Health impacts of a randomized biomass cookstove intervention in northern Ghana.

Background: Household air pollution (HAP) from cooking with solid fuels has adverse health effects. REACCTING (Research on Emissions, Air quality, Climate, and Cooking Technologies in Northern Ghana) was a randomized cookstove intervention study that aimed to determine the effects of two types of "improved" biomass cookstoves on health using self-reported health symptoms and biomarkers of systemic inflammation from dried blood spots for female adult cooks and children, and anthropometric growth measures for children only.

Methods: Two hundred rural households were randomized into four different cookstove groups.

A Case-Crossover Analysis of Indoor Heat Exposure on Mortality and Hospitalizations among the Elderly in Houston, Texas.

Background: Despite the substantial role indoor exposure has played in heat wave-related mortality, few epidemiological studies have examined the health effects of exposure to indoor heat. As a result, knowledge gaps regarding indoor heat-health thresholds, vulnerability, and adaptive capacity persist.

Objective: We evaluated the role of indoor heat exposure on mortality and morbidity among the elderly ( of age) in Houston, Texas.

Updated Emission Factors from Diffuse Combustion Sources in Sub-Saharan Africa and Their Effect on Regional Emission Estimates.

Diffuse emission sources outside of kitchen areas are poorly understood, and measurements of their emission factors (EFs) are sparse for regions of sub-Saharan Africa. Thirty-one in-field emission measurements were taken in northern Ghana from combustion sources common to rural regions worldwide. Sources sampled included commercial cooking, trash burning, kerosene lanterns, and diesel generators.

Environmental Conditions, Ignition Type, and Air Quality Impacts of Wildfires in the Southeastern and Western United States.

This research contrasts the environmental conditions, meteorological drivers, and air quality impacts of human- and lightning-ignited wildfires in the southeastern and western United States, the two continental U.S. regions with the most wildfire burn area.

Vegetation-fire feedback reduces projected area burned under climate change.

Climate influences vegetation directly and through climate-mediated disturbance processes, such as wildfire. Temperature and area burned are positively associated, conditional on availability of vegetation to burn. Fire is a self-limiting process that is influenced by productivity.

Urban heat and air pollution: A framework for integrating population vulnerability and indoor exposure in health risk analyses.

Urban growth and climate change will exacerbate extreme heat events and air pollution, posing considerable health challenges to urban populations. Although epidemiological studies have shown associations between health outcomes and exposures to ambient air pollution and extreme heat, the degree to which indoor exposures and social and behavioral factors may confound or modify these observed effects remains underexplored. To address this knowledge gap, we explore the linkages between vulnerability science and epidemiological conceptualizations of risk to propose a conceptual and analytical framework for characterizing current and future health risks to air pollution and extreme heat, indoors and outdoors.

Application of geostatistical approaches to predict the spatio-temporal distribution of summer ozone in Houston, Texas.

Mitigation of adverse effects of air pollution requires understanding underlying exposures, such as ambient ozone concentrations. Geostatistical approaches were employed to analyze temporal trends and estimate spatial patterns of summertime ozone concentrations for Houston, Texas, based on hourly ozone observations obtained from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. We systematically assess the accuracy of several spatial interpolation methods, comparing inverse distance weighting, simple kriging, ordinary kriging, and universal kriging methods utilizing the hourly ozone observations and meteorological measurements from monitoring sites.

Liquified Petroleum Gas (LPG) Supply and Demand for Cooking in Northern Ghana.

Like many other countries, Ghana relies on biomass (mainly wood and charcoal) for most of its cooking needs. A national action plan aims to expand liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) access to 50% of the country's population by 2020. While the country's southern urban areas have made progress toward this goal, LPG use for cooking remains low in the north.

Chemical composition and source apportionment of ambient, household, and personal exposures to PM in communities using biomass stoves in rural China.

Fine particulate matter (PM) has health effects that may depend on its sources and chemical composition. Few studies have quantified the composition of personal and area PM in rural settings over the same time period. Yet, this information would shed important light on the sources influencing personal PM exposures.

Impacts of stove use patterns and outdoor air quality on household air pollution and cardiovascular mortality in southwestern China.

