Household Cooking with Solid Fuels Contributes to Ambient PM2.5 Air Pollution and the Burden of Disease. Environ Health Perspect. 2014 Sep 5.
Authors: Chafe ZA1, Brauer M2, Klimont Z3, Van Dingenen R4, Mehta S5, Rao S3, Riahi K3, Dentener F4, Smith KR6.
Author information
1Energy and Resources Group; and Environmental Health Sciences, University of California, Berkeley, California, USA.
2School of Population and Public Health, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
3International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, Laxenburg, Austria.
4European Commission Joint Research Centre, Institute for Environment and Sustainability, Air and Climate Unit, Ispra, Italy.
5Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves, Washington, DC, USA.
6Environmental Health Sciences, University of California, Berkeley, California, USA.
Background: Approximately 2.8 billion people cook with solid fuels. Research has focused on the health impacts of indoor exposure to fine particulate pollution. Here, for the 2010 Global Burden of Disease project (GBD 2010), we evaluate the impact of household cooking with solid fuels on regional population-weighted ambient PM2.5 pollution (APM2.5).
Objectives: We estimated the proportion and concentrations of APM2.5 attributable to household cooking with solid fuels (PM2.5-cook) for the years 1990, 2005, and 2010 in 170 countries; and associated ill-health.
Methods: We used an energy supply-driven emissions model (GAINS) and source-receptor model (TM5-FASST) to estimate the proportion of APM2.5 produced by households and the proportion of household PM2.5 emissions from cooking with solid fuels. We estimated health effects using GBD 2010 data on ill-health from APM2.5 exposure.
Results: In 2010, household cooking with solid fuels accounted for 12% of APM2.5 globally, varying from 0% of APM2.5 in five higher-income regions to 37% (2.8 µg/m3 of 6.9 µg/m3 total) in Southern sub-Saharan Africa. PM2.5-cook constituted >10% of APM2.5 in seven regions housing 4.4 billion people. South Asia showed the highest regional concentration of APM2.5 from household cooking (8.6 µg/m3). Based on GBD 2010, we estimate that exposure to APM2.5 from cooking with solid fuels caused the loss of 370,000 lives and 9.9 million disability-adjusted life years globally in 2010.
Conclusions: PM2.5 emissions from household cooking constitute an important portion of APM2.5 concentrations in many places, including India and China. Efforts to improve ambient air quality will be hindered if household cooking conditions are not addressed.
