Reduction in personal exposures to particulate matter and carbon monoxide as a result of the installation of a Patsari improved cook stove in Michoacan Mexico

Abstract

Installation of improved cookstoves may result in significant reductions in indoor concentrations of carbon monoxide and fine particulate matter (PM(2.5)), with concurrent but lower reductions in personal exposures. Significant errors may result if reductions in kitchen concentrations are used as a proxy for personal exposure reductions when evaluating stove interventions in epidemiological investigations. Similarly, time microenvironment activity models in these rural homes do not provide robust estimates of individual exposures due to the large spatial heterogeneity in pollutant concentrations and the lack of resolution of time activity diaries to capture movement through these microenvironments.

Impact of improved cookstoves on indoor air pollution and adverse health effects among Honduran women

“…The indoor PM 2.5 levels observed in this study are similar to those observed for other improved biomass stoves, including wood-and dung-burning cookstoves in India (Chengappa et al 2007;Dutta et al 2007), wood-burning cookstoves in Mexico (Masera et al 2007), and wood-burning cookstoves in Guatemala (Naeher et al 2000;Albalak et al 2001;McCracken et al 2007). In addition, Cynthia et al (2008) suggest that the relationship between reductions in kitchen concentrations and reductions in personal concentrations are not consistent and may differ based on stove type. In this study, personal carbon monoxide concentrations were not assessed which may limit interpretation of results if carbon monoxide is the health-damaging pollutant and if changes in indoor carbon monoxide do not reflect changes in personal carbon monoxide.…”

Quantification of Carbon Savings from Improved Biomass Cookstove Projects

“…Although these costs are much more variable on a projectby-project basis depending on stove promotion efforts and monitoring and verification strategies, incorporating a conservative minimum adoption rate of 60% within a community and monitoring costs from the Patsari Project increased costs to ∼$8 per tCO 2 -e saving. Even if these costs were three times higher, they would still be considerably less expensive than the lower range of CO 2 (25) indicate CO 2 -capture from coal plants ($25-40) and solar power ($57-240) in the United States would be 3-5 and 7-30 times more expensive than Patsari dissemination. Should stripping CO 2 from the atmosphere be required, at a cost of $140-250 per tCO 2 removed, this would be 17-31-fold more expensive than reducing CO 2 -e emissions with improved stoves.…”

“…Traditional assessment methods are also invasive and costly, requiring installation of vented hoods in homes while using sophisticated instrumentation, and typically provide only short-term estimates of emissions for a single meal event. Second, although in more commercial sectors direct reporting or fuel inventories are used to asses fuel consumption, cookstoves often rely on noncommercial or locally purchased fuels, and tracking of fuel consumption presents methodological and logistic challenges (2). Third, for biomass burning stoves, the tools to consistently estimate the fraction of nonrenewable biomass (fNRB) harvesting have been lacking.…”

“…To demonstrate that robust estimates of CO 2 -e savings can be obtained at reasonable cost, an integrated approach of community-based subsampling of traditional and improved stoves in homes to estimate fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emissions, combined with spatially explicit community-based estimates of the fraction of nonrenewable biomass harvesting (fNRB), was used to estimate CO 2 -e savings for 603 homes with improved Patsari stoves in Purépecha communities of Michoacán, Mexico. Mean annual household CO 2 -e savings for CO 2 , CH 4 , CO, and nonmethane hydrocarbons were 3.9 tCO 2 -e home -1 yr -1 (95% CI ( 22%), and for Kyoto gases (CO 2 and CH 4 ) were 3.1 tCO 2 -e home -1 yr -1 (95% CI ( 26%), respectively, using a weighted mean fNRB harvesting of 39%. CO 2 -e savings ranged from 1.6 (95% CI ( 49%) to 7.5 (95% CI ( 17%) tCO 2 -e home -1 yr -1 for renewable and nonrenewable harvesting in individual communities, respectively.…”

Air quality, respiratory health and wood use for women converting from low- to high-efficiency stoves in rural Kenya

“…While there have been many studies of indoor air quality in developing countries, including some comparing IAQ before and after stove improvements [e.g., [27][28][29][30], few studies have simultaneously examined effects on human health. Notably, Guatemalan women reported fewer headache and less eye discomfort after installation of improved wood burning stoves [31] while the use of cleaner household fuels coincided with a 31% decrease in childhood mortality in subSaharan Africa [32].…”