA; T) 1-202-328-5004; F) 1-202-939-3460; E) ezzati@rff.o
The Lancet