Abstract

Almost half of the world’s population still practice biomass fuel burning for various domestic purposes. About 1.6 million deaths are attributed to acute exposure to indoor air pollutants in India. A very few attempts have been made in the eastern part of India for remediation from household air pollution through the intervention of improved cookstoves. In this study, an attempt has been made to curb the pollution level by substituting traditional biomass cookstoves with an improved cookstove. The concentrations of pollutants (CO, CO₂, O₃, NO₂, SO₂, PM_2.5, PM₁₀ and TSPM) were measured, and health parameters were assessed before and after installation of the improved cookstove. Results revealed that the pollution was reduced and health parameters were improved significantly (p < 0.001) after installation of an improved cookstove. Toxicological risk analysis and percentage of blood carboxyhemoglobin results confirmed that higher health risk was associated with the use of the traditional cookstove. However, the health risk of women was gradually decreased after using an improved cookstove. The Monte Carlo probabilistic simulation model was run to assess the uncertainty factors on the health risk, and it was observed that exposure time and duration of exposure were two important factors that contributed most to the health risk assessment. Therefore, it may be concluded that the present improved cookstoves could be an alternative for the rural people besides clean energy.

Graphic abstract

中文翻译：

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减少家庭空气污染和相关的健康风险：在农村家庭中使用改进的炉灶进行的初步研究

摘要

世界上将近一半的人口仍在为各种家庭目的从事生物质燃料燃烧。在印度，约有160万人的死亡归因于室内空气污染物的急性暴露。在印度东部，已经进行了很少的尝试，通过改进炉灶来从家庭空气污染中进行补救。在这项研究中，已经尝试通过用改进的炊具代替传统的生物质炊具来抑制污染水平。污染物浓度（CO，CO ₂，O ₃，NO ₂，SO ₂，PM _2.5，PM ₁₀（TSPM和TSPM），并在安装改进型灶具之前和之后评估健康参数。结果表明，污染减少了，健康参数大大改善了（p <0.001）安装改进的炉灶后。毒理学风险分析和血液中羧基血红蛋白百分比结果证实，使用传统炊具会带来更高的健康风险。但是，使用改良的炉灶后，女性的健康风险逐渐降低。运行蒙特卡罗概率模拟模型来评估健康风险的不确定性因素，并且观察到暴露时间和暴露持续时间是对健康风险评估贡献最大的两个重要因素。因此，可以得出结论，除清洁能源外，目前改进的炊具还可以作为农村居民的替代选择。

图形摘要