Low-income families in dry regions, including in the Southwestern United States, frequently cool their homes with evaporative ("swamp") coolers (ECs). While inexpensive and energy efficient compared to central air conditioners, ECs pull unfiltered outdoor air into the home, creating a health hazard to occupants when wildfire smoke and heat events coincide. A community-engaged research project to reduce wildfire smoke in homes was conducted in California's San Joaquin Valley in homes of Spanish-speaking agricultural workers.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Hypertension is a leading risk factor for cardiovascular disease, and its association with household air pollution (HAP) in sub-Saharan Africa is understudied.
Main Objective: To investigate the association between blood pressure (BP) and HAP exposure in a population-based cohort in rural Malawi.
Materials And Methods: In the Chikwawa district, the site of a previous randomized controlled trial of a cleaner-burning cookstove intervention (the Cooking and Pneumonia Study or CAPS), we recruited 1,481 randomly selected adults.
Background: Coccidioidomycosis, caused by inhalation of spp. spores, is an emerging infectious disease that is increasing in incidence throughout the southwestern US. The pathogen is soil-dwelling, and spore dispersal and human exposure are thought to co-occur with airborne mineral dust exposures, yet fundamental exposure-response relationships have not been conclusively estimated.
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