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.