Atmospheric Environment 49 (2012) 415e418
Dioxin inhalation doses from wood combustion in indoor cookfires
Amanda L. Northcross
Approximately 3 billion people worldwide rely on solid biomass fuels for household cooking and space heating, and approximately 50 to 60% use wood, often indoors in poorly ventilated situations. Daily exposures to high concentrations of smoke from cookstoves inside kitchens create large smoke exposures for women cooks and their small children. The smoke from burning wood fuel contains hundreds of toxic compounds, including dioxins and furans some of the most toxic compounds known to science. Health affects from exposure to dioxins include reproductive and developmental problems, damage the immune system, interference with hormones and also cause cancer. This study measure concentrations of dioxins and furans in a typical Guatemalan village home during open cookfires.
Measured concentrations averaged 0.32 ng m3 over 31 fires. A Monte Carlo simulation was conducted using parameter estimates based on 8 years of research experience in the study area. The 46% of babies have an estimated total daily intake (TDI) which exceed the WHO TDI guideline for dioxins and furans, 3% of women and 26% of 5-year-old children based solely inhalation of particle phase dioxins in woodsmoke from an open cooking fire. These values may be underestimates, as they did not include gas phase concentrations or ingestion of dioxins and furans through food, which is the largest route of exposure in the developed world.
