Public health benefits of strategies to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions: household energy

Wilkinson, Paul; Smith, Kirk R.; Davies, Martin; Adair, Heather; Armstrong, Ben; Barrett, Mark; Bruce, Nigel; Haines, Andy; Hamilton, Ian; Oreszczyn, Tadj; Ridley, Ian; Tonne, Cathryn; Chalabi, Zaid

doi:10.1016/s0140-6736(09)61713-x

Cited by 335 publications

(225 citation statements)

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“…Factors like ETS, lack of separate kitchen or ventilated kitchen and use of kerosene for cooking are also found to be strongly associated with respiratory problems among respondents and could be the reasons for the high prevalence of disease among women. Indoor air pollution from alternate fuel use in all developing countries was estimated to account for about 1.6 million deaths annually in 2004 and about 500,000 in India in 2010, suggesting a serious impact on health (Smith, Mehta, & Maeusezahl-Feuz, 2004;Wilkinson et al, 2009). This is a pointer, that in our country we have chronic respiratory diseases on the rise.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Epidemiologic Correlates of Chronic Respiratory Infections in Adults an Urban Slum of Bhubaneswar, Odisha, India

Kar¹,

Mohapatra²,

Konar³

2016

GJHS

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Introduction: Urbanization is marked by emergence of slum areas, wherein migrants from the nearby villages stay in temporary establishments for seeking avenues of employment. These dwellings lack most of the essential living conditions like safe water, healthy living conditions and access to health services. This population is also vulnerable to social evils like alcohol and tobacco addiction. KIMS, a medical college in Bhubaneswar, Odisha, India has an Urban Health Training Centre (UHTC) that caters to a slum population of nearly 12,000 population for their primary health needs. Out of the monthly average of 200 patients /day, it is observed that respiratory symptoms complaints were highest both among the young and adults. Hence the study was conceived with the following objectives. Aims & Objectives:To assess the cumulative prevalence of Chronic Respiratory Infections and prevalence of specific respiratory symptoms in urban slum population along with a gender break up.To assess the association between the living conditions, tobacco use with the respiratory manifestations if any. Methodology:A house to house survey was done wherein all population aged 20-64years were interviewed using a pretested predesigned questionnaire adapted from questionnaire used in International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Diseases (IUATLD) study. Given the prevalence of nearly 4%, with 95% CI and a relative error of 20%, the optimum sample is considered to be nearly 400. For the study Chronic Respiratory Infections (CRI) was defined as reporting of 3 or more episodes of some specific common respiratory symptoms in last one year or a diagnosed case of asthma/COPD, warranting medical treatment. Results:The cumulative prevalence for CRI was seen as 11.7%, dry cough being the most common complaint ie 23.25% in both sexes. Smoking (both men and women), overcrowding and history of TB were seen as positive predictors of the disease. Use of wood or kerosene in case of women gave an OR of 6.1 times for manifestation of the disease. Conclusion:Chronic Respiratory Illness is a major burden for slum dwellers and they should be educated against the risk factors and take appropriate precautions to safeguard against the illness.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Epidemiologic Correlates of Chronic Respiratory Infections in Adults an Urban Slum of Bhubaneswar, Odisha, India

Kar¹,

Mohapatra²,

Konar³

2016

GJHS

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“…217,218 Decarbonising the power supply sector holds both risks and benefits for health. The direct benefits centre on reducing exposu re to air pollutants from fossil-fuel burning.…”

Section: Actions Technologies and Health Outcomesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Health and climate change: policy responses to protect public health