Background: Decades of intervention programs that replaced traditional biomass stoves with cleaner-burning technologies have failed to meet the World Health Organization (WHO) interim indoor air quality target of 35-μg m for PM. Many attribute these results to continued use of biomass stoves and poor outdoor air quality, though the relative impacts of these factors have not been empirically quantified.

Methods: We measured 496 days of real-time stove use concurrently with outdoor and indoor air pollution (PM) in 150 rural households in Sichuan, China.

New Emission Factors and Efficiencies from in-Field Measurements of Traditional and Improved Cookstoves and Their Potential Implications.

Household cooking using solid biomass fuels is a major global health and environmental concern. As part of the Research on Emissions Air quality Climate and Cooking Technologies in Northern Ghana study, we conducted 75 in-field uncontrolled cooking tests designed to assess emissions and efficiency of the Gyapa woodstove, Philips HD4012, threestone fire and coalpot (local charcoal stove). Emission factors (EFs) were calculated for carbon monoxide (CO), carbon dioxide (CO), and particulate matter (PM).

Improving present day and future estimates of anthropogenic sectoral emissions and the resulting air quality impacts in Africa.

The African continent is undergoing immense social and economic change, particularly regarding population growth and urbanization, where the urban population in Africa is anticipated to increase by a factor of 3 over the next 40 years. To understand the potential health impacts from this demographical shift and design efficient emission mitigation strategies, we used improved Africa-specific emissions that account for inefficient combustion sources for a number of sectors such as transportation, household energy generation, waste burning, and home heating and cooking. When these underrepresented emissions sources are combined with the current estimates of emissions in Africa, ambient particulate matter concentrations from present-day anthropogenic activity contribute to 13 210 annual premature deaths, with the largest contributions (38%) coming from residential emissions.

Exposures to and origins of carbonaceous PM in a cookstove intervention in Northern Ghana.

REACCTING (Research on Emissions Air Quality, Climate, and Cooking Technologies in Northern Ghana) was a 200-home cookstove intervention study from 2013 to 2015. Study households were divided into four groups: a control group, a group given two locally made rocket stoves, a group given two Philips forced draft stoves, and a group given a locally made rocket stove and a Philips stove. In a subset of study households, 48-hour PM exposure samples were collected for adults and children, as well as in the primary cooking area.

Air Quality Impact of Diffuse and Inefficient Combustion Emissions in Africa (DICE-Africa).

Anthropogenic pollution in Africa is dominated by diffuse and inefficient combustion sources, as electricity access is low and motorcycles and outdated cars proliferate. These sources are missing, out-of-date, or misrepresented in state-of-the-science emission inventories. We address these deficiencies with a detailed inventory of Diffuse and Inefficient Combustion Emissions in Africa (DICE-Africa) for 2006 and 2013.

The Regional Impacts of Cooking and Heating Emissions on Ambient Air Quality and Disease Burden in China.

Exposure to air pollution is a major risk factor globally and particularly in Asia. A large portion of air pollutants result from residential combustion of solid biomass and coal fuel for cooking and heating. This study presents a regional modeling sensitivity analysis to estimate the impact of residential emissions from cooking and heating activities on the burden of disease at a provincial level in China.

Seasonal and Diurnal Air Pollution from Residential Cooking and Space Heating in the Eastern Tibetan Plateau.

Residential combustion of solid fuel is a major source of air pollution. In regions where space heating and cooking occur at the same time and using the same stoves and fuels, evaluating air-pollution patterns for household-energy-use scenarios with and without heating is essential to energy intervention design and estimation of its population health impacts as well as the development of residential emission inventories and air-quality models. We measured continuous and 48 h integrated indoor PM2.

"What We Breathe Impacts Our Health: Improving Understanding of the Link between Air Pollution and Health".

Air pollution contributes to the premature deaths of millions of people each year around the world, and air quality problems are growing in many developing nations. While past policy efforts have succeeded in reducing particulate matter and trace gases in North America and Europe, adverse health effects are found at even these lower levels of air pollution. Future policy actions will benefit from improved understanding of the interactions and health effects of different chemical species and source categories.