2015

Br Dent J

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Executive summaryThe 2015 Lancet Commission on Health and Climate Change has been formed to map out the impacts of climate change, and the necessary policy responses, in order to ensure the highest attainable standards of health for populations worldwide. This Commission is multi-disciplinary and international in nature, with strong collabor-ation between academic centres in Europe and China.The central finding from the Commission's work is that tackling climate change could be the greatest global health opportunity of the 21st century. The key messages from the Commission are summarised below, accompanied by ten underlying recommendations to accelerate action in the next 5 years.The effects of climate change are being felt today, and future projections represent an unacceptably high and potentially catastrophic risk to human healthThe implications of climate change for a global population of 9 billion people threatens to undermine the last half century o f gains in development and global health. The direct effects of climate change include increased heat stress, floods, drought, and increased frequency of intense storms, with the indirect threatening population health through adverse changes in air pollution, the spread of disease vectors, food insecurity and under-nutrition, displacement, and mental ill health.Keeping the global average temperature rise to less than 2°C to avoid the risk of potentially catastrophic climate change impacts requires total anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions to be kept below 2900 billion tonnes (GtCO2) by the end of the century. As of 2011, total emissions since 1870 were a little over half of this, with current trends expected to exceed 2900 GtCO2 in the next 15-30 years. High-end emissions projection scenarios show global average warming of 2·6-4·8°C by the end of the century, with all their regional amplification and attendant impacts.Tackling climate change could be the greatest global health opportunity of the 21st century Given the potential of climate change to reverse the health gains from economic development, and the health co-benefits that accrue from actions for a sustainable economy, tackling climate change could be the greatest global health opportunity of this century. Many mitigation and adaptation responses to climate change are "no-regret" options, which lead to direct reductions in the burden of ill-health, enhance community resilience, alleviate poverty, and address global inequity. Benefits are realised by ensuring that countries are unconstrained by climate change, enabling them to achieve better health and wellbeing for their populations. These strategies will also reduce pressures on national health budgets, delivering potentially large cost savings, and enable investments in stronger, more resilient health systems. The Commission recommends that over the next 5 years, governments:1 Invest in climate change and public health research, monitoring, and surveillance to ensure a better understanding of the adaptation needs and the potential health co-b...

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“…A growing body of literature accounts for the various co-benefits which accrue from household and building energy efficiency measures (see for example U.S. EPA, 2011;Wilkinson et al, 2009;Hutton and Rehfuess, 2008;Hutton et al, 2007;von Schirnding et al, 2002). This research has focused on thermal comfort co-benefits due to thermal insulation, indoor air quality benefits from fuel switching and more efficient cook-stoves (especially in developing countries), and improved health impacts from less exposure to extreme temperature and humidity.…”

Section: Categorizing Of Co-benefits Studiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

International Experiences with Quantifying the Co-Benefits of Energy-Efficiency and Greenhouse-Gas Mitigation Programs and Policies

Williams¹

2012

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Executive SummaryImproving the efficiency of energy production and consumption and switching to lower carbon energy sources can significantly decrease carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) emissions and reduce climate change impacts. A growing body of research has found that these measures can also directly mitigate many non-climate change related human health hazards and environmental damage. Positive impacts of policies and programs that occur in addition to the intended primary policy goal are called co-benefits. Policy analysis relies on forecasting and comparing the costs of policy and program implementation and the benefits that accrue to society from implementation. GHG reduction and energy efficiency policies and programs face political resistance in part because of the difficulty of quantifying their benefits. On the one hand, climate change mitigation policy benefits are often global, long-term, and subject to large uncertainties, and subsidized energy pricing can reduce the direct monetary benefits of energy efficiency policies to below their cost. On the other hand, the co-benefits that accrue from these efforts' resultant reductions in conventional air pollution (such as improved health, agricultural productivity, reduced damage to infrastructure, and local ecosystem improvements) are generally near term, local, and more certain than climate change mitigation benefits and larger than the monetary value of energy savings. The incorporation of co-benefits into energy efficiency and climate mitigation policy and program analysis therefore might significantly increase the uptake of these policies. Faster policy uptake is especially important in developing countries because ongoing development efforts that do not consider co-benefits may lock in suboptimal technologies and infrastructure and result in high costs in future years.Over the past two decades, studies have repeatedly documented that non-climate change related benefits of energy efficiency and fuel conversion efforts, as a part of GHG mitigation strategies, can be from between 30% to over 100% of the costs of such policies and programs strategies. Policy makers around the world are increasingly interested in including both GHG and non-GHG impacts in analyses of energy efficiency and fuel switching policies and programs and a set of methodologies has matured from the efforts of early moving jurisdictions such as the European Union, the United States, and Japan.ii ES.1. General Steps for Quantifying Co-benefitsThere are four general steps for quantifying the co-benefits of energy efficiency and GHG emissions reduction policies discussed in this report:1. Calculating emissions differences between base case and alternative policy scenarios.2. Applying air dispersion modeling or simplifications to characterize and compare concentrations of pollutants.3. Estimating impacts for each scenario and comparing them against each other (using, for example, population-adjusted C-R functions to find health impacts).4. Monetizing or otherwise quantifying those impacts in rela...

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Public health benefits of strategies to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions: household energy

Cited by 335 publications

References 47 publications

Epidemiologic Correlates of Chronic Respiratory Infections in Adults an Urban Slum of Bhubaneswar, Odisha, India

Epidemiologic Correlates of Chronic Respiratory Infections in Adults an Urban Slum of Bhubaneswar, Odisha, India

Health and climate change: policy responses to protect public health

International Experiences with Quantifying the Co-Benefits of Energy-Efficiency and Greenhouse-Gas Mitigation Programs and Policies

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