Research on Emissions, Air quality, Climate, and Cooking Technologies in Northern Ghana (REACCTING): study rationale and protocol.

Background: Cooking over open fires using solid fuels is both common practice throughout much of the world and widely recognized to contribute to human health, environmental, and social problems. The public health burden of household air pollution includes an estimated four million premature deaths each year. To be effective and generate useful insight into potential solutions, cookstove intervention studies must select cooking technologies that are appropriate for local socioeconomic conditions and cooking culture, and include interdisciplinary measurement strategies along a continuum of outcomes.

Global emissions of trace gases, particulate matter, and hazardous air pollutants from open burning of domestic waste.

The open burning of waste, whether at individual residences, businesses, or dump sites, is a large source of air pollutants. These emissions, however, are not included in many current emission inventories used for chemistry and climate modeling applications. This paper presents the first comprehensive and consistent estimates of the global emissions of greenhouse gases, particulate matter, reactive trace gases, and toxic compounds from open waste burning.

Predicting primary PM2.5 and PM0.1 trace composition for epidemiological studies in California.

The University of California-Davis_Primary (UCD_P) chemical transport model was developed and applied to compute the primary airborne particulate matter (PM) trace chemical concentrations from ∼ 900 sources in California through a simulation of atmospheric emissions, transport, dry deposition and wet deposition for a 7-year period (2000-2006) with results saved at daily time resolution. A comprehensive comparison between monthly average model results and available measurements yielded Pearson correlation coefficients (R) ≥ 0.8 at ≥ 5 sites (out of a total of eight) for elemental carbon (EC) and nine trace elements: potassium, chromium, zinc, iron, titanium, arsenic, calcium, manganese, and strontium in the PM2.

Identifying PM2.5 and PM0.1 sources for epidemiological studies in California.

The University of California-Davis_Primary (UCD_P) model was applied to simultaneously track ∼ 900 source contributions to primary particulate matter (PM) in California for seven continuous years (January 1st, 2000 to December 31st, 2006). Predicted source contributions to primary PM2.5 mass, PM1.

Projected effects of climate and development on California wildfire emissions through 2100.

Changing climatic conditions are influencing large wildfire frequency, a globally widespread disturbance that affects both human and natural systems. Understanding how climate change, population growth, and development patterns will affect the area burned by and emissions from wildfires and how populations will in turn be exposed to emissions is critical for climate change adaptation and mitigation planning. We quantified the effects of a range of population growth and development patterns in California on emission projections from large wildfires under six future climate scenarios.

Evaluation of a seven-year air quality simulation using the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF)/Community Multiscale Air Quality (CMAQ) models in the eastern United States.

The performance of the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF)/Community Multi-scale Air Quality (CMAQ) system in the eastern United States is analyzed based on results from a seven-year modeling study with a 4-km spatial resolution. For 2-m temperature, the monthly averaged mean bias (MB) and gross error (GE) values are generally within the recommended performance criteria, although temperature is over-predicted with MB values up to 2K. Water vapor at 2-m is well-predicted but significant biases (>2 g kg(-1)) were observed in wintertime.

Seasonal variability in bacterial and fungal diversity of the near-surface atmosphere.

Bacteria and fungi are ubiquitous throughout the Earth's lower atmosphere where they often represent an important component of atmospheric aerosols with the potential to impact human health and atmospheric dynamics. However, the diversity, composition, and spatiotemporal dynamics of these airborne microbes remain poorly understood. We performed a comprehensive analysis of airborne microbes across two aerosol size fractions at urban and rural sites in the Colorado Front Range over a 14-month period.

Evaluating the effects of climate change on summertime ozone using a relative response factor approach for policymakers.

Unlabelled: The impact of climate change on surface-level ozone is examined through a multiscale modeling effort that linked global and regional climate models to drive air quality model simulations. Results are quantified in terms of the relative response factor (RRF(E)), which estimates the relative change in peak ozone concentration for a given change in pollutant emissions (the subscript E is added to RRF to remind the reader that the RRF is due to emission changes only). A matrix of model simulations was conducted to examine the individual and combined effects offuture anthropogenic emissions, biogenic emissions, and climate on the RRF(E